Change Chrome's Default Language on macOS
A quick Terminal trick to switch Chrome's UI language on macOS using the defaults command and any IETF language tag.
Change Chrome's Default Language on macOS
Chrome on macOS doesn’t expose a UI language picker; it follows the system language. You can override it with one Terminal command.
Check the Current Setting
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defaults read com.google.Chrome AppleLanguages
If you see The domain/default pair of (com.google.Chrome, AppleLanguages) does not exist, it just means no override has been set yet.
Set a New Language
Pass any IETF language tag:
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defaults write com.google.Chrome AppleLanguages '(vi-VN)'
Capitalization doesn’t matter, macOS normalizes it. Restart Chrome and the menu switches immediately. A few favorites:
vi-VN: Vietnameseen-GB: British Englishfr-CA: Canadian Frenches-MX: Mexican Spanishja-JP: Japanesezh-CN: Simplified Chinesezh-TW: Traditional Chineseko-KR: Koreande-DE: Germanru-RU: Russianpt-BR: Brazilian Portuguese
Verify
From Terminal:
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defaults read com.google.Chrome AppleLanguages
Or from any page’s DevTools console:
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window.navigator.language
Revert
Run the same defaults write command with your preferred language, or delete the override entirely:
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defaults delete com.google.Chrome AppleLanguages
This post is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by the author.