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.
Choosing your interface language
The interface language is the language used on menus, buttons, labels, forms etc when you are logged in. Mobile apps will automatically use the same interface language that your phone or tablet is set to.
To choose your interface language for Mastodon’s web interface:
- Log in through your server’s website or the web app
- Click ⚙️ Preferences (on the mobile web click ☰ in bottom right, then ⚙️ Preferences)
- Select the language you want from the Interface language dropdown menu
- Click the Save changes button
Filtering timelines by language
You can filter your Mastodon timelines by language, so that only posts in specific languages are visible:
- Log in through your server’s website or the web app
- Click ⚙️ Preferences (on the mobile web click ☰ in bottom right, then ⚙️ Preferences)
- Click the link marked Other on the left of the page (on the mobile web click ☰ in top right and then Other)
- Scroll down to the section marked Filter languages
- If you just want to see certain languages tick the boxes for the specific languages you want to see. If you want to see all languages UN-tick all the boxes.
- 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.
Remember to also set your posting language
Your posting language is a special setting on a post that lets Mastodon know which language it is written in. When you post on Mastodon, you can set each post to be marked as being in a particular language.
If you use a particular language all or most of the time, you can set this as your default posting language. When you use a different language, you can alter the posting language setting manually on those particular posts.
How to set your default post language setting
- Log in through your server’s website
- Click ⚙️ Preferences (on the mobile web click ☰ in bottom right, then ⚙️ Preferences)
- Click Posting Defaults (on the mobile web click ☰ in top right and then Posting Defaults)
- In the section marked Posting language choose which language you use most often and click Save changes. (If you don’t choose a language, the default posting language will be the same as your interface language.)
How to adjust your posting language when writing a post
If you are posting in a language that isn’t your default, you can manually adjust which post language setting you are using in that particular post.
- Write the post but don’t publish it yet
- Select the language you are writing from the language button next to the post creation box (it may be at the top or the bottom, depending on what interface or app you use). The language button shows your current language setting.
- Publish the post
Don’t worry if you forget to do this or if you pick the wrong language, you can edit the post to give it the correct language setting if needed.
How to adjust your posting language when replying
If you are replying to a post marked in another language, your reply will be set to that post’s language by default (for example if you reply to a post set to French, your reply will automatically be set to French too). If you don’t want to reply in the same language, alter this setting by clicking the language button. The language button should remember your most recently chosen languages at the top of its menu.
Here’s why setting your posting language is really important
It’s really important to set your posting language for three reasons:
- People filtering their timelines by language rely on posts having the correct language settings. If the settings are incorrect, they will see posts in languages they don’t want in their timelines. (See the section above in this guide for how to filter your timeline by language.)
- Mastodon’s built-in translation system relies upon post language settings to know whether to offer a “translate” button or not. If you have the wrong settings, people will not be able to translate your post with the built-in system.
- Blind and visually impaired people often use screen reader software which automatically detects the language setting of a post. This tells the reader how to pronounce the text in the post, so if you have the wrong setting your post will be difficult or impossible to understand for screen reader users.
Why isn’t the posting language detected automatically?
Language detection software relies on having enough text to tell which language is being used. If a post is quite short, there isn’t enough text for a language detector to reliably decide which language is being used. Because of this situation, Mastodon needs users to tell the system which language they are writing in.
There IS an automatic language detector on Mastodon though, and it makes the language button glow if it thinks you’re using the wrong language setting (see the section below). But because the detector is not 100% reliable on very short posts, it never overrides your posting language settings.
The language indicator is glowing yellow! What is going on?
If you are using your Mastodon server’s website and writing a post in a language different to the one selected, the posting language indicator will notice the language difference and start glowing yellow. Clicking the glowing yellow indicator will show a list of languages with the detected language at the top, so you can switch to it more easily.
For example if you have your posting language set to English and you start writing in French, the word “English” will start glowing yellow. If you click on the glowing indicator, you will see a list of languages with French at the top.
This detection system doesn’t actually switch your language automatically though because the detection isn’t 100% reliable in all circumstances (for example discussing names from different countries can confuse it). The idea is just that it alerts you if it thinks your posting language setting is wrong, but you can ignore its alert if you know the language setting is right.
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:
- Log in through your server’s website or the web app.
- Go to the profile page of the account you want to filter by language.
- Click ︙ and select Change subscribed languages
- Tick the boxes for the languages you want to see
- 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 ⧉.