The new Language preferences section in Control Panel is the new one-stop place to find all Windows display languages in Windows 8. In the past, some languages were available through Windows Update, and others were distributed through the Microsoft Download Center.
The reasons for separating the languages into two groups and their separated distribution channels made no sense to our customers. It wasn’t their fault. This classification of languages only made sense to our internal teams. This confusion was a great motivator for re-imagining Language preferences in Control Panel. We will no longer ask customers to understand these nuances. Looking at the end-to-end experience, it made sense to build an entirely new experience around the acquisition of new languages. Here’s what that looks like in Windows 8:
Language preferences in Control Panel
The main view of Language preferences shows you which languages are enabled on your system. You can see that on this system, English (United States) display language is installed and enabled. The keyboard layout is also US. Language preferences is the one place to go to add or change display languages, input language, and other functionality. We’ll be talking more about that in future blog posts.
To add another language to your Windows, simply click the “Add a language” link above the first tile to bring up this list.
List of languages you can add to Windows
Select the language you want from the list. In these screenshots, I’m selecting Hindi. This list is long. Luckily, it’s filterable. Just type the first few letters of the language you want into the search box, and the list is narrowed for you. This search filter works in both the native script as seen on the tile, and the localized name of the language.
Hindi language has been added
Once selected, the language is added to your language list, but does not download and install the display language until you choose to do so. To add it as a display language, click Options.
The Options page for this language shows the status of the language pack
If a language pack is available for your language, you will see the link to “Download and install language pack.”
You can monitor progress of the download and installation
To switch to the newly installed display language, you’ll need to make it your primary language, by clicking “Make this the primary language,” as seen in the next screenshot.
Make your new language the primary language on the PC
Hindi is now the primary language on this PC
It’s as simple as that. Pretty cool, huh? No more hunting around on websites looking for the languages you want. They’re right here. If you are currently using Windows Vista or Windows 7 Ultimate, you probably see 34 or 35 languages as optional updates in your Windows Update UI. These won’t show up there anymore in Windows 8. Instead, we’ve consolidated the languages in one place for you: Language preferences in Control Panel. Language preferences will be a clean, unified control for all Windows display languages moving forward.
