UI Localization / i18n support — Portuguese (pt-BR) and other languages
Preflight Checklist
- [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
- [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)
Problem Statement
The Claude Code interface is only available in English. All menus, commands, status messages, tooltips, and UI text are displayed in English regardless of the user's language preference or system locale.
This creates a barrier for non-English speakers — particularly the large Portuguese-speaking developer community (Brazil + Portugal) — who must navigate an English-only interface even when they have "language": "portuguese" configured in settings.json (which only affects Claude's responses, not the UI itself).
Non-English developers should not have to work in a foreign language to use their development tools.
Proposed Solution
Add internationalization (i18n) support to Claude Code so that the UI language can be configured separately from the AI response language.
Proposed implementation:
- Add a
"uiLanguage"setting tosettings.json(e.g.,"uiLanguage": "pt-BR") - Or extend the existing
"language"setting to also control UI language - Translate all interface text: menus, slash command descriptions, status messages, error messages, spinner verbs, tips, and prompts
Initial language targets: Portuguese (pt-BR), Spanish (es), French (fr), German (de), Japanese (ja), Chinese (zh-CN)
This is standard i18n practice used by most developer tools (VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, etc.).
Alternative Solutions
- The
"language"setting insettings.jsononly changes the language of Claude's AI responses — it does not affect the UI at all. - No other workaround exists to change the interface language.
- Users currently must rely entirely on English UI regardless of their preference.
Priority
Medium - Would be very helpful
Feature Category
Configuration and settings
Use Case Example
_No response_
Additional Context
_No response_
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4 Comments
+1 from a Brazilian user (pt-BR).
Concrete experience that motivated this: I set
"language": "portuguese"in settings.json expecting a fully Portuguese experience, and was surprised that it only affects the model's responses. The UI chrome stays in English:spinnerTipsEnabled: false, not translated/doctor-style messagesFor non-English-speaking teams (in my case, ISP network operators in Brazil who use Claude Code as their daily terminal assistant), the mixed-language screen is genuinely confusing — the assistant talks in Portuguese while the frame around it talks in English.
The proposed
uiLanguagesetting (or extendinglanguageto cover UI strings) would solve this cleanly. pt-BR as an initial target would cover one of the largest developer communities outside English.Related consolidated proposal: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/70490
That issue proposes following Claude Desktop's proven locale JSON approach for CLI i18n, covering all languages in a unified framework.
Closing for now — inactive for too long. Please open a new issue if this is still relevant.
+1 for this. I'd love to see UI localization support for pt-BR (Brazilian Portuguese) in Claude Code. Currently, only the model's responses can be set to Portuguese (via CLAUDE.md instructions or the language setting) — menus, help text, and other UI elements remain English-only. Full interface localization would make the tool much more accessible for Brazilian users.