Support per-app language preferences #12093

mileskrell · 2025-03-12T04:10:47Z

What is it?

Bugfix (user facing)
Feature (user facing)
Codebase improvement (dev facing)
Meta improvement to the project (dev facing)

Description of the changes in your PR

Enables automatic per-app language support.

On Android 13+, the preference in Settings -> Content shows any locale that has been set by the user through Android's per-app language settings. When tapped, it opens NewPipe's per-app language settings screen.

Also added a method to migrate any existing app language preference from SharedPreferences to the Android per-app language settings when we run the app on Android 13+.

Before/After Screenshots/Screen Record

Before:

After:

per-app.language.settings.integrated.with.existing.ui.without.toast.mp4

APK testing

The APK can be found by going to the "Checks" tab below the title. On the left pane, click on "CI", scroll down to "artifacts" and click "app" to download the zip file which contains the debug APK of this PR. You can find more info and a video demonstration on this wiki page.

Due diligence

I read the contribution guidelines.

TobiGr · 2025-03-12T11:17:10Z

I'll paste my comment from #10994 here:

NewPipe has an in-app language chooser (settings > content > app language). This one conflicts with the language chosen in the Android app settings when a language is set. The language chosen inside the app is used. Everything works fine when the "system default" option is chosen. Not sure if this is an unwanted behaviour in terms of accessibility.

Is it possible to check whether the per-app language is set? If it is, we might want to disable the in-app setting and display a hint that the per-app language preference is used instead.

mileskrell · 2025-03-12T20:41:29Z

thanks @TobiGr! I looked briefly for an existing in-app language picker but didn't check in the "content" settings.

Yeah, I'll need to make some more changes so they don't conflict. I should be able to keep the in-app language picker and migrate it to use the new APIs.

TobiGr · 2025-03-12T20:51:27Z

@Stypox @AudricV Should these changes be done on the dev branch or the refactor branch?

Stypox · 2025-03-13T22:05:06Z

If it's just a matter of hiding the settings screen language toggle and showing a message instead, in case the language has been changed from outside, then it's ok on the dev branch. If it involves heavy changes to the way the app sets the language then it's better on the refactor branch. Thanks @mileskrell !

mileskrell · 2025-03-16T03:10:08Z

app/src/main/res/xml/content_settings.xml

+    <Preference
+        android:key="@string/app_language_android_13_and_up_key"
+        android:title="@string/app_language_title"
+        app:isPreferenceVisible="false"
+        app:singleLineTitle="false"
+        app:iconSpaceReserved="false" />


I added a separate Preference for the Android 13+ behavior only because for some reason when I set an OnPreferenceClickListener on the existing preference that returns true (indicating "the click was handled"), it still opens the existing dialog.

mileskrell · 2025-03-16T03:11:16Z

@TobiGr @Stypox I've updated this PR so it doesn't conflict with the existing in-app language picker. Let me know what you think!

TobiGr

Thank you. There is still a toast displayed that the language change is going to take effect with the next start of the app when changing the language on SDK 33+ which is obviously false.

TobiGr · 2025-03-16T09:39:51Z

app/src/main/java/org/schabi/newpipe/App.java

+
+        if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 33) {
+            ensureAppLanguagePreferenceIsMigrated(prefs);
+        }
+    }
+
+    private void ensureAppLanguagePreferenceIsMigrated(final SharedPreferences prefs) {
+        final String appLanguageDefaultValue = getString(R.string.default_localization_key);
+        final String appLanguageKey = getString(R.string.app_language_key);
+        final String appLanguageCurrentValue = prefs.getString(appLanguageKey, null);
+        if (appLanguageCurrentValue != null) {
+            // Migrate to Android per-app language settings
+            prefs.edit().remove(appLanguageKey).apply();
+            if (!appLanguageCurrentValue.equals(appLanguageDefaultValue)) {
+                try {
+                    AppCompatDelegate.setApplicationLocales(
+                            LocaleListCompat.forLanguageTags(appLanguageCurrentValue)
+                    );
+                } catch (final RuntimeException e) {
+                    Log.e(TAG, "Error migrating to Android 13+ per-app language settings");
+                }
+            }
+        }


That looks like it should be moved and converted to a Migration in org.schabi.newpipe.settings.SettingMigrations.

My only concern is that if we convert this to a Migration, my understanding is that it will only run once. So in theory, the following scenario is possible:

Someone running NewPipe on Android <13 sets a custom app language

They update to the new version of NewPipe, where this migration is run but doesn't do anything because they're on Android <13

They update to Android 13+

Their custom app language pref isn't used (because it's running the Android 13+ code path) and it's not migrated from their old preference (because there's nothing triggering the migration to run again)

I recognize this will probably be a pretty rare scenario, just wanted to flag it. But whether or not we make it a Migration, I do recognize that this code belongs somewhere outside of the Application subclass for sure.

I've moved it to a Migration. If we want to prevent the hypothetical app language setting loss I described above, maybe we could add a new migrations file for "migrations that should always be run on app startup because they depend on the current Android version".

Mmmh you are right, this shouldn't be a migration as it needs to run every time the app notices it has been updated to Android 13+ from a lower Android version. What do you think @TobiGr?

Yes, you are right. My bad. I'd move it to initSettings in NewPipeSettings then. Does that make sense @Stypox ?

mileskrell · 2025-03-16T22:42:52Z

My bad, totally forgot to fix the toast!

