There are lots of language options on Mastodon to help you understand other people, and help other people understand you. At the time of writing there are 95 different languages and dialects to choose from.

Interface language

The interface language is the language used on menus, buttons, labels, forms etc when you are logged in. To choose your Mastodon interface language:

1. Log in through your server’s website or the web app
2. Click ⚙️ Preferences
3. Select the language you want from the dropdown menu marked Interface language
4. Click the Save changes button

Filtering timelines by language

You can filter Mastodon timelines by language:

1. Log in through your server’s website or the web app
2. Click ⚙️ Preferences
3. Click the link marked Other on the left of the page (on the mobile website click ☰ and then Other)
4. Scroll down to the section marked Filter languages
5. Tick the boxes for languages you want to see
6. Click the Save changes button
7. To switch the language filter off (so that you see all languages), make sure all the boxes are UN-ticked and click the Save changes button

When the language filter is on, posts in other languages will no longer appear in your timelines. However, if you follow someone this will override the language filter and show you all their posts regardless of language used.

Posting language

It’s important to set your posting language, because it means people using language filters to show your language will see your posts. Setting this also allows other people to automatically translate your posts using Mastodon’s built-in translation system.

To set which language you post in:

1. Log in through your server’s website
2. Go to Preferences > Other > Posting language
3. Choose which language you use most often and click Save changes

If you post in multiple languages, you can change which language you’re using each time you’re writing a post:

1. Write the post but don’t publish it yet
2. Select the language you are writing from the language button. The language button is a two letter country code in the bottom row of icons, for example EN for English.

By default the button will be your selected posting language, unless you are replying to a post marked in another language in which case it will be set to that language.

The language button should remember your most recently chosen languages at the top of the menu.

Filtering search results by language

You can filter your search results on Mastodon to only show posts in particular languages by including the search operator “language:(LANGUAGE CODE)” using language codes from this list. For example to only show posts in French include the term language:fr in searches.

See the guide to searching Mastodon for more details on using special search operators.

Wait! I’m still seeing languages I don’t understand in my Home timeline! Why aren’t the filters hiding them?

Unfortunately if you follow an account or a hashtag, this overrides the language filters, so by default you’ll see all posts in all languages on the Home timeline.

There is a workaround for filtering the language of accounts you’re following, but it’s slightly more fiddly than general language filters:

1. Log in through your server’s website or the web app.
2. Go to the profile page of the account you want to filter by language.
3. Click ︙ and select Change subscribed languages
4. Tick the boxes for the languages you want to see
5. Click the Save Changes button

You have to do this for any account you’re following where you want to restrict which languages it shows. For example, if ten people you follow are posting in languages you don’t want to see you’ll have to do this for each of those ten accounts.

Obviously this isn’t as easy as just setting a single language filter, and if you’re following lots of people who post in many languages it can take a while to set preferences for each of them. Also, this option isn’t even available for followed hashtags. This situation isn’t satisfactory, and you may want to give feedback to the developers about this at the links below.

If you’re comfortable using Github, you can vote for language filters to apply to the Home timeline by giving a thumbs up to the first post in this issue ⧉. You can also vote for language filters to apply to hashtags you follow ⧉.

Contributing translations for the Mastodon user interface

If you want to add or correct translations on Mastodon’s interface, click here to go to the Mastodon translation website ⧉.

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