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JavaScript for detecting browser language preference
I want to detect the language of the browser that is entering my site, if it's En or Fr. So I can redirect to the En page or the other page.
Also, can I detect mobile language?
2 Answers
Try this script to get your browser language
<script type="text/javascript">
var userLang = navigator.language || navigator.userLanguage;
alert ("The language is: " + userLang);
</script>
12 Comments
Eamon Nerbonne
equivalent and more JS-typical:
navigator.language || navigator.userLanguage
kybernetikos
My testing suggests that while this works in IE and Firefox, it does not work in Chrome. Chrome's navigator.language is always the language configuration of the installation of windows, rather than the language configuration of the browser.
boburShox
+1 @kybernetikos, This is something to be addressed since most of the people use Chrome.
Leigh McCulloch
If you want to use a library, you can also use
acceptedlanguages.js which is entirely javascript and browser compatible covering all the cases: github.com/leighmcculloch/acceptedlanguages.js
Cornelius Roemer
Update: There is now (2020) an experimental feature supported by all modern browsers that returns an array of language preference: navigator.languages //["en-US", "zh-CN", "ja-JP"] This should work on at least 95% of browsers in 2020.
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At this point navigator.userLanguage has long since been deprecated, so you can get the user's language tags via navigator.language directly:
const lang = navigator.language;
If you need more granular information, you can create an Intl.Locale object:
const locale = new Intl.Locale(navigator.language);
switch (locale.language) {
case 'en':
// do something for English
break;
case 'fr':
// do something for French
break;
...
}
In my original answer from 14 years ago, I mentioned that language detection should be done on the server. While I don't think that's fully wrong, it's also not fully right either. A lot has changed in the last 14 years.
It's worth calling out the existence of the Accept-Language header in browser http requests, and that for some payloads it is probably beneficial to perform translation server-side with the initial request to avoid additional unnecessary round-trips. However, there are also situations where it's entirely valid to use the user's language in client-side scripts, so use your best judgement.
7 Comments
Paul
why should it be done on the server? seems like a redundant comment.
zzzzBov
@Paul, language detection should be done on the server so that the content is served in the appropriate language. To do otherwise would be wasteful of the user's bandwidth.
Paul
@zzzzBov I've been working on a Ember.js app with full language support, where I use the navigator.language as part of my API calls, so no user bandwidth is wasted. But I guess your right. It's an edge case.
Wanny Miarelli
This answer is pretty old but today SPA works most of the time on static server-less env, so doing this with Javascript is more than legit.
zzzzBov
@SeLeCtRa, I appreciate the enthusiasm behind your edit, but I think you'd be better off writing your own answer than trying to revive this one.
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HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE