CometChat's React Native UI Kit now ships with comprehensive localization support—19 languages out of the box, with full extensibility for custom language implementations.
What's new?
The UI Kit introduces CometChatI18nProvider, an integrated localization framework that lets you dynamically adapt your app's interface to user language preferences. Built on react-native-localize for native device locale detection, it eliminates the complexity of manual multilingual implementation.
Why it matters
Localization directly impacts engagement, retention, and market reach. This update gives you:
Centralized language management across your entire app
Market expansion capabilities without rebuilding UI components
Reduced implementation overhead with automatic locale detection
Consistency guarantees through provider-level control
Core features
19 Supported languages
English (US/GB), Chinese (Simplified/Traditional), Hindi, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Portuguese, Malay, Swedish, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Dutch, Turkish, plus regional variants.
Flexible language selection
Explicit selectedLanguage prop or automatic detection via autoDetectLanguage.
Complete translation override
Supply custom translation maps through the translations prop to override defaults, add strings, or implement entirely new languages.
Native device integration
Automatic detection and adaptation to device locale settings.
Graceful degradation:
Configurable fallback language with robust handling for missing translation keys.
Hook-based API
useCometChatTranslation hook exposes localization utilities directly to custom components.
Technical implementation
The architecture uses a context-provider pattern (CometChatI18nProvider) for performant, scalable localization across large codebases. Integration with react-native-localize provides native-level locale detection, abstracting device language logic into clean, declarative props. This separation ensures your localization layer remains independent and easily maintainable.
Get started
Ready to implement localization in your app? Check out our comprehensive documentation for setup instructions, code examples, and advanced configuration options.
Nivedita Bharathy
Product Marketing Specialist , CometChat