How To Change the Language on the Amazon Fire Tablet

Jamie Read more March 5, 2020

If you just cracked open the box for your brand-new Amazon Fire Tablet, you’re probably excited to get the device setup so you can start watching movies, playing games, and browsing the web. Unfortunately, if you’re rushing through the setup process, you might’ve accidentally set the wrong language on your Fire Tablet. Perhaps you’re looking to change the language to help you learn a new skill by immersing yourself, or you bought a tablet used online and it came in a different language.

No matter why you have to change the language on your Fire Tablet, the good news is that it’s quite easy to accomplish. Let’s take a look at how to change the language on your Fire Tablet.

Customizing Language Settings on the Amazon Fire tablet

Start by waking your device and exiting all apps to get to the home screen. From the top of your display, slide down to open the notification tray. At the top of this panel is a shortcut to your settings menu.

This menu is divided into three sections: Device, Personal, and System. Scroll down to the Personal Settings to find Keyboard and Language on your device.

In this menu, we can change our language options to allow for text to appear in different languages. At the top of the display, select the Language option. This will bring you back to the same language-selection screen you saw during initial setup of your device.

Your Fire Tablet allows you to select between English for both the United States and United Kingdom, along with German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Chinese. Some of the selections, including German, United Kingdom English, Spanish, and French have choices for selecting your regional format, such as Australian English or Canadian French.

Make sure you choose the correct regional format for your language, or you may be lost when it comes to some of the menu systems.

You can return to the previous screen of your settings with your new language preferences saved on your device. These options should also automatically change your default keyboard on your device to match your language, but if you’d rather have your keyboard set to a different option, you can do that by selecting Keyboard, then Keyboard Settings. This takes you to the keyboard options display, which allows you to select your custom input styles. You can switch between these options within your keyboard whenever you like, allowing you to switch your keyboard style or language whenever necessary.

Download Extra Languages to your Fire Tablet

The last few generations of Fire Tablet devices include a wide array of languages already pre-downloaded on the device, but if your Fire Tablet doesn’t have the language you want installed, you can download it directly to your tablet from Amazon’s servers. This makes it easy to personalize your device to whatever needs you may have. This will only apply to tablets marketed with the Kindle Fire branding.

With your language selected, you can return to the previous screen of your settings with your new language preferences saved on your device. These options should also automatically change your default keyboard on your device to match your language, but if you’d rather have your keyboard set to a different option, you can do that by selecting Keyboard, then Keyboard Settings. This takes you to the keyboard options display, which allows you to select your custom input styles. You can switch between these options within your keyboard whenever you like, allowing you to switch your keyboard style whenever necessary.

To download extra language packs to your tablet, swipe down from the top of the home screen. Select Settings and Keyboard & Language from the menu, then choose either Current Keyboard and Fire Standard or Basic Keyboard, depending on your use. Select Download Languages and agree to the options. The language will install the selected language onto your tablet and will offer you the chance to set it as your system language. Select this option if that’s what you want and the system language should change dynamically.

Changing Alexa’s default language

Alexa should use whatever language setting you have configured on your Amazon account. It does not have to match what is set on your Fire tablet but it does correlate to what is set on your actual account. It’s a strange setup, but given that Alexa is yet to be released in some countries it does make sense.

If, for some reason your Alexa doesn’t match the default or desired language, it is relatively simple to change it. Log into http://alexa.amazon.com with your Amazon account details or use the Alexa app on your smartphone. Select the Settings menu and select your Fire tablet from the list. Then, select Language from the menu and choose your desired language from the list.

Once your changes have been saved, they should be reflected the next time you use Alexa. You will notice that not that many languages are featured yet but more are slated to come. Amazon does not currently have any idea when the roll out of more languages for Alexa will occur so patience is key if you want to get in on this voice activated action.

If you’re still looking for tips and tricks you can use with your Fire Tablet, check out our guide to installing the Google Play Store on your tablet to access Chrome, YouTube, Gmail, and plenty of other apps.