codex - 💡(How to fix) Fix Codex desktop UI does not update language despite localeOverride=zh-CN and --lang=zh-CN [1 comments, 2 participants]

Summary

Codex Desktop does not update the app UI language according to the language selected in Settings.

The local setting is saved as localeOverride=zh-CN, and the running Electron renderer process is launched with --lang=zh-CN, but the visible UI remains in English after restart.

Environment

• Codex Desktop: 26.422.21459
• Codex CLI: 0.124.0-alpha.2
• macOS: 26.4.1, build 25E253
• Architecture: arm64
• Selected language: Simplified Chinese / zh-CN

What I checked

• The local global state contains localeOverride: "zh-CN".
• The running Codex renderer process includes --lang=zh-CN.
• The app bundle contains Simplified Chinese resources, including frontend strings such as “新聊天” and “Codex 设置”.
• Restarting Codex does not change the UI language.

Suspected cause

From the bundled frontend code, UI message loading appears to be gated behind a remote feature flag named enable_i18n. If that flag is false or not fetched for this machine/account, the app still computes the preferred locale but does not pass localized messages to the UI, so it falls back to English defaults.

This would also explain why the issue only reproduces on some machines/accounts.

Expected behavior

When the user selects Simplified Chinese in Settings, Codex Desktop should render the UI in Chinese after restart or reload.

Actual behavior

The UI remains in English even though the saved setting and Electron language are both zh-CN.