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Navigator: language property

The Navigator.language read-only property returns a string representing the preferred language of the user, usually the language of the browser UI.

Value

A string representing the language version as defined in RFC 5646: Tags for Identifying Languages (also known as BCP 47). Examples of valid language codes include "en", "en-US", "fr", "fr-FR", "es-ES", etc.

Note that in Safari on iOS prior to 10.2, the country code returned is lowercase: "en-us", "fr-fr" etc.

Examples

Using Intl constructors to do language-specific formatting

The Intl constructors allow formatting content to match the rules of a given locale. You can pass navigator.language to them to format content in the locale corresponding to the user's preferred language:

js

const date = new Date("2012-05-24");

const formattedDate = new Intl.DateTimeFormat(navigator.language).format(date);

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard
# dom-navigator-language-dev

Browser compatibility

Desktop Mobile
Chrome Edge Firefox Internet Explorer Opera Safari WebView Android Chrome Android Firefox for Android Opera Android Safari on IOS Samsung Internet
language 1 12
1Before Firefox 4, this property's value was also part of the user agent string, as reported by navigator.userAgent. Starting in Firefox 5, this property's value is based on the value of the Accept-Language HTTP header.
11Closest available (non-standard) properties are userLanguage and browserLanguage.
 4 1 4.4 18 4 10.1 1 1.0

See also

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Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v2.5 or later.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/language