Per-app language settings are missing in Android 13 Beta 1

Google giveth, Google taketh away

Android 13 Beta 1 has finally arrived, narrowly meeting the timeframe first set by Google two months ago. It's brought all sorts of changes and tweaks, including four times the amount of Material Design themes as previously offered. Unfortunately, one of the marquee features of Android 13 — per-app language support — has disappeared with today's update, leaving us scratching our heads as to when it'll return.

We exclusively reported on per-app languages late last year, and we were as excited as anyone to see them launch in Android 13 DP2 in March. Although it wasn't a perfect solution — the tool required app developers to support multiple languages for the option to work — it's a massive improvement over forcing users to change their system settings for a single app.

Left: Per-app language settings on Android 13 DP2. Right: Missing per-app language settings on A13 Beta 1.

Despite being mentioned in today's blog post from Google announcing Android 13 Beta 1, per-app language settings have disappeared completely, both from specific app settings and from the Languages & input menu itself.

When we tried the feature out in March, we came away fairly impressed, even if its limited app support was frustrating. It seems likely that their disappearance is yet another bug, though we'll have to wait for future Android 13 updates to see if and when it returns. For now, multilingual users are stuck with the old system-wide method.

If you want to give Android 13 a try, joining the beta program is super easy. Just keep in mind, bugs and disappearing features — including this one — are to be expected.