Language
Eight languages, switched from the header, remembered in a cookie, and applied to the panel's own sentences as well as its buttons.
OSS Panel ships in eight languages. The switcher sits in the header, to the left of the theme toggle and your avatar, on every screen.
Switch language
Click the language button in the header. It shows the current language by name on a wide screen and as a two-letter code on a phone.
Pick one. The button shows a spinner while the choice is saved, then the page re-renders in the new language. No reload, no navigation — you stay exactly where you were.
The eight
| Language | Code |
|---|---|
| English | en |
| Español | es |
| Deutsch | de |
| Français | fr |
| हिन्दी | hi |
| Português | pt |
| 日本語 | ja |
| Русский | ru |
English is the default and the fallback.
What gets translated
Both halves of the panel, which is the part worth noticing. The screenshot above is not just translated chrome: the sidebar, the page title, the table headers and the activity sentences are all in Spanish, because those sentences are written by the server in your language rather than assembled in the browser from English fragments.
What stays in its original form:
- Your own data — application names, database names, usernames, file paths.
- Output from the machine — log lines, command output, package manager messages.
- Version numbers and identifiers.
How the choice is stored
The language lives in a cookie called NEXT_LOCALE, set for a year.
That has three consequences worth knowing:
- It is per browser, not per account. Sign in from another machine and you get the default again. Two people sharing one browser profile share one language.
- Clearing cookies resets it.
- There is no language field on your profile, and nothing in the admin area sets a language for somebody else.
Before the cookie exists, the panel reads your browser's Accept-Language
header and uses that language if it is one of the eight. Otherwise, English.
There is no language prefix in the URL. /account is /account in every
language, so links are safe to share between people reading the panel in
different languages.
Missing translations
Translation is per key, not per file. A string that has not been translated for your language falls back to English on its own, rather than taking the page down or leaving a blank. So a partially translated language is usable — you will see a mix rather than a failure.
If a key is missing everywhere, the panel renders a readable version of the key
itself (set_ownership becomes "Set ownership") instead of showing you a dotted
identifier.
Caveats
- Dates and numbers follow the language you picked, not the server's timezone setting. The server's clock and timezone are configured separately in Settings → Server.
- The theme toggle beside the switcher is independent — light, dark and system, also stored per browser.
- Needs no permission.