Navigator: language property

{{APIRef("HTML DOM")}}

The language read-only property of the {{domxref("Navigator")}} interface returns a string representing the preferred language of the user, usually the language of the browser UI.

Value

A string representing the language version in {{glossary("BCP 47 language tag")}} format. Examples of valid language tags 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 {{jsxref("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:

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

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

Specifications

{{Specifications}}

Browser compatibility

{{Compat}}

See also

• {{domxref("navigator.languages")}}
• {{domxref("navigator")}}
• {{jsxref("Intl")}}