If you’ve ever booted up Apex Legends only to find all menus and dialogue in a language you don’t recognize, or you want to switch to your native tongue to follow story beats more easily, you’re not alone. Thousands of players search how do you change the language in Apex Legends every month, especially after big season updates that sometimes reset user settings. This guide walks you through every step for all supported platforms, fixes for common bugs, and extra customization options you might not know exist. Whether you play on PC, console, or mobile, you’ll be able to adjust your settings in under two minutes with no extra downloads required in most cases.
How Do You Change the Language in Apex Legends Across All Platforms
The process varies slightly depending on what device you use to play, but all paths start from the main menu of the game. Before you start adjusting any settings, run through these quick pre-checks to make sure your changes save correctly:
- Save any ongoing match progress or quit to the main menu first, mid-match setting changes often don’t save and can cause crashes in rare cases
- Log in to your primary Apex Legends account linked to your platform to ensure settings sync across all devices you use
- Restart your game client if the settings menu is unresponsive before making changes, especially if you just installed a new update
For EA App users on PC, you don’t even need to open the game to adjust settings. Head to your game library, right click on Apex Legends, select Settings, then choose the language option from the dropdown menu. The client will download a small language pack if needed, and the change will apply the next time you boot up the game. For Steam players, the process is almost identical: right click the game in your library, select Properties, head to the Language tab, and pick your preferred option from the list.
Console players have to make the change inside the game itself, since console system settings don’t always override in-game language choices for Apex. From the main menu, hit the settings cog icon, navigate to the Gameplay tab, and scroll down to the Language section. Pick your option, confirm the change, and the game will restart automatically to apply the new settings. For mobile players, the steps are the same as console, just tap the settings icon on the main lobby screen and find the Language option under the General tab.
Customizing Separate Text and Audio Language Settings
One feature most players don’t know about is the ability to set different languages for text and audio separately. This is a game-changer if you prefer the original English voice acting for character lines but want menu text and subtitles in your native language, or if you’re trying to learn a new language by matching audio to text you already understand.
To use this feature, head to the same Language menu where you adjust your default language. You’ll see two separate dropdowns: one for Text Language and one for Audio Voiceover Language. Pick whichever combination works for you, confirm the choice, and restart the game to apply changes. Note that full audio localization is only available for 12 of the most popular supported languages right now, so if you pick a less common language for audio, it will default back to English automatically.
If you use separate language settings, you might want to adjust your subtitle sync to match the audio better. You can find this option under the Accessibility tab in settings, where you can shift subtitles forward or back by a few milliseconds to line up with dialogue. This is especially helpful if you’re using a language with longer or shorter sentence structures than the audio track.
Fixing Common Language Setting Glitches in Apex Legends
Even if you follow all the steps correctly, you might run into bugs that prevent your language settings from saving, or only change part of the game’s text. The most common issue is the language reset bug that pops up after major season updates, where the game reverts back to your original region’s default language no matter how many times you change it.
First, check if you have cloud save sync turned on for the game. A cloud save conflict is the cause of 80% of these reset issues, because your old saved settings are overwriting the new ones you just picked. To fix this, turn off cloud sync for Apex Legends on your platform, adjust the language settings while you’re offline, restart the game to confirm the change stuck, then turn cloud sync back on. I’ve had this happen to me twice after major season drops, so I know how frustrating it is to fumble through menus you can’t read, and this fix works 9 times out of 10.
If only part of the text is changed to your preferred language, that means the language pack didn’t download fully. On PC, verify your game files through EA App or Steam to download the missing parts. On console, delete the local saved data for Apex Legends (don’t worry, your account progress is saved to the cloud) and restart the game to redownload the full language pack. If you’re on mobile, clearing the game’s cache from your device settings will usually fix the partial translation issue.
Reasons to Adjust Your Apex Legends Language Settings
Most people change their language settings just because the game defaulted to the wrong one when they downloaded it, but there are a lot of other good reasons to tweak these settings. First, it makes the game far more accessible if you’re not fluent in English, since ability and item descriptions are critical to playing well, especially if you’re learning a new legend. Missing a tiny detail about an ability cooldown or effect can cost you a match, so having that information in a language you know perfectly gives you a small but real competitive edge.
It’s also a great tool for cross-language play sessions with friends who speak a different language. You can switch the text to a shared language so everyone can read the menu when you’re playing together on the same console, then switch it back later when you’re playing solo. A lot of players also use the separate audio and text settings to practice learning a new language, since the dialogue is casual and repetitive, which makes it easy to pick up new vocabulary while you’re having fun playing.
Even if you’re fluent in English, you might prefer the voice acting for certain characters in other languages. For example, a lot of fans love the Japanese voice lines for Wraith, or the Spanish dub for Octane, because they have more personality to them. There’s no right or wrong choice here, the settings are there to make your gaming experience as enjoyable as possible.
At the end of the day, figuring out how do you change the language in Apex Legends is a quick, simple process that makes a huge difference in how much you enjoy the game. Whether you’re fixing an accidental setting reset, customizing your audio and text for cross-language play, or just want to hear your favorite legend’s lines in a different dub, the steps are straightforward and only take a minute or two to complete. If you run into any issues that aren’t covered here, try restarting your game or verifying your files first, as those two fixes resolve almost all language setting related problems.