strings
What is a .strings file?
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An Apple .strings file is a plain-text localization catalog used by iOS and macOS apps. Each line maps a quoted key to a quoted translated value with a trailing semicolon, optionally preceded by a comment, and placeholders use printf-style tokens like %@ and %d. It is typically stored per-locale in an .lproj folder.
How to use a .strings file
Use an example .strings file to test Apple localization parsers, Xcode string catalogs, .strings-to-XLIFF converters, and tooling that reads iOS/macOS translations.
Download example .strings files
- Apple .strings — EnglishAn Apple Localizable.strings file (English) — quoted key = value pairs with comments and %@ placeholders, as iOS/macOS apps use per-locale in .lproj folders.
- Apple .strings — SpanishThe Spanish twin of the Apple .strings catalog — for testing .strings parsers and en/es diffing against the same keys.
- Apple .strings — positional arguments that reorder (German)A German .strings file whose replace_confirm value puts %2$@ before %1$@, because German inverts the pair English uses. Also covers %% as a literal percent, an escaped double quote, a doubled-backslash UNC path and an escaped newline inside a value.
- Apple .strings — UTF-16 LE with BOM (Japanese)The encoding fixture the .strings format needs: a Japanese catalog written as UTF-16 Little Endian with a byte-order mark, which is what Xcode has historically produced and what a UTF-8-only reader turns into mojibake or a decode error. Also carries full-width punctuation and an ideographic space for width and line-breaking tests.