German Apps in English on iPhone: An Expat's Guide to Kleinanzeigen, ELSTER and Everything Else on Your Home Screen
Within a month of landing in Germany your iPhone fills up with apps you didn’t choose: a bank, a health insurer, a parcel app, a train app, a classifieds app for the furniture you suddenly need. Most were built for people who already read German. Getting German apps in English is partly a settings job and partly a workaround, and it’s worth doing the settings job first because it’s free and permanent.
Which German apps in English already exist
Before you translate anything, check whether the app will do it for you.
- Look in iOS Settings. Open Settings, scroll to the app, and see if there’s a Language row. iOS shows it when an app ships more than one language. If English is listed, pick it and you’re done.
- Look inside the app. Some apps ignore the system setting and keep their own switch under Profile, Settings or Einstellungen.
- Pick English-friendly providers while you still have the choice. DB Navigator and Lieferando offer English. Mobile-first banks like N26 are designed around it, and among the public health insurers TK is known for English-language service.
What a language setting never fixes is content written by other people: a landlord’s listing, a seller’s message, a letter from an office in your in-app inbox. That stays German no matter what the menus say.
Where the iPhone’s built-in tools stop
Safari can translate a German web page from the page menu in the address bar, and that’s the right tool for websites with real text, government portals included. Inside native apps it doesn’t apply. Long-press translate needs selectable text, which most app interfaces don’t offer.
That leaves the screenshot loop: capture, open a translator, read, switch back. Fine for one screen. For a twelve-step bank enrollment with a session timeout, you’ll lose the thread around step five.
Float the English version over the German app
PiP Translate (on the App Store as PiP Screen Translate) works differently. You start an iOS screen broadcast from the app, switch to whatever you need to read, and a Picture in Picture window floats on top showing the same screen in English. Tap through to the next screen and the window follows. Drag it to another corner, pinch to resize it, or swipe it off the edge when it’s covering a button.
Text recognition happens on the phone, and only the recognized text goes to the cloud for translation. Set German as the source language once; auto-detect exists, but choosing it yourself avoids screens coming back untranslated. It only reads the screen; it can’t tap or change the app underneath. Free to download; unlimited translation needs a Pro subscription.
Kleinanzeigen in English: browsing, haggling, not getting burned
Kleinanzeigen (the former eBay Kleinanzeigen) is where Germany sells its used bikes, sofas and winter coats, and the interface, the listings and the messages are all in German. Search “Kleinanzeigen English” and you mostly find other expats asking the same question.
With the floating window running you can scroll results and open listings at normal speed. A few terms are still worth learning by sight:
- VB (Verhandlungsbasis): the price is negotiable
- Festpreis: it isn’t
- Nur Abholung: pickup only, no shipping
- Versand möglich: the seller will ship
- Zu verschenken: free, come and get it
Two honest caveats. The window translates what the seller wrote to you, but it doesn’t write your reply; draft that in a text translator such as DeepL and paste it in. And be wary of anyone who pushes you to pay outside the options the app itself offers. A translated scam is still a scam.
Willhaben in English: the Austrian version of the same problem
In Austria the equivalent is willhaben: second-hand furniture, cars, jobs and flats in one app. It is German-first too; we’re not aware of an English mode at the time of writing, so check the settings and then plan on translating. The floating window works the same way here, and most of the Kleinanzeigen vocabulary above carries over. A few terms you’ll see more often in Austrian listings:
- Selbstabholung: you collect it yourself
- Provisionsfrei: a flat listed without an agent’s commission
- Kaution: the deposit
- Betriebskosten: running costs on top of the rent, so compare the total, not the headline figure
For flats, the same rule as anywhere: read the listing in English, then confirm the rent, the deposit and every extra cost in writing before you pay anything.
ELSTER in English: understanding the screen is not tax advice
ELSTER is the official tax portal, and most people use it in a browser. So start with the free options: check whether the portal offers an English view for the forms you need, and try Safari’s page translation. For the ELSTER app, or for forms where neither helps, the floating window reads the screen the same way it reads any other.
“ELSTER English” has a harder problem than language, though. Knowing that Werbungskosten are work-related expenses and Sonderausgaben are special expenses, or that your Steuer-ID and your Steuernummer are two different numbers, tells you what a field is called. It doesn’t tell you what you’re allowed to enter there.
So treat any translation, ours included, as a reading aid. It shows you which form you’re on and what a field is asking for. It is not tax or legal advice, and a machine translation of a tax term can be plain wrong. Before you submit anything binding, verify it with a Steuerberater, a Lohnsteuerhilfeverein, or one of the commercial filing services that walk you through a German return in English.
Banking, insurance, parcels and flat hunting
| App type | Check first | Where live translation earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| Traditional banks (Sparkasse, Volksbank, Commerzbank) | Language option in the app’s settings | Menu labels like Überweisung (transfer), Dauerauftrag (standing order), Lastschrift (direct debit); TAN and security prompts |
| Health insurers (AOK, Barmer, DAK, TK) | Whether your insurer has an English app or hotline | Uploading sick notes, reading messages in your inbox |
| DHL / Post | Language row in iOS Settings | Packstation pickup steps, delivery status |
| ImmobilienScout24 | The interface may vary; listings are German regardless | Kaltmiete, Warmmiete, Nebenkosten, Schufa-Auskunft erforderlich |
Supermarket and loyalty apps (REWE, Lidl, Payback) work the same way, with less at stake.
A note on banking: recognized text is sent out for translation, so decide for yourself which screens you’re comfortable reading this way. Some security-sensitive apps may also hide their content while the screen is being broadcast. If the window shows a blank screen, that’s the app’s decision and no screen translator can get around it.
The same approach carries across the border: we covered French apps in English separately. Arriving for university rather than a job? See apps for international students.
Limits, and when you need a human
- The translation trails the screen by a second or two. Tapping through menus is fine; fast scrolling through a long form means pausing.
- Tiny text is the weak spot, and contracts and terms pages are full of it. Zooming in helps a lot.
- Handwriting and decorative fonts read poorly.
- Long bureaucratic compound nouns can come out as awkward English. If a term decides something, look it up.
- Paper letters aren’t on your screen. Use a camera translator for those.
For a lease, an insurance contract, a tax return or an official letter, use the translation to understand what you’re looking at, then have someone qualified confirm it. Where an office asks for translated documents, it usually wants a certified translation from a sworn translator, and no app substitutes for that.
Elsewhere in Europe: French apps like Leboncoin, Italian apps like Subito, Allegro, Trendyol, Funda and Marktplaats, Blocket and Hemnet and Idealista.
PiP Translate is on the App Store. For how the floating window works in general, see your iPhone can translate any app.