How to localize Info.plist entries?

[ConfusedVorlon]

Is there a way to use RemafoX for Info.plist translations?
e.g. NSBluetoothAlwaysUsageDescription

[Jeehut]

@ConfusedVorlon Thank you for this question.

The short answer is:
Yes, you can totally use RemafoX to localize Info.plist files!
But you need to first localize your Info.plist file in general, much like with any Storyboard/XIB file, too.

Apple's documentation on localizing Info.plist files is quite hidden so I think this is a very common question. But you can actually find it, in the "About Information Property List Files" page under the section titled "Localizing Property List Values". The most important bit of info is this:

Localized values are not stored in the Info.plist file itself. Instead, you store the values for a particular localization in a strings file with the name InfoPlist.strings.

Step-by-step Guide

So, all you need to do is to:

1. Create a new Strings file in your project and name it exactly InfoPlist.strings
2. Hit the "Localize" button on the right sidebar of Xcode
3. Add a file for each language you want to support in the same right sidebar
4. Add all keys and their values for your source language of the InfoPlist.strings file

Here are a few screenshots showing the creation steps:

The result should look something like this:

Using RemafoX for the Info.plist file

Now, you have a set of .strings files for your Info.plist entries. Assuming that your search paths in RemafoX match the folder you created the InfoPlist.strings files in (if not, adjust them accordingly), you can now use all RemafoX features, including:

1. Opening the "Normalizer" pane in your config and hitting "Normalize Strings files" to sync your keys to all languages
2. Opening the "Quick Actions" or "Machine Translation" pane and hitting "Start batch-translation" to translate to all languages
3. Or building your project to execute the above two actions (Normalize + Machine-Translate) via the build-script automatically

For example, this was the result when I added the NSBluetoothAlwaysUsageDescription to a sample project and hit "Start batch-translation" in the config file:

Further Notes

I'm not really happy with how Xcode is dealing with the localization of Info.plist. It's easy when you know it, but your question is proof that it's not very well documented, and it's definitely not intuitive either. So I actually have this feature request to make it even easier in a future update. Feel free to vote it up so I can prioritize it accordingly.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

[ConfusedVorlon]

thank you :)

[Jeehut]

You're welcome!