“Change the language in Shopify” means three different things depending on who is doing the changing and what they are looking at. The admin dashboard you log into has one language setting. The storefront your customers see has another. The Shopify POS app you ring up sales on has a third. The three are configured in different places, and conflating them is why most how-to guides for this task leave the merchant more confused than they started.

This guide walks each path separately. If you only want to change what you see when you log in, skip to the admin section. If you want your storefront to launch in a different default language, or to offer additional languages your customers can switch between, those are the two storefront paths. If you run Shopify POS in a non-English store, there is a per-device setting too.

Key Takeaways
1
Your admin language and your storefront language are separate settings. Changing one does not change the other.
2
For an existing live store, add a new language rather than overwriting the default. The default change applies to the raw theme strings and is hard to reverse without data loss.
3
Adding customer-facing languages beyond one or two needs a translation app. Shopify’s native layer covers product fields and theme strings but not image text, third-party app content, or long-form content in bulk.

Three Different “Languages” in Shopify

Before you change anything, know which one you mean:

  • Admin language is what you (the store owner or staff member) see when you log into the Shopify admin: menu labels, buttons, settings copy. It is a per-user preference and does not touch the storefront.
  • Storefront default language is the base language of your store’s theme and content as served to shoppers who do not switch languages. Changing this is a store-wide action and affects every shopper.
  • Additional storefront languages are translations shoppers can switch between. You add these in Settings and the content is translated either manually, through Shopify’s native tools, or through a translation app.
  • POS app language is what you see on the Shopify POS app on an iPad or iPhone when you ring up sales. It is set per device.

Change Your Shopify Admin Language

This affects only your own view of the Shopify admin. Nobody else on the store sees it change, and shoppers never see it.

  1. Click your profile icon in the top-right of the Shopify admin.
  2. Select Manage account.
  3. Under Account, find the Language setting and click Change language.
  4. Pick your preferred language and save.

The admin UI reloads in the new language. You can repeat this on each device or browser you use the admin from; Shopify remembers it per account.

Change the Default Language of Your Storefront

This changes the base language your theme and content are served in. It is a store-wide change and should be approached with care on an existing live store: Shopify warns you that changing the default language rewrites the primary theme strings, and anything you have manually translated previously may need to be redone.

  1. From the Shopify admin, go to Settings > Languages.
  2. Find your current default language at the top of the Published section.
  3. Click the three-dot menu next to it and select Change default language.
  4. Pick the new default language and confirm.

If your store is already live and selling, our strong recommendation is to add the new language rather than replace the default (see the next section). Overwriting the default on a mature store is painful to undo.

Add Additional Languages for Customers

This is the right path for most merchants expanding into new markets. You keep your current default and offer the shopper a language switcher.

  1. From the Shopify admin, go to Settings > Languages.
  2. Click Add language.
  3. Pick the language you want to add from the dropdown.
  4. Choose whether to publish it immediately (shoppers can see it) or keep it unpublished while you translate.

Once the language is added, you have three choices for actually translating the content:

  • Shopify’s native translation UI: use the Translate & Adapt app (free, built by Shopify) to translate product fields, collection pages, blog posts, and theme strings one at a time or in bulk.
  • A third-party translation app: a dedicated app (Weglot, Transcy, T-Lab, Translate My Store, LangShop, Langify, Pluglin) will auto-translate everything with AI, cover image translation and third-party-app content, and write proper hreflang SEO tags. Our picks for the current field are in our Shopify translation apps roundup.
  • Human translators: for serious brand copy in a serious market, pay a professional. Several of the apps above (LangShop, Pluglin, Weglot) have a human-translation workflow built in.

Most Shopify themes include a language switcher that appears automatically once a second published language exists. If yours does not, your translation app will inject one.

Change the Language in the Shopify POS App

The Shopify POS app on an iPad or iPhone has its own language setting, separate from your admin and your storefront. It is set per device.

  1. Open the Shopify POS app on the device.
  2. Tap ≡ Menu in the top-left, then Settings.
  3. Tap Language and pick the one you want.

If a language you want is not listed, check that your iPad or iPhone’s system language supports it in the device’s own Settings app; POS pulls from the OS’s available languages.

Shopify Markets and Multi-Region Language

If you sell into multiple regions through Shopify Markets, language becomes a per-market setting rather than a single store-wide one. In Settings > Markets, open a market, go to the Languages section, and add the languages that should serve shoppers routed to that market. A French-Canadian shopper routed to your Canada market can see French content and CAD prices; a shopper routed to your France market can see French with EUR prices.

This matters for SEO too: Shopify Markets writes proper region codes into your URLs (fr-ca vs fr-fr) and hreflang tags, so Google can serve the right page to the right region.

Common Issues After Changing the Language

Some strings are still in the old language. Shopify’s native translation covers product fields and most theme strings, but it does not touch text baked into images, text inside third-party apps (reviews, upsell widgets, filters), or hard-coded strings a theme developer wrote into Liquid. Edit those directly in the theme, or use a translation app that covers them.

The language switcher is not showing. It only appears once you have added a second published language. If the second language is still in draft, publish it from Settings > Languages. If the theme has no built-in switcher, your translation app usually ships one.

Prices still show in the old currency. Language and currency are separate settings. Add the currency in Settings > Markets > [market] > Currencies, or use a currency app alongside your translation app.

Google is not indexing the new language pages. Check that each translated page has its own URL (a /fr/ path, not a JavaScript overlay), that your hreflang tags are correct, and that the translated pages appear in your sitemap. Most translation apps handle all three automatically if configured; a widget-style tool does not.

If your plan is to run the store in several languages long-term, the broader setup (URL structure, hreflang, switcher placement, Shopify Markets) is a bigger topic. Our multilingual Shopify setup guide covers it end to end.