Chromium-based browsers on Linux (Chrome, Brave, etc.) don’t have a built-in UI language setting, but you can still change it manually.

1) One-time: CLI

The simplest way is to pass the LANGUAGE environment variable when launching the browser.

🇺🇸 English (EN)

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LANGUAGE=en_US:en chromium-browser

🇹🇷 Turkish (TR)

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LANGUAGE=tr_TR:tr chromium-browser

The command name may differ depending on your distro. Examples:

  • chromium-browser
  • chromium
  • or full path: /usr/bin/chromium-browser

Generic format:

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LANGUAGE=target_lang /path/to/browser

Do you need LC_ALL?

Usually no. If parts of the UI still show the old language/format, you can use a stronger override:

🇺🇸 English (EN)

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LANGUAGE=en_US:en LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 chromium-browser

🇹🇷 Turkish (TR)

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LANGUAGE=tr_TR:tr LC_ALL=tr_TR.UTF-8 chromium-browser

2) Permanent: GUI

To make it permanent, add env LANGUAGE=... at the start of the Exec= line in the app’s .desktop launcher.

Instead of editing the system .desktop file directly, the cleanest approach is:

  1. Find the .desktop file (usually under /usr/share/applications/).
  2. Copy it to ~/.local/share/applications/.
  3. Edit the copied file’s Exec= line.

Example transformation:

  • Before: Exec=chromium-browser %U

  • After (🇺🇸 EN): Exec=env LANGUAGE=en_US:en chromium-browser %U

  • After (🇹🇷 TR): Exec=env LANGUAGE=tr_TR:tr chromium-browser %U

3) Flatpak

One-time

🇺🇸 English (EN)

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flatpak run --env=LANGUAGE=en_US:en org.chromium.Chromium

🇹🇷 Turkish (TR)

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flatpak run --env=LANGUAGE=tr_TR:tr org.chromium.Chromium

Permanent

🇺🇸 English (EN)

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flatpak override --user --env=LANGUAGE=en_US:en org.chromium.Chromium

🇹🇷 Turkish (TR)

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flatpak override --user --env=LANGUAGE=tr_TR:tr org.chromium.Chromium

To revert:

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flatpak override --user --unset-env=LANGUAGE org.chromium.Chromium

Tip: Run locale -a to list the available languages on your system. To browse the exact language codes, check the List of ISO 639 language codes.