FireFox language switches to English after update

Support Software & Applications
1

Hello, I have a relatively fresh Manjaro KDE minimal install.
I am using German i.e. “Deutsch (Deutschland)” as my main system language, with “English (United States)” as secondary language, specified in the Manjaro Settings-manager, as well as in the KDE settings(there I only have “Deutsch” as language).
Firefox was set to German as menu language as well as for “displaying [web]pages”, however after the update to 126.0-0.1 the menu language was switched to “English (US)”. Fortunately the “displaying [web]pages” languages seems to have stayed the same (a combination of German and English).

So in short:

  1. Have Firefox setup, with the menu language being not English (i.e. German)
    I am using the native firefox package i.e. not the Flatpak.
  2. Update Firefox
  3. The menu is set to “English (US)”

This is a very annoying bug that has existed for a long time on Manjaro (wayback since at least one or two years ago, but I couldnt find my old issue).

I doubt that my system setup should have anything to do with this, since it is a fresh install and I’ve had this issue before. However if I can provide any additional details please tell me.
Otherwise if this issue was reported(upstream/to the Manjaro packagers) I did like to know since it appears to be a persistent issue, it might be a small one indeed however if every application would behave like that using any other language but English would prove to be a chore.

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2

Did you also install firefox-i18n-de?

(I don’t have this issue, so it must be specific to your setup.)

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3

Yes I have/had the firefox-i18n-de and firefox-i18n-en-us(and hunspell-en_US, hunspell-de) package installed.
Also I am planing on installing more language packages in the future, however since I had have this issue before iirc I did not install any new Firefox specific language packages(except for those packages the Manjaro Settings-manager recommends).

4

The same happens to me. Each update Firefox returns from Spanish to English. Tested with or without firefox-i18n-es installed and the behaviour is the same. Happens since the first day installed Manjaro in my machine (two years ago).

Thunderbird also from Mozilla, does not the same and works fine.

2 Likes
5

And when is it fixed?

Could it be that the firefox package is updated while the language pack firefox-i18n-de is still the old version because the mirror was not fully synchronized or was it not yet built?

6

Both packages are on 126 and I just updated them simultaneously via the CLI with pacman -Syu.
And well it is when I manually switch the language in the Firefox settings until the next update(I assume that will reset the language once again).

7

After the 127 testing branch Firefox update the language again switched back to English(US).
I uninstalled the firefox-i18n-en-us package and will see how it goes with that.

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8

Nope, still switched to English after the upgrade even with removed firefox-i18n-en-us package.

9

Me too (again). You installed from CLI, I used Pamac and the result is the same: two packages updated and spanish language disappears from settings → Language and Appearance → Language. I must “Set alternatives” and add spanish again.

10

As far as I’ve heard so far, firefox-i18n-en-us can’t really be uninstalled because it’s probably necessary as a fallback. This means that if it was uninstalled via CLI, it will come back immediately with the next update.

11

We are not alone…

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=285028

In this thread was solved creating a new profile, but I suspect when you customize firefox the problem may return.

Can you tell me what is the value of your browser in about:config → intl.accept_languages?

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12

Just for clarification, I updated Firefox via the graphical interface i.e. pamac-gtk3.
And firefox-i18n-en-us is still uninstalled, the package did not reinstall.
It’s just that inside Firefox the language setting switched like @Arrababiski described:

language disappears from settings → Language and Appearance → Language. I must “Set alternatives” and add spanish again

I havent tried a new profile on this install, but since this was a fresh Manjaro install I assume the problem got returned by the sync or import of my old settings.
If it’s not too much of a hassle I will try with a new profile and see how it goes.
Maybe there is a way to make this problem disappear for existing problems right away.

Edit: Well, so I migrated to a fresh profile and tried to import as few things as possible, let’s see how it goes.

13

This is some config issue. I have it too. Probably something is corrupted in profile.

For many years, FF was following my system language automatically, but since 2 or 3 years, I always need to add my language after the FF update. The issue doesn’t exist on the vanilla, test user.

I would have to refresh FF (restoring default configs) to fix it, but because I have too many tabs, plugins and customizations, I decided to ignore that bug and just add the language. It doesn’t happen that often, so I can live with it.

