Learn how to use real-time on-device translation in the Messages app to automatically translate texts from a foreign language into English on your iPhone or iPad.
Apple Intelligence in the Messages app can translate text messages on the fly as soon as they arrive. This lets you converse with colleagues, friends, and family who speak a different language, such as French, Spanish, Chinese, etc.
Although you need an internet connection to download languages initially, the Messages app translates offline thanks to on-device processing. Hence, it works even for SMS texts sent by an iPhone or Android user when your device isn’t connected to Wi-Fi or cellular data.
Supported languages
As of October 2026, Live Translation in the iOS 27 Messages app supports the following languages:
- English (Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States)
- Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) (not available in mainland China)
- Danish
- Dutch
- French (Belgium, Canada, France, Switzerland)
- German (Austria, Germany, Switzerland)
- Italian
- Italian (Switzerland)
- Japanese
- Korean
- Norwegian
- Portuguese (Brazil, Portugal)
- Spanish (Mexico, Spain, United States)
- Swedish
- Turkish
- Vietnamese
Note: Make sure Apple Intelligence is enabled on your device.
Translate messages automatically in real time on iOS
It involves three steps: download the language files, turn on Auto-Translate, and then use Auto-Translate.
Step 1: Download language files
Since translation happens offline, you need to save the language files on your iPhone or iPad. Each language can take anywhere from 300 MB to 1 GB of local space. Secondly, connect to Wi-Fi, as language files may not download over 5G or 4G cellular data.
1) Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad, tap Apps from the bottom, and then select Translate from the list of applications.
2) Tap Languages or Downloaded Languages.
3) Go through the list of available languages and tap the download arrow button next to your native language, like English. Then, tap the download button next to the language you want to save for offline translation, such as French. I recommend staying on this screen until the languages have finished downloading and appear in the “Available Offline” section at the top.
One important thing to note is that even though you’ll see multiple languages here, translation in Messages is currently available in the languages mentioned above.
Step 2: Turn on automatic translation
Once the language files are saved offline, it’s time to turn on auto-translate for Messages.
1) Open the Messages app on your iPhone or iPad, go inside an existing iMessage or SMS chat, and tap the person’s name or contact info at the top.
2) Make sure you’re in the Info tab, and turn on the switch for Automatically Translate, which will take you to the ‘Choose Language’ pane.
3) Tap the language you want to translate to (such as French). Since you already downloaded the language in Step 1, this language won’t show the download icon next to it, but you may see a pop-up nonetheless. Tap Download there. Note: You can also download languages from here; however, it repeatedly fails for me; your mileage may vary.
Next, check that the “Translate From” section shows the correct language. Then ensure the language you read and understand, such as English (US), is active in the “Translate To” field. You can also tap it and select an alternative language if you prefer. Once everything looks fine here, tap the back button (<) at the top left to return to your conversation screen.
Step 3: Translate texts in a foreign language
Upon returning to the conversation screen, you’ll now see a small pill-shaped “Translating Language” button. This indicates that the message translation feature is active on the device.
From now on, when you receive new texts in the chosen foreign language, your device will automatically translate them and display them in the chat bubbles. Existing texts are not translated.
You can tap the pill-shaped “Translating” button and choose to show both the original and translated texts or just the translated version.
You can also stop translating. But if you do that and then change your mind, you’ll have to turn this feature back on by re-enabling the Automatically Translate switch.
How to translate into multiple languages
One conversation in the Messages app can translate text from only one language at a time, even though you can keep multiple languages downloaded on the device. For example, if I set my iPhone to translate Italian messages to English and then receive a text in French in that same chat, the app will not translate it.
If you often converse in multiple foreign languages, keep them all downloaded on your device. And then you can switch between them quickly.
Note that you can set different translation languages for different chats.
What about old messages?
Past messages in foreign languages aren’t translated. Copy the text and paste it into Apple’s Translate app to see the translation.
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