Language switcher

Documentation / Language switcher

Settings › Switcher sets how visitors change the language. It takes the fonts and colours of your theme.

The screen goes in three steps.

1. Where visitors find it

• In a menu: the languages join the menus you tick, as their first or last items. Styles: Dropdown (the others open under the language shown) or One item per language (side by side). Or a Globe, a globe that leads nowhere: a click or tap opens the languages.
• At the end of every page: below the footer of the theme (a row across the end of the page), or floating in a corner: Floating, bottom right or Floating, bottom left, a small dropdown.
• Anywhere else:
• Block (Language switcher): in the block editor, the Site Editor, inside the Navigation block and in widget areas. Its sidebar has its own style and what it shows.
• Widget: in the sidebars of classic themes and in widget areas of page builders such as Elementor.
• Shortcode:
  English

  • Deutsch
  • Français
  • Hrvatski
  • Español
  • العربية
  . Options: flag, name, code, current, class, flag_size (small, medium, large). Styles: dropdown, horizontal, vertical.
• PHP, in a theme: an action that prints nothing while SwiftLing is inactive.

A theme that keeps its menus in the Navigation block does not use classic menus: add the Language switcher block to the Navigation block in the Site Editor. The screen tells you when this is the case, and where the block is in use.

2. How it looks

Each place has its own style and parts, such as flags in the menu and names below the footer. What it shows: a flag, the name, a code such as DE, and the current language. Sizes: small, medium, large. The preview follows your choices; the site changes once you save.

3. Flags

Flags stand for countries, not languages. Each language shows the flag of the country in its locale; choose another country, no flag, or an image of your own. The same choice is in the Flag column of Languages.

Hidden languages

Hidden languages appear in the switcher only for people who can edit content, faded.

Names

Each language is named in its own language, in the language of the page, or both. See Languages.

The visitor’s language

What happens when a visitor’s browser prefers another language: see The visitor’s language.