Android 16’s regional settings could get a lot more granular

Android 16’s first public beta came out roughly a week ago, offering a peek into the stable OS update that is expected to reach Platform Stability in Q1 2025 and stable in Q2. We’ve learned a lot about the features that will make up the final Android 16 stable build, including predictive back animations for three-button navigation, accessibility improvements for hearing aid users, functionality to intelligently turn light mode apps dark, another Quick Settings revamp, and more.

Among the list of improvements is a particularly noteworthy one — one that could allow users to truly personalize their Android experience with the measurement systems of their choice, similar to a recent Pixel Weather app change.

Currently, units and measurements on Android work in tandem with your device’s System Language. Android infers a user’s region from their device’s System language, which essentially means that choosing English (United States) as your system’s default language will show the Imperial System across your device, while using English (Canada) will highlight the metric system.

The argument for breaking the reliance comes because of the limitation the coupling imposes on users not living in their country of birth or the country they’ve spent the most time in.

For example, an immigrant from France living in the US might prefer using French as their device’s default System Language. At the same time, they’d also need their device to show dates, measurements, and units in the imperial system, considering they’re more likely to come across mm-dd-yyyy, inches, feet, miles, pounds, and gallons every day, and not dd/mm/yyyy, centimeters, meters, kilometers, and liters.

Although a niche issue, Google seems to be working on a solution to decouple region and language settings.

Choose between Metric, Imperial (UK), and Imperial (US)

As highlighted by Mishaal Rahman in a report for Android Authority, the tight coupling could soon change, and it could happen with Android 16. Buried within the latest Android 16 Beta 1 is a standalone Regional preference section, separate from the existing Preferred Language section. The new section appears to host Region, Temperature, Measurement system, and First day of the week settings, as seen in the image above.

Temperature and First day of the week settings currently exist, but Region and Measurement system are both new, with the latter allowing users to choose between Metric, Imperial (US) and Imperial (UK) — all independent of your device’s System Language.

For what it’s worth, the new settings are still hidden, so you won’t see them yet if you’re running the first Android 16 beta. Regardless, their presence in the beta build strongly indicates that Google is actively working on the feature, and the feature will likely be included in a future build.