UI Localization / i18n support — Portuguese (pt-BR) and other languages

Status Closed — not planned
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 5 comments · opened Jun 9, 2026 · closed Aug 8, 2026

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 to settings.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 in settings.json only 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

rafaellucas89 · 4 months ago

+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:

  • Spinner verbs ("Razzmatazzing…", "Flibbertigibbeting…") — not configurable at all
  • Tips under the spinner ("Tip: Use /btw to ask a quick side question…") — can only be disabled via spinnerTipsEnabled: false, not translated
  • Status/keybinding hints ("esc to interrupt", "Enter to view", "↑/↓ to select")
  • Startup banner and /doctor-style messages

For 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 uiLanguage setting (or extending language to cover UI strings) would solve this cleanly. pt-BR as an initial target would cover one of the largest developer communities outside English.

wmh89131519-debug · 3 months ago

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.

github-actions[bot] · 2 months ago

Closing for now — inactive for too long. Please open a new issue if this is still relevant.

adelsonllima · 1 month ago

+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.

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