Disable localization in Android application

Question

Is there any way to disable localization in an Android application? It must use only English strings. We have library projects with French localized strings. Some apps that

Answer 1

Add the specific resource config in build.gradle

 defaultConfig {

          resConfigs "en"
}

Answer 2

2019 - Gradle-based approach

As pointed out by Nidhin in their answer, this is easier and less error prone now than it was in 2012. In the defaultConfig section of the android section of your build.gradle file, you can set resConfigs to the single language you support. For example:

android {
    defaultConfig {
        resConfigs "en"
    }
}

This isn't just for disabling localization—resConfigs simply tells the build system which resources to keep. It can be set to a single language, or ideally to many, and it can be used to filter resources by something other than language, like screen density, as well. As such, saying "only include the English resources" effectively forces the app to always be in that language.

The programmatic way of loading the resources for a specific language is still sometimes useful, so my 2012 answer is still provided:

2012 - Programmatic approach

Doing the following before calling setContentView() or anything else that loads locale-specific resources should ensure that you always load only the English strings.

Resources res = getApplicationContext().getResources();

Locale locale = new Locale("en");
Locale.setDefault(locale);

Configuration config = new Configuration();
config.locale = locale;

res.updateConfiguration(config, res.getDisplayMetrics());

Answer 3

Android's normal behavior is that you define a given language only if you support it. For french this would be values-fr/strings.xml. If you don't want to support french don't include the strings.xml for french and it will fall back to the strings.xml in the values folder

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/localization.html

If you don't have control over the provided strings or if you want to dynamically set the locales to support you can override the default locale.

http://developer.android.com/reference/java/util/Locale.html#setDefault(java.util.Locale)

EDIT

What I forgot to mention is that you have to update your configuration with the new config

Configuration config = new Configuration();
config.locale = locale;
getBaseContext().getResources().updateConfiguration(config,getBaseContext().getResources().getDisplayMetrics());