How to Change the Language on Instagram (iPhone, Android, PC)

To change the language on Instagram, open your profile, tap the menu in the top right, then Language and translations and Set language, and pick English. On iPhone, Instagram sends you to your iPhone’s Settings to finish the job. On a computer, it’s More, Settings, Language. This guide follows the menus as they look in September 2026, explains why the app sometimes switches language on its own, and shows how to handle the new automatic translations. And if you’re relaunching your account for an English-speaking audience, Instagram followers help set the tone.

Why is Instagram showing in another language?

Instagram doesn’t have a “default” language of its own. It takes whatever your phone gives it, and that’s where things get messy. The usual causes:

• Your phone is set to another language, or another language sits above English in your iPhone’s preferred languages list. The app follows the order of that list.
• Someone changed the setting inside the app itself, or you did it by accident while poking around the menu.
• The phone came from somewhere else: a device bought abroad, borrowed, or restored from a backup sometimes keeps another language.
• On a computer, instagram.com follows your browser’s language until you pick one.

A rarer but very annoying case: a phone shared in the family, where everyone changes the language in turn. On iPhone, Instagram’s language is a setting of the phone itself, so it follows the device, not the person logged in.

The good news: none of these causes has anything to do with your account. Your posts, followers and messages stay put when you change language. Only the menus and buttons change.

How do you change the Instagram language on iPhone?

Here’s the official path, as Meta’s Help Center describes it in September 2026, with the English labels.

1. Tap your profile picture in the bottom right.
2. Tap the Menu (three lines) in the top right.
3. Under Your app and media, tap Language and translations.
4. Tap Set language.
5. Tap Continue: Instagram then opens its page in your iPhone’s Settings.
6. Tap Language, choose English, then reopen Instagram.

Why the detour through Settings? Because on iPhone, the system handles each app’s language. So you can keep your iPhone in Spanish and Instagram in English, or the other way round. You can also reach that setting directly: open Settings, scroll down to Instagram, then Language. It only shows up if your iPhone has at least two languages in its list.

How do you change the Instagram language on Android?

On Android, everything happens inside the app.

1. Tap your profile picture in the bottom right.
2. Tap the Menu in the top right.
3. Under Your app and media, tap Language and translations.
4. Tap Set language.
5. Tap English in the list. The interface switches right away.

If the menu is in a language you can’t read at all, use the search bar at the top of the settings screen and type “language”: the word is close in most languages that use the Latin alphabet, and the right setting comes up first. Another option on recent phones: Android’s own settings offer a per-app language, in the section about system languages. Handy if the app refuses to cooperate.

How do you change the Instagram language on a computer?

On instagram.com, it takes three clicks. The positions don’t move with the language: More always sits at the bottom left, so you can follow along even if the site is in a language you don’t read.

1. Click More in the bottom left, then Settings.
2. Under Your app and media, click Language.
3. Click English.

If you’re logged out, the home page and the sign-up page show a language picker at the very bottom, with more than fifty options, including English and English (UK). One detail matters here: that setting applies to the browser, not to your phone. Each device keeps its own language.

How do you manage automatic translations?

Changing Instagram’s language also changes what you see from other people. Two separate systems are at work.

Text. Captions, comments and bios are translated based on your display language. When a translation exists, a See translation link appears under the text: tap it to show it.

Reel audio. Since 2025, creators can have their reels translated by Meta AI, voice and lip movement included. According to Meta’s help pages, you then hear the reel in your default language when a translation is available, and you can switch back to the original by tapping the Translated with Meta AI label. To control all of this:

1. While watching a reel, tap More (the three dots), then Translations.
2. Choose the translation language, exclude languages you already understand, or turn off text or voice translation.
3. To switch translations off everywhere, go to Menu, then Language and translations.

One point almost nobody mentions: in September 2026, Meta’s help pages say translated reels are only available in Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and Kannada. English is on the list, so with Instagram in English you may hear Spanish or Portuguese creators dubbed into English by a synthetic voice. If you’d rather hear the original, exclude those languages in the translation settings.

For your own reels, it’s the same feature seen from the other side: translating your voice when you post, which the Help Center calls “Translate your voice on Instagram Reels”. It isn’t open to every account or every language, so check whether it shows up for you before counting on it.

For creators, it’s an opening: your English reels can now reach people who don’t speak it. Instagram likes on a reel that’s starting to travel help it get past your inner circle.

What if the language won’t change?

• Close the app completely and reopen it. On iPhone, a language change only kicks in when the app restarts.
• Update Instagram: the menus described here are the 2026 versions.
• Check your iPhone’s language list (Settings, General, Language & Region): if English isn’t there, add it.
• The Language menu has vanished? Meta rolls out settings gradually, and some accounts still see the old path Settings, Account, Language.
• Threads is still in another language? That’s normal. Threads has its own language setting, separate from Instagram’s.

And if the interface has also turned black on top of switching language, that’s dark mode, a separate setting we cover in our guide to Instagram dark mode (turning it on or off).