Back in 2009, a scripter wrote an app that let you change the user interface (UI) language of InDesign to almost anything… Greek, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, and so on. This turned out to be extremely helpful in a wide variety of situations. For example, some people had an Italian version but preferred to use the English menus. Other people had the English version but really preferred seeing everything in Korean.
I wrote about the app in this article here, and noted that it was Mac-only. Fortunately, some Windows users jumped in and showed how you could do something similar there.
However, when Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” came out, some users started to write to us, saying the app no longer worked. I wouldn’t know because I’m usually among the last to ever upgrade to a new operating system. Anyway, a well-known and accomplished scripter, Ray Robertson of Scripting Events (also known by his earlier company, Scripting Matters), stepped forward to update the script/app.
You can download the new version of this Mac application here. It appears to work in 10.6 and 10.5, too. Yay!
[Note that this script no longer works for CS6 and CC and later. See this post for a new technique.]
Note that after you change your UI and relaunch InDesign, your workspace (panels, shortcuts, etc.) will be messed up! But you can fix that easily. See the section called “Workspaces and Shortcuts” in the original blog post to learn how.
If you find this script useful, please please please click the Donate button on Scripting Events and send him something. Right now, he’s donating all proceeds to a charity, but honestly, he deserves to keep some himself! Or, if you need an applescript built (especially scripts that need to automate two or more applications on the Mac), contact Ray!
This article was last modified on December 21, 2021
This article was first published on December 8, 2011
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