Talk:Wikimedia Language and Product Localization/ULS Rewrite

Pinning languages wish

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T416512

Please see Wish507: Enable the user to 'pin' preferred languages (for switching language easily). @SGrabarczuk (WMF) and Nikerabbit: Thanks, Prototyperspective (talk) 10:54, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

The feature request to be able to pin suggested languages is in our plans for the rewrite project. Nikerabbit (talk) 12:41, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Popup is still too small

There are more than 300 Wikipedia languages, so it makes zero sense that even in a rewritten version you can still see at most 3 columns and at most 18 languages per scroll. There is zero reason to believe that if the window was bigger and showed more info at the first glance, as well as required less scrolling in general, that this would be detrimental to the readers. Please figure out how to show more info in the desktop interface since that's what desktop interfaces are actually for. Obviously that can be dependent on a relevant window size, for instance, via vh/vw CSS units. stjn^[ru] 15:47, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I've added this as input to our design review. Nikerabbit (talk) 10:24, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

Multiple problems

1) The settings button overlaps with the scrollbar, if I try to select the scrollbar in the bottom, I click on the settings button instead

2) Abstract Wikipedia appears in the language list, and without label. (Example: open https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland, click on 314 languages, take a look at the second entry under "All languages", it has an empty label and leads to https://abstract.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q183). Abstract Wikipedia shouldn't appear in the language menu at all, it should rather appear in "In other projects" (and even there only if it's out of beta)

3) When opening the "Language settings" with German display language, on "Display language" the entry "American English" is suggested, if I click on it and "Apply settings" the display language stays German. CennoxX (talk) 08:38, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback.

1) We are aware of this and are exploring solutions.

2) We'll look into this. I do note that it also appears without ULS like in https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland?useskin=timeless

3) We haven't touched this part of the code, and I am not able to reproduce this. Can you give more details? Nikerabbit (talk) 08:49, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

The Abstract Wikipedia team has resolved the issue number 2. Nikerabbit (talk) 06:49, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

3) Probably the suggested languages rely on some parameters, that are not the same between us. What happens when you select German as "Display language", then open the [...]-button from the display languages and select American English? For me the interface stays German.

4) The "Search languages" field is not focused if I open it first, if I close and reopen again, it is focused.

5) Sometimes (if the article is long) the Language list doesn't open on first click.

6) The hovered gray area under the language stays, even if I left the clickable label with my cursor. This is especially noticable when there are many languages, like on https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland. So if I not pay attention to the cursor changing from hand to pointer, I'll think I can still click on the language.

If more information are needed, I'm open to connect via Teams etc.--CennoxX (talk) 09:05, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

3) I am still unable to reproduce this. The dialog language changes immediately regardless whether I choose from the suggested languages or via the ... dialog. Maybe it has something to do with the initial state you have.

4) A fix for this should go out this week

5) We'll monitor this. Might be that the code that listens for the click hasn't loaded yet. The number of links shouldn't affect this though if that is the case.

6) I can see this too. I have added this to our internal design review document to explore. Nikerabbit (talk) 12:42, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

Here is an recording that shows multiple errors including (3) https://i.imgur.com/dz0RJuW.gif CennoxX (talk) 14:56, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the video. It's helpful.

3) Now I able to identify that this issue is https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T355023 (which also affects previous ULS)

4) Given there are no deployments this week, we have to wait for one more week for the fix to go live.

6) This is being fixed and if the fix is ready in time, it will also go live next week. Nikerabbit (talk) 12:03, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Logic Error in ULS Rewrite: "Not available" message shown for Chinese variants on Chinese Wikipedia

I encountered a logical inconsistency while testing the new ULS Rewrite on Chinese Wikipedia. When using the Language Selector, the search interface displays a message stating that "Chinese (Taiwan)" and "Chinese" are not available, despite the fact that I am currently on a Chinese Wikipedia page.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Go to any article or talk page on Chinese Wikipedia.
2. Open the new ULS Language Selector.

Actual Results:

The UI shows a message: "尚無中文 (臺灣)、中文以及更多語言的版本" (Version for Chinese (Taiwan), Chinese, and more languages is not available).

