i18n settings in Kibana

You do not need to configure any settings to run Kibana in English.

i18n.defaultLocale

The locale used for server-rendered strings and as the default for users who haven't picked a preferred language. Must be one of the values listed in i18n.locales when that setting is non-empty.

Default: en

i18n.locales

The list of locales that Kibana offers in the language picker. Locales not in this list are not available to users, even if translation files for them are installed. Set to [] to disable the language picker.

Default: ["en", "fr-FR", "ja-JP", "zh-CN", "de-DE"]

i18n.locale

Replaced by i18n.defaultLocale. Kibana continues to honor i18n.locale if set, logging a deprecation warning at startup.

Built-in and custom locales

Kibana ships translation files for English, French, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and German. Plugins (and admin-installed translation files) can add additional locales. Any locale you list in i18n.locales for which a translation file exists will be served; locales without translation files fall back to English.

Per-user language selection

When i18n.locales is not empty, individual users can choose their preferred display language:

User Profile page — Users can select a language from the Language section on their profile page (User icon → Profile).
User menu — Users can select a language from the Language option in the user menu available from the application header.

When a user sets a preferred language, it is stored in their user profile and takes effect after a page reload.

Resolution priority

Kibana resolves the display language using the following priority chain:

User profile setting — The language selected by the user in their profile or the user menu (must be one of i18n.locales).
i18n.defaultLocale config — The server-wide default set in kibana.yml.

Example configurations

		# 1. Default behavior — picker shows the five bundled locales, server defaults
#    to English. Equivalent to omitting all i18n.* keys.

# 2. Curate the picker to a subset:
i18n.locales: ["en", "ja-JP"]
i18n.defaultLocale: "en"

# 3. Disable the per-user picker entirely (server still serves defaultLocale).
#    The flow-style empty array (square brackets) is the supported way to
#    express "no locales"; the block-list form has no syntax for an empty list.
i18n.locales: []
i18n.defaultLocale: "en"

# 4. Legacy form — still works, logs a deprecation warning at startup:
i18n.locale: "ja-JP"
		
	