Internationalization

Overview

weNow supports 50 languages via i18next with the react-i18next integration. The app automatically detects the device locale on first launch and sets the UI language accordingly. If the detected locale is not among the 50 supported languages, the app falls back to English. The user's language preference is persisted to AsyncStorage so it survives app restarts.

Supported Languages

Technical Setup

The internationalization system is built on the following stack:

• i18next -- core internationalization framework
• react-i18next -- React bindings providing the useTranslation hook and Trans component

Key files:

• src/i18n/index.ts -- i18next initialization, resource imports, AsyncStorage language detector
• src/i18n/languages.ts -- list of supported languages with codes and display names
• src/i18n/locales/*.json -- one JSON translation file per language (50 files total)

How to Add a New Language

1. Create the locale file -- Add a new JSON file in src/i18n/locales/ named with the language code (e.g., sw.json). Copy the structure from en.json and translate all values.
2. Register the language -- Add the language entry (code, name, native name) to the array in src/i18n/languages.ts.
3. Import in i18n config -- Import the new locale JSON in src/i18n/index.ts and add it to the resources object passed to i18next.init().

Translation Keys

Translation strings are organized into the following sections within each locale JSON file:

• common -- shared UI strings (OK, Cancel, generic text)
• weather -- main weather screen UI (search placeholder, ensemble title, forecast titles, remaining requests)
• errors -- error messages and fallback text (all sources failed, permission denied, etc.)
• onboarding -- first-launch screen text
• widgetConfig -- widget configuration screen (city search, forecast mode toggle)
• settings -- settings screen labels (language, data sources, feedback, privacy/terms links)
• comingSoon -- premium/paywall page (pitch, features, price)
• ad -- self-served ad card labels (sponsored, dismiss, accessibilityHint, plus the legacy adSpace / upgradeToRemove)
• accuracy -- source accuracy tracking (most accurate, off by, not enough data)

Widget Localization

Android home screen widgets run in a headless JavaScript context that does not have access to react-i18next, so they handle localization differently from the main app:

• Day names in forecast widgets use Intl.DateTimeFormat with the device locale (e.g., "Mon", "Tue") and fall back to English abbreviations if Intl is unavailable.
• Hour labels in hourly forecast mode are formatted as "14h", "15h" -- language-independent.
• Weather descriptions are returned by the backend in the language matching the app's locale (the lang parameter is forwarded to providers that support localized responses), so they render in the user's language.
• Hardcoded fallbacks ("Tap to set location", "Loading weather...", "Tap to open") are currently English-only because they appear before any data has been fetched.
• The widget configuration screen runs in the main app context, not headless, so it uses react-i18next normally with keys under the widgetConfig namespace.