Blocket and Hemnet in English on iPhone: Read Swedish Listings, Viewings, Bids and Seller Messages

You moved to Stockholm, you need a sofa and eventually a flat, and everyone tells you the same two apps: Blocket for second-hand everything, Hemnet for homes. Searching for Blocket English or Hemnet English usually means you already opened both and hit a wall of Swedish: “skick”, “upphämtning”, “avgift”, “budgivning”. Most Swedes speak excellent English. Their apps, and the people writing the listings, mostly don’t bother.

Here is what English each app actually offers, and how to read the rest on your iPhone.

Is there a Blocket English or Hemnet English version?

Check before you install anything else, because the answer differs by app:

• Blocket is Swedish-first. We are not aware of a full English mode at the time of writing, but apps change, so look in the app’s settings and in iOS Settings under the app’s name for a Language row.
• Hemnet has offered English for parts of the experience, and it may show up when your iPhone’s language is set to something other than Swedish. Check the app and the website. What stays Swedish is the part you care about most: listing descriptions are written by estate agents, in Swedish, for Swedish buyers.
• The website in Safari. Both have websites, and Safari’s page translation handles Swedish text. It does nothing inside the native apps, and nothing for text inside photos.

So even with Hemnet in English, and certainly with Blocket, you will be reading Swedish in the listings and in every message a seller sends you.

When the app stays in Swedish: a floating translation window

PiP Translate (App Store name: PiP Screen Translate) covers the gap. You start an iOS screen broadcast from the app, switch to Blocket or Hemnet, and a Picture in Picture window floats over it showing the same screen with the text in English. Scroll the results, open a listing, read the seller’s reply; the window follows along a second or two behind.

Drag it to a corner, pinch to resize it, or swipe it off the edge when it covers a button. The Swedish app underneath is untouched, so the buttons you tap are still the Swedish ones. Set Swedish as the source language instead of Auto: a wrong guess comes back untranslated. The longer explanation is in translate your iPhone screen live.

Text recognition runs on the phone, and only the recognized text is sent for translation. It reads; it doesn’t write. It won’t type your reply to a seller or fill in a form for you.

Blocket in English: condition, pickup and messaging a seller

Blocket is where Sweden sells its furniture, bikes, prams and cars. A typical listing packs a lot into a few fields, and each one matters:

• Condition (skick). The seller picks a condition and then describes it. Read both. The description is where the wobbly leg or the cat hair gets mentioned.
• Pickup or shipping. “Upphämtning” means you collect it. Some listings offer “frakt”, shipping, often through Blocket’s own purchase flow. A sofa in Södermalm listed as pickup only means you need a van and a friend.
• Who is selling. “Privatperson” is a private individual; a business listing (företag) comes with different consumer rights.
• Messaging. This is where the floating window earns its keep. Reading a thread in Swedish one screenshot at a time is slow; with the window open you just scroll. You still write the reply yourself, and a short, polite message in English is usually fine in Sweden.

One rule worth repeating: don’t pay for an item you haven’t seen unless you are using the platform’s own purchase and shipping flow. Be wary of buyers or sellers who send links, ask you to move to another app, or press you to pay first. Payment on pickup, often by Swish, is the normal pattern for local deals.

Hemnet in English: bostadsrätt, avgift, visning and budgivning

Hemnet is mainly where homes for sale are listed. Rentals largely live elsewhere, on other sites and in municipal housing queues (in Stockholm, Bostadsförmedlingen). Either way, the vocabulary is what trips people up, because translation gives you the words but not the system behind them.

• Bostadsrätt vs hyresrätt. Most city flats for sale are bostadsrätt: you buy the right to live in the flat as a member of a housing association (a BRF), not the flat itself. A hyresrätt is a rental with a first-hand contract, and it isn’t bought on Hemnet.
• Avgift. The monthly fee you pay the housing association on top of your mortgage. It varies a lot between associations, and the association’s finances matter; ask the agent for the annual report.
• Visning. The viewing, often a set time slot at the weekend. Listings usually ask you to register first.
• Budgivning. Bidding, run by the estate agent after the viewings. The listed price is often an utgångspris, a starting price, not the expected final price.

This is high-stakes. Translation helps you understand the screen. It does not replace reading the contract, the association’s documents and the agent’s terms properly. Verify amounts, fees and anything you agree to with the agent, your bank, or a Swedish speaker you trust before you commit.

Swedish words you’ll keep seeing

Swedish	What it means
skick	condition
upphämtning	pickup: you collect the item
frakt	shipping
privatperson	private seller, not a business
bostadsrätt	co-op flat: you buy membership of a housing association
avgift	monthly fee to the housing association
visning	viewing
budgivning	bidding process

Honest limits, and a note on BankID

• The translation trails the screen by one to two seconds. Scroll, pause, read.
• Small text in photos, like a floor plan’s labels, reads better if you zoom in first.
• BankID and some Swedish bank screens may block screen capture, so there may be nothing to translate there. The window can’t sign anything either: identification, bids and payments are always you, in the original app.
• Protected video shows as a black frame.
• It’s free to download; unlimited translation needs a Pro subscription.

Other Swedish apps in English

The same session works across the rest of your phone: your bank’s non-BankID screens, Skatteverket letters in the browser, SL tickets, grocery apps. Checking for a built-in English setting first is always worth thirty seconds; translating the screen covers the rest of your Swedish apps in English. If you are comparing a move within Europe, see German apps in English and Dutch apps in English.

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PiP Translate is on the App Store. Open it once, switch to Blocket or Hemnet, and read the listing before you message or bid.

FAQ

Does Blocket have an English version?

Blocket is built Swedish-first. We are not aware of a full English mode at the time of writing, so check the app's settings and the iOS per-app language option first. Listings and messages are written by Swedish sellers and stay in Swedish either way.

Is Hemnet available in English?

Hemnet has offered English for parts of the experience, and it may appear when your iPhone's language is not Swedish. Check the app and website settings. Listing descriptions are written by estate agents and usually remain in Swedish.

Can I use Blocket as a foreigner in Sweden?

Generally you can browse from anywhere, but buying usually means meeting the seller or using a shipping option, and paying with Swedish methods. The more common obstacle is reading the listing and the messages, which are in Swedish.

How do I translate Blocket or Hemnet on iPhone?

Start a screen broadcast from a screen translator such as PiP Translate, set Swedish as the source language, then open Blocket or Hemnet. A floating Picture in Picture window shows the same screen in English while the app itself stays unchanged.