# How to set up your local language {#how-to-set-up-your-local-language}


Setting up the right "locale" is about:

- How an amount is formatted (`$ 12.34` versus `12,45$`)
- How dates are formatted (`17 сентябрь` or `September 17`?)

The locale you want to use is identified by a little piece of text, like this: `en`, `English`, `en_US.utf8`.



> [!NOTE]
> If your browser is set to "English (US)", the date input fields will show "mm/dd/yyyy" (which is the American way of formatting dates). There is no setting in Firefly III that can change that.



In order to make the demo site work (it’s an Ubuntu server) I run these commands:

```text
sudo apt-get install -y language-pack-nl-base
sudo locale-gen
```

On a debian server, edit `/etc/locale.gen` and remove the `#` in front of every entry you're interested in.

```
sudo nano /etc/locale.gen
sudo locale-gen
```

You can see which locales your system has by running

```text
locale -a
```

Depending on your language, a specific list of locales is tried by Firefly III. They can be found on [GitHub](https://github.com/firefly-iii/firefly-iii/tree/main/resources/lang). Open the directory of your language, then open `config.php` and look for the line `locale`.


## Locale settings in Docker {#locale-settings-in-docker}


The Docker container cannot be extended with locales. Please see [this issue on GitHub](https://github.com/firefly-iii/firefly-iii/issues/9070) for instructions.


## Locale settings on Windows and Linux {#locale-settings-on-windows-and-linux}


Windows usually recognizes locale strings like these: `English` or `english`. Linux mostly looks for strings like these: `en_US` or `nl_NL`. Sometimes you see stuff like this: `en_US.utf8` which means that it's not just English (US), but also UTF8 (a special encoding).

So changing your locale in Firefly III on Windows may not work as you had expected. This is on my list for future improvements.

Keep in mind some Linux installations only have `nl_NL.iso-8859-1` while Firefly III will always look for `nl_NL.utf8`.

If the user your system is running under is jailed, it may not have access to the necessary locales.


### Missing translations or format instructions {#missing-translations-or-format-instructions}


You'll notice the formatting of the date is American, ie `septembre 17, 2020` even though you've set your locale and language to something else.

This is caused by missing translations. Let me know where you run into this issue.


### Browsers {#browsers}


When set to English (US) browsers will always format the date input fields as `09/17/2020`. Use a localized browser to fix this. Changing your Firefly III settings will not change the date input fields.

![Date format in US browser](/_media/2686a8c418b249a43979.png)


### Missing packages or configuration {#missing-packages-or-configuration}


If your server is missing the required packages, Firefly III won't be able to show the locale. You will see missing dots in numbers and other weird stuff.


### Select the correct locale {#select-the-correct-locale}


Select "Hungarian (Hungarian)" and not "Hungarian". The list of locales is pretty specific so "hu" may not work on your system but "hu_HU" does.