Arabic and right-to-left, done properly
Switching to Arabic changes more than text alignment. Navigation drawers open from the right, back arrows point the other way, progress bars fill right to left and swipe gestures reverse. Some elements must not mirror: media playback controls, clocks, phone numbers and brand logos. We build on each platform's RTL support (I18nManager in React Native, Directionality in Flutter, leading and trailing constraints on iOS, start and end attributes on Android) instead of hand-flipping screens.
Arabic also needs its own typography: fonts with well-drawn Arabic glyphs, slightly larger sizes and more line height, and testing with real copy. Mixed strings, such as an English product code inside an Arabic sentence, can reorder in surprising ways, so they get explicit test cases.
- Mirrored layouts using start and end spacing, never hardcoded left and right
- Arabic font pairing and line-height tuning per screen size
- Bidirectional text tests for names, addresses, prices and order numbers
- A deliberate choice between Western and Eastern Arabic numerals
- Hijri date display where your audience expects it
