A feature that went unmentioned during Apple’s main WWDC keynote this morning was the addition of comprehensive support for right-to-left languages in iOS 9. While Apple didn’t mention the addition this morning, it detailed the support during its Platforms State of the Union address this evening. Apple also notes of the feature in the official iOS 9 changelog:
iOS 9 brings comprehensive support for right-to-left languages, which makes it easier for you to provide a flipped user interface. For example:
- Standard UIKit controls automatically flip in a right-to-left context.
- UIView defines semantic content attributes that let you specify how particular views should appear in a right-to-left context.
- UIImage adds the imageFlippedForRightToLeftLayoutDirection method, which makes it easy to flip an image programmatically when appropriate.
To learn more about providing a flipped user interface, see Supporting Right-to-Left Languages.
While this feature may not seem incredibly useful for everyone, it will definitely be welcome in areas of the world where right-to-left languages are more widely used and it’s certainly nice to see Apple working to add support for features that are maybe not as headline worthy, but undoubtedly needed.
Below are some screenshots of the comprehensive support for right-to-left languages in iOS 9:
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Where can one find the SOTU video? I can’t find it on Apple’s website or anywhere else…
not sure what you mean by SOTU. but the video they’re talking about is only available to developers. they mentioned streaming them live. but those won’t be public. and i’m not sure if 9to5mac can have the screenshot shown from a private live-stream or not.
Just watch for this page: https://developer.apple.com/videos/. They will upload the Platform State of the Union in a few days.
Looks terrible!
I am persian and I Farsi is rtl but I would never use this!
Looks very weird! Specially the status bar
جيد (Good), I think we will see a localized versions of App Store & Mac App Store in Arabic & other right-to-left languages, and less “Effective Power” bugs.
شكراً
Awesome improvements, We have been waiting for this for 9 years. it’s only a matter of time to get used to it. i hope the same for OS X El Capitan UI user interface, especially menu bar and dock elements. thanks apple.
I am amazed that Apple has done this harder work of supporting RTL so nicely but missed to introduced more keyboards such as Persian which is greatly missing there for years. Apple OS has a nice one and I never understood why not on iOS. I could be sure that by iOS 9 the keyboard should be there but I am very disappointed.