However, if you don’t mind refreshing FF yourself, this is the best way to go. If it wouldn’t work, just delete FF configs and profile data manually, restart FF and the new, default and clean profile will be created, most probably without the issue you are describing.

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14

So do I. And I’m almost sure once created a new profile and set the configuration as it was in the former profile, the bug will come back. :rage:

Please, can you and @Lamdarer go to about:config, search the “intl.accept_languages” preference and tell us what’s the value? This is the only value I change in language preferences and I want to know if anyone else affected by the bug makes the same change and can be the reason.

15

intl.accept_languages is set to de-de,de,en-us,en in both the old and this fresh profile. But I cant imagine that this causes the display language to change on update :thinking:

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16

I have “es-ES, es, en-US, en” but used to delete “en-US, en” and keep only spanish. As this is the only language parameter in config, I was wondering if deleting English could cause the issue when updating and wanted to see if anyone else did the same, but I’m afraid this is not going to be the cause.

17

This setting is just the one responsible for the language in which web-pages are displayed. In the settings menu it’s the one right next to the “display language”.

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18

In about:config, there is also :
intl.locale.requested (fr for me last year, but currently empty !)
app.update.langpack.enabled (true for me)
plus a lot of other parameters linked to lang, intl,
Note : I don’t have this problem.

1 Like
19

I know, but as I tried all the logical changes in settings, now I’m searching something like a bug, something unexpected. :slightly_smiling_face:

And this is where the solution may lie… :slightly_smiling_face:

I’ll set intl.locale.requested as “” instead of “es-ES,en-US” and see what happens next update. Thunderbird has no problems and intl.locale.requested is also empty.

Let’s cross our fingers. :crossed_fingers:

EDIT:

Well… nothing at all. I remember you can downgrade packages with DOWNGRADE_FROM_ALA=1 sudo downgrade firefox firefox-i18n-es-es, so I downgraded to Firefox 127.0.1, tryed changing some parameters before upgrading and no way to avoid the change to english with each upgrade. Tryed with lots of parameters in about:config, searching language, langpack, locale, comparing with Thunderbird config, created a new profile and compared pref.js (the preferences file) with Meld to see where are the diferences between the new and the default profile, but once upgraded the language always switches.

The only solution I see is to create a new profile, as @Lamdarer did…

1 Like
20

Sorry for replaying so late. In my case I have:

intl.accept_languages pl, en-US, en
services.sync.prefs.sync.intl.accept_languages true
intl.locale.requested empty
app.update.langpack.enabled true

It feels like the FF is actively ignoring/blocking the language package firefox-i18n-pl, because after each updater it defaults to English and I have to ADD MANUALLY PL LANGUAGE, as if the installed package was not in the system. So my guess is, the issue stems from the fact that it doesn’t use the package and any installed languages manually from Firefox are gone after the update.

I again checked my test user with vanilla settings and the FF has proper PL language without setting it manually.

Curiously, when I create various apps on my user account using FF browser, all of those apps have the same issue, although in theory, profiles for them should be vanilla and have no such issue. Or maybe they inherit my settings?

Maybe I’ll do another experiment. I’ll rename my configs and launch FF to see how pure FF behaves.
EDIT: As expected, FF has the proper language on a fresh profile.

In a way, I also suspect that even if I refresh the browser, the same issue will show up, because I have impression that I did that a long time ago (but I may be wrong). So I have no idea what are we doing wrong.

Maybe some extension is overwriting this? What is your list of active extensions? In my case I list any long-standing ones (as recent showed up after the issue):

Facebook Container
Firefox Multi-Account-Containers
Foxy Gestures
G App Launcher
Google Container
Bitwarden
Plasma Integration
uBlock Origin
Simple Tab Groups
Video Downloadhelper

I have an idea. The next time after update the language switches back to English, let’s launch FF in a safe mode without extensions and see if the system lanaguage is applied correctly or not. This will tell us if an extension is at fault here. Doing it now is pointless, because the language is set manually so it overwrites everything, but after the update, this could show us if plugins are influencing the language.

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