MATLAB: Does MATLAB fail to load the preferred language on macOS Sierra

When running MATLAB on macOS Sierra, I have noticed that MATLAB does not seem to load my language, region, or text encoding preferences correctly. On previous releases of macOS, the MATLAB user interface appeared in my preferred language, but on macOS Sierra it appears in English. Additionally, MATLAB fails to load or save non-ASCII characters. How can I resolve this issue?

Best Answer

Apple released macOS Sierra on September 20, 2016 and changed the way macOS reports Language & Region preferences to MATLAB. If you have set your Language & Region (hereafter referred to together as "locale") to a locale not listed below, you may be impacted by this issue. To check your locale, open the "Language & Region" preference pane in System Preferences. Your current Language is at the top of the list on the left, and your Region is listed in the drop down menu on the right.
The following locales are not impacted by this issue:
  • English, United States
  • English, Australia
  • English, Canada
  • English, United Kingdom
  • Deutsch, Austria
  • Deutsch, Switzerland
  • Français, Canada
  • Français, Switzerland
  • Español, Spain
  • Nederlands, Belgium
  • Português, Brazil
  • Português, Portugal
If you have set your Mac to one of these locales, no patch is necessary. MATLAB will use the correct character encoding for your locale regardless of which release of MATLAB you are using.
If you have set your Mac to a locale outside of these twelve, you either need to update to a newer release of MATLAB or apply a patch for MATLAB to resume its expected behavior in your locale.
If you are running MATLAB R2016b and you installed MATLAB before October 6, 2016, a patch can be downloaded here. If you installed MATLAB after October 6, 2016, no action is required.
If you are running MATLAB R2014a through R2016a a patch for these releases of MATLAB can be downloaded here.
If you are running MATLAB R2013b or earlier a patch for these releases is not available. Please update to MATLAB R2014a or later to use MATLAB on macOS Sierra.
If you are not sure if your Mac is affected by this issue, the script attached to this article will tell you. To run the script:
  1. Download the attached file, sierraLocaleDetector.p
  2. Move the file to your MATLAB working directory
  3. In MATLAB, run the command "sierraLocaleDetector"
The script will tell if your Mac is impacted and if you need to apply the patch.
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