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Firefox Keeps Changing My Preferred Language

  • 4 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 9 views
  • Last reply by James

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It seems like almost every time I do a Windows Update on and sometimes when I just restart my Lenovo IdeaPad 3 my language gets changed from American English to French. Even some of the add-ons change preferences. Since I don't speak or read French it can be a real hassle to get everything changed back. What I usually end up doing is going to the page on the Mozilla site that has different downloads for different languages and I download the correct one. Once I install it over the existing installation things go back as they should be until I do another Windows Update or like I said before, sometimes after just a restart. This just happened again a few hours ago when I did a Windows Update. All the menu items and drop downs were suddenly in French. My Forecast Fox changed to Celsius instead of Fahrenheit. My Notifier for GMail changed to French. A couple log in pages for some web pages were in French. This never happened with other laptops I have had that were different brands. I once tried just uninstalling Firefox and then reinstalling the correct language version and things were fine until the next time I did an update. My preferences are set to how I want them and I just don't understand why it keeps getting changed.

It seems like almost every time I do a Windows Update on and sometimes when I just restart my Lenovo IdeaPad 3 my language gets changed from American English to French. Even some of the add-ons change preferences. Since I don't speak or read French it can be a real hassle to get everything changed back. What I usually end up doing is going to the page on the Mozilla site that has different downloads for different languages and I download the correct one. Once I install it over the existing installation things go back as they should be until I do another Windows Update or like I said before, sometimes after just a restart. This just happened again a few hours ago when I did a Windows Update. All the menu items and drop downs were suddenly in French. My Forecast Fox changed to Celsius instead of Fahrenheit. My Notifier for GMail changed to French. A couple log in pages for some web pages were in French. This never happened with other laptops I have had that were different brands. I once tried just uninstalling Firefox and then reinstalling the correct language version and things were fine until the next time I did an update. My preferences are set to how I want them and I just don't understand why it keeps getting changed.

All Replies (4)

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Do you possibly have language packs installed (i.e. do you have a "Settings -> Languages" tab) ? Make sure that you do not confuse a language pack with string translations for the user interface with spell check dictionaries you can find under "Settings -> Dictionaries".

If the Firefox user interface (toolbars) is in the wrong language or if you want to change the current language, download Firefox in the language of your choice.


The first language setting in Settings is about the language for the user interface and second setting is about the preferred languages for webpages. You can check the latter to see what languages appear there.

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Thank you for replying. I don't see Dictionary listed anywhere in Settings and I don't have any language packs installed but everything under Language is set to US English. I never change it unless I'm changing it back when it somehow gets changed. I do have a Dictionary add on but that is also set to US English. A few times in the past my Thunderbird installation has also changed to French but it hasn't done that for quite a while. Maybe my laptop just needs an exorcism.

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I did install the US English version, but I think I probably solved the problem. I'll have to wait until Firefox or Thunderbird is updated to be sure. I went through some of my add-ons, and one of them that I use is Patch My PC. I went into the settings of that one and it did have a language selection and it was set on French. I have now changed it to English, so the next time I use it to update Firefox or Thunderbird I should know that it's the problem. Funny, though, I have five browsers and Thunderbird installed and the only ones that ever changed languages when I used Patch My PC for updating them were Firefox and Thunderbird and none of the others. Weird. Hopefully no need for an exorcism now, and thanks for replying.

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Dropa said

Since this is for Firefox browser help anything related to Addon issue Firefox forum can't help with that as you need to contact the Addon developer for help with their app.

People are still welcome to ask for some help with Extensions here as I have mentioned to you Lots of times now but you ignore.