So prior to this PR, we've been showing this toast whenever the app language, content language, or content country is changed. But are we sure that changes to content language/country have ever required a restart? When building from the latest commit on dev, after I set the content language, I'm shown the toast. But if I then open a video that has an audio track for the new content language, that audio track is automatically used without having to restart first:

content.language.changing.without.restart.mp4

If changes to the content language and country are reflected without having to restart, then the only situation where we need to show the toast is when app language is changed on a device running Android <13. Let me know if that sounds correct!

mileskrell · 2025-03-17T00:28:41Z

If changes to the content language and country are reflected without having to restart, then the only situation where we need to show the toast is when app language is changed on a device running Android <13. Let me know if that sounds correct!

The most recent commit I pushed assumes this is the case, but we can revert it if not.

Video showing new behavior (no toast when changing only content language):

dont.show.toast.when.changing.content.language.or.country.mp4

Stypox

Code looks good to me, thank you! I have a comment here that could possibly be solved in a separate PR if you prefer. Also, see my comment about the migration.

Also, could you take a video of the updated code on pre-Android-13, so we can see if it still works as expected there?

Stypox · 2025-03-21T10:08:09Z

app/build.gradle

+    androidResources {
+        generateLocaleConfig = true
+    }
+


If we don't pay attention to new languages being added from Weblate, this might lead to half-translated being proposed to the user. Currently the list of languages is manually kept in settings_keys.xml, so when new languages are added through Weblate they don't automatically appear in the app menu. However, I'm fine with switching to the new behavior, as it would avoid work to keep the language list up to date. Is it possible to access the locale config from within the app, so we can delete the list of languages in settings_keys.xml and use the autogenerated locale config even for the pre-Android-13 language picker?

I found LocaleManager#getOverrideLocaleConfig but it sounds like that method is only to get a LocaleConfig that's already been set with setOverrideLocaleConfig(). As far as I can tell, we would have to manually generate a LocaleConfig instead of using the auto-generated one if we wanted to use it for this.

I could find the data under app/build/generated/res/localeConfig/debug/xml/_generated_res_locale_config.xml after running the build, with this data inside:

<locale-config xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"> <locale android:name="en-US"/> <locale android:name="ace"/> ...

So in theory the data is there, but in practice I think we better not access it by manually opening the xml since it's not officially supported. So yeah let's keep the previous behavior.

mileskrell · 2025-03-24T01:40:50Z

Also, could you take a video of the updated code on pre-Android-13, so we can see if it still works as expected there?

@Stypox I tried it on an emulator running Android 12 and it seems fine:

changing.language.on.android.12.mp4

Stypox · 2025-03-24T16:31:21Z

Thank you! I tested to import an export from a previous version of NewPipe into this PR's build on Android 13 and unfortunately it did not work: the app language remained the one that was there previously before importing settings. This is the database I imported (it should set the language to italian): NewPipeData-20250324_172806.zip

mileskrell · 2025-03-27T23:19:15Z

thanks for catching that and for sharing the settings export @Stypox!

It turns out AppCompatDelegate.setApplicationLocales wasn't working - I missed the part of the documentation that says

Note: This API should always be called after Activity.onCreate(), apart from any exceptions explicitly mentioned in this documentation.

I've moved the migration method to Localization.migrateAppLanguageSettingIfNecessary and I'm calling it at the end of MainActivity.onCreate. Here's a video of the working migration:

fixed.migration.mp4

sonarqubecloud · 2025-03-27T23:24:54Z

Quality Gate passed

Issues
0 New issues
0 Accepted issues

Measures
0 Security Hotspots
0.0% Coverage on New Code
0.0% Duplication on New Code

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Support per-app language preferences

b888dc7

github-actions bot added the size/small PRs with less than 50 changed lines label Mar 12, 2025

mileskrell marked this pull request as draft March 12, 2025 20:41

mileskrell added 2 commits March 15, 2025 21:56

Redirect to per-app language settings on Android 13+

87693a2

Migrate from pre-Android 13 app language pref

3532ac9

github-actions bot added size/medium PRs with less than 250 changed lines and removed size/small PRs with less than 50 changed lines labels Mar 16, 2025

mileskrell marked this pull request as ready for review March 16, 2025 02:46

mileskrell added 2 commits March 15, 2025 22:54

Don't try to migrate "system" app language

da106e2

Move migration to separate method

980a35a

mileskrell commented Mar 16, 2025

View reviewed changes

ShareASmile added the feature request Issue is related to a feature in the app label Mar 16, 2025

TobiGr reviewed Mar 16, 2025

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mileskrell added 3 commits March 16, 2025 19:24

Move app language setting migration to SettingMigrations

70416e7

Only show toast on Android <13

35abb99

Don't show toast because of changing content language or country

c7bf498

mileskrell requested a review from TobiGr March 20, 2025 04:33

Stypox requested changes Mar 21, 2025

View reviewed changes

Move migration to NewPipeSettings

7f10312

Move call to setApplicationLocales

205466c

mileskrell requested a review from Stypox March 27, 2025 23:19

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Support per-app language preferences #12093

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Support per-app language preferences #12093

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mileskrell commented Mar 12, 2025 • edited Loading

What is it?

Description of the changes in your PR

Before/After Screenshots/Screen Record

APK testing

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