This is confusing for users as it implies a lack of support for the language they are currently reading. Addonian1123 (talk) 13:17, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Screenshot: File:New language selector problem 20260502.png Addonian1123 (talk) 13:25, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

This should now be fixed. Nikerabbit (talk) 07:34, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

"Missing in English" on English Wikipedia

On the English Wikipedia's article Corn starch, the language selector header says that the page is missing, among other languages, in English. Michael21107 (talk) 20:50, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the report. I created a task to fix this: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T425329 Nikerabbit (talk) 09:13, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the task creation. Michael21107 (talk) 15:51, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

same here, found during WMHACK in milan :) GiovanniPen (talk) 19:02, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

This is now fixed. Nikerabbit (talk) 07:35, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Featured article stars

The rewrite does not seem to show stars for Good Articles or Featured Articles (or equivalents for other languages). Is that an intended change? I find the feature fairly useful, and a nice way to promote the work that went into these articles. Thuiop (talk) 09:46, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Hi. This feature is expected to land next week or the week after. More details in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T416892 Nikerabbit (talk) 10:18, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Great then. Thanks! Thuiop (talk) 10:45, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

This has now been implemented. Nikerabbit (talk) 07:36, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Keyboard shortcut for switching keyboard layout

I'd be happy if I could switch between different writing systems using the keyboard. In my case I've got to switch frequently between greek and latin (german) keyboard layout. While switching back to latin can be done by pressing ctrl-M there is no shortcut to switch to greek, so I have to use the mouse navigate the popup menu and while doing so I loose the focus (applies to the cursor as well as to my eyes) on the place I've been working on.

As the most commen use case is probably to use exactly one other layout, I could imagine that it's implemented using ctrl-M for that too. (The user should be able to define which language to choose in this case.) Alternativly the user might add ctrl-keys to arbitrary layouts. As these keys are typically used at other places too, I personally prefere the first approach, because this approach might have unwanted side effects.

Great tool, by the way. It's the first time that I can use the keyboard for writing greek texts instead of using copy and paste. --Kumakyoo (talk) 09:05, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

Happy to hear it is useful to you. However, we are not doing any changes to input methods in this rewrite. We could still consider this as an independent feature request. Nikerabbit (talk) 18:18, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

That would be nice. :-) --Kumakyoo (talk) 19:11, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

Great, it works now! Many thanks to whoever did this! :-) --Kumakyoo (talk) 15:43, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

‘Localise the language names’ option

Inspired by phab:T429083, I think it would be good to expose the ‘Localise the language names’ option by default for new ULS (and maybe make it available without it, too). Currently we have a number of gadgets across wikis that do the same thing:

• en:MediaWiki:Gadget-SidebarTranslate.js
• ru:MediaWiki:Gadget-iwcore.js
• (and probably others)

These gadgets essentially duplicate the maintenance of language names in wikis and exist mostly because MediaWiki doesn’t support this by default. I think showing other languages in your current language is a very good software option to have, so it would be nice to expose it as a preference so that those gadgets become obsolete (although the process of contributing translations to CLDR is a bit opaque, so they might continue to exist nonetheless, maybe in a reduced form, only fixing those languages that don’t have a translation). As I see, on translatewiki:Special:Translate we already have the ULS with localised language names, so this could be exposed as a built-in option.

More generally, it would be nice to see more gadget support from the ULS rewrite, since currently the Russian Wikipedia gadgets that modify language list in any way seem to break the language button selector in Vector 2022 (iwcore.js is the main entry point for those). stjn^[ru] 18:04, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

What would gadget support look concretely?

I think we should first make it possible to contribute missing language name translations before exposing them more widely to users. Nikerabbit (talk) 11:27, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

In the short term, some addition to mw.user.options.get('compact-language-links' ) != 1 to make the gadgets not interfere with the new ULS rewrite in Vector 2022 (since right now it doesn’t support any modification of the list by outside tools).
In the long term, some support for changing the list of languages in ULS programmatically during or before its initialisation.
Right now, I have the gadgets to translate the labels and to show some of them as preferred languages (hopefully those gadgets can be replaced by the shared option with ULS language list some day) enabled for myself, and it ends up butchering the list in the ULS rewrite somehow. Previously it just didn’t touch the ULS at all, so since those gadgets are enabled by a lot of experienced users in Russian Wikipedia, I would need to find a way to fix the gadget to work or ignore the rewritten ULS selector once it gets closer to widespread adoption.
True about missing language names, unfortunately. stjn^[ru] 21:24, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

I also now realised that ru:MediaWiki:Gadget-ondemand-mainPage.js broke post-ULS switch. How do we make it work with it? Is there any capability to extend the list of languages programmatically (this gadget adds a link to the complete list of languages from the main page)? stjn^[ru] 12:04, 3 July 2026 (UTC)