Internationalization settings in {{kib}} [i18n-settings-kb]

:::{settings} /reference/configuration-reference/internationalization-settings.yml :::

Built-in and custom locales

{{kib}} ships translation files for English, French, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and German. Plugins and admin-installed translation files can add additional locales. Any locale listed in i18n.locales for which a translation file exists will be served; locales without translation files fall back to English.

Per-user language selection

stack: ga 9.5
serverless: ga

When i18n.locales is not empty, individual users can choose their preferred display language:

• {applies_to}self: User Profile page — Users can select a language from the Language section on their profile page (User icon → Profile).
• {applies_to}serverless: {applies_to}ech: User menu — Users can select a language from the Language option in the user menu available from the application header.

When a user sets a preferred language, it is stored in their user profile and takes effect after a page reload.

Resolution priority

{{kib}} resolves the display language using the following priority chain:

1. User profile setting — The language selected by the user in their profile or the user menu (must be one of i18n.locales).
2. KBN_LOCALE cookie — The most recently rendered locale on this browser. {{kib}} writes this cookie on every rendered response, so it tracks profile changes automatically. The cookie is the fallback used on surfaces where the profile isn't available — login pages, error pages, and any browsing the user does after signing out. Only used when the cookie value matches a locale {{kib}} can serve.
3. i18n.defaultLocale config (when explicitly set) — When an admin sets i18n.defaultLocale to a value other than the built-in en default, that server-wide choice takes precedence over browser detection. Per-user signals (profile, cookie) above still win over it.
4. Accept-Language header — When the steps above produce no match and i18n.defaultLocale is left at its en default, {{kib}} consults the browser's Accept-Language preferences. The first weighted preference matching an entry in i18n.locales, exactly or by language (fr-CH or bare fr can resolve to a configured fr-FR), wins.
5. i18n.defaultLocale config — The server-wide default (en unless overridden) set in kibana.yml, used when nothing above matches.

About the KBN_LOCALE cookie

{{kib}} sets a KBN_LOCALE cookie on every rendered response containing the resolved locale id (for example, KBN_LOCALE=ja-JP). Attributes:

• Path scoped to the {{kib}} serverBasePath.
• SameSite=Lax, Max-Age of one year, and Secure when the response is over HTTPS.
• HttpOnly. The value is a preference, not a secret, but {{kib}} does not need browser-side JavaScript to read it.

Privacy posture: KBN_LOCALE is a strictly-necessary preference cookie. It does not track the user, store identity, or enable cross-site activity.

To disable the cookie entirely, set i18n.allowLocaleCookie: false in kibana.yml. When disabled, the per-user language selection still works via user profiles; however, anonymous pages and pages visited after signing out resolve their locale from i18n.defaultLocale when it is explicitly set, and otherwise from the browser's Accept-Language preferences (falling back to the en default when no preference matches), rather than remembering the previously resolved locale.

Example configurations

# 1. Default behavior — picker shows the five bundled locales, server defaults
#    to English. Equivalent to omitting all i18n.* keys.

# 2. Curate the picker to a subset:
i18n.locales: ["en", "ja-JP"]
i18n.defaultLocale: "en"

# 3. Disable the per-user picker entirely (server still serves defaultLocale).
#    The flow-style empty array (square brackets) is the supported way to
#    express "no locales"; the block-list form has no syntax for an empty list.
i18n.locales: []
i18n.defaultLocale: "en"

# 4. Legacy form — still works, logs a deprecation warning at startup:
i18n.locale: "ja-JP"

# 5. Disable the KBN_LOCALE cookie:
i18n.allowLocaleCookie: false