How do I change or set the language in the widget on my website?

Question
How do I manually set the language of my Web Widget (Classic)?
Answer
The widget language is set automatically by default based on the customer's browser. To manually set the language of the widget instead, follow the directions below for the widget you have on your account.


Tip: To determine which widget you have with your Zendesk account, see the article: Which widget do I have with my Zendesk account?

If you use the Web Widget (Classic) with a Support account
To customize the Web Widget (Classic) so that it always appears in a specific language regardless of your customer's browser language, use the setLocale command as in the example below.
zE('webWidget', 'setLocale', 'LANGUAGE_CODE');

zE('webWidget', 'setLocale', 'LANGUAGE_CODE');

For more information, see the developer documentation for the setLocale settings. For a complete set of instructions, see the article: Advanced customization of the Web Widget (Classic).


Note: When no help center articles match the widget's locale, the widget will attempt to match the search results in the default language of the help center first. For example, when the language of the widget is set to Dutch, and the help center does not contain any Dutch content. If the default language of the help center is English, the widget tries to match results in English. If there are no results, the search extends to the articles that do not have an English translation to match the keywords used across all the help center languages.

If you use a chat-only Web Widget (Classic) account
To set the language for a Chat-only Web Widget (Classic), you will need to use custom code. See this guide in our developer portal for more information: Changing the widget language for chat-only accounts.