ar Locale default numbering system different between iOS 17 and iOS 18

Question

Created Feb ’25

Replies 1

Boosts 0

Participants 2

Hi there

The behaviour of using Locale(identifier: "ar") with NumberFormatter.locale appears to have changed between iOS 17 and iOS 18.

Is this expected?

Steps to reproduce

import UIKit

func numberFormatter(withlocaleString localeString: String) -> NumberFormatter {
    let locale = Locale(identifier: localeString)
    let numberFormatter = NumberFormatter()
    numberFormatter.locale = locale
    return numberFormatter
}

let numbers = 0...9
let localeDigits = numbers

let ar_digits = localeDigits.compactMap {
    numberFormatter(withlocaleString: "ar").string(for: $0)?.first
}


print(ar_digits)

Results

The results show:

**** numbering system on iOS 17
latn numbering system on iOS 18.

iOSOutput

iOS 17	`["٠", "١", "٢", "٣", "٤", "٥", "٦", "٧", "٨", "٩"]`
iOS 18	`["0", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9"]`

Boost

Answer 1

Engineer OP

Apple

Feb ’25

Recommended

What you’re observing is expected. The default numbering system for Arabic did change to use Western Arabic (Latin) digits in iOS 18.

With that said, for any region for which Arabic is a widely-spoken language, the numbering system has not changed. For example, if you initialize Locale with ar_SA, you’ll note that it continues to use Eastern Arabic (Arabic-Indic) digits.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that the numbering system is a user-configurable setting in Language & Region settings, and when the user overrides it away from the default for that region, the locale identifier will convey this with a subtag, e.g. ar_US@numbers=arab is an Arabic (U.S.) locale with Eastern Arabic digits.

Hope this helps!

2