Technology I Wish Existed, part 3: Wikipedia Language Redirector browser extension

Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net · 12 days ago

Technology I Wish Existed, part 3: Wikipedia Language Redirector browser extension

wheresmysurplusvalue [comrade/them]@hexbear.net · 11 days ago

I started looking into this and this might be what the Accept-Language HTTP header^[1] is used for? It seems to allow a list of languages in order of preference, and then websites can use this to decide which language to show content in.

There’s probably a setting in about:config which will globally set Accept-Language for all pages you visit, or maybe you can try an extension like this to control it per site.

I tried using this addon to add a site setting for *.wikipedia.org to set Accept-Language to de, fr, but it’s not working for me. It might be that my browser (IronFox on Android) has some settings to prevent browser fingerprinting which are interfering with this. (There’s at least one setting “Request English versions of web pages - When enabled, strengthens fingerprinting protection”)

Dunno if this helps, but maybe it gives a direction to look.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/Headers/Accept-Language ↩︎

Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net · 11 days ago

Thanks a bunch!

Enjoyer_of_Games [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net · 11 days ago

You can install the Firemonkey extension.

and use it to run this script

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Erika3sis
// @version      2026-02-12
// @match        https://*.wikipedia.org/*
// @description  Redirects wikipedia pages to alternate language pages in order of predefined preference
// @author       Enjoyer_of_Games
// @run-at       document-idle
// @license      AGPL 3+
// ==/UserScript==

console.log(window.location);

function switchtoLanguage(langCode) {
    const checkbox = document.getElementById('p-lang-btn-checkbox');
    if (checkbox && !checkbox.checked) {
        checkbox.click(); // Open the dropdown
        console.log('Checkbox clicked to open dropdown');
    }
    let linktarget = document.querySelector(`a.interlanguage-link-target[lang="${langCode}"]`);
    if(linktarget){
        let langLink = linktarget.href;
        if (langLink){
          console.log(`Navigating to language: ${langCode}`);
          window.location.href = langLink;
          return true;
        }
        else {
           console.warn(`Could not find language link for "${langCode}"`);
        }
    }
}

const langBtn = document.querySelector('#p-lang-btn');

let result = false;
do{
    if (langBtn) {
        let LanguageList = ['no', 'nn', 'da', 'sv', 'eo', 'tok', 'ru', 'ja', 'zh'];
        for (const langCode of LanguageList) {
            let result = switchtoLanguage(langCode);
            if (result){
                console.log('finished');
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    else {
        console.log('Could not find the #p-lang-btn element');
    }
}
while(result !== true);

11 days ago

You must include https:// in links

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Enjoyer_of_Games [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net · 11 days ago

it works on my machine

11 days ago

https://lemmy.encryptionin.space/post/addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/firemonkey/

It doesn’t on mine.

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11 days ago

Also, it seems it is unnecessary to open the checkbox? And I get this warning: “Too many calls to Location or History APIs within a short timeframe.” which makes sense, there is no check in the code to not attempt to navigate to a page once we have done so. It works, but there are problems.

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Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net · 11 days ago

Doesn’t seem to work quite as it’s supposed to, but this is a really great start and I’m really glad you’d throw this together for me in a pinch.

Unexpected behavior (note: I’m running the script through TamperMonkey rather than FireMonkey):

Upon loading an article, the script redirects me to that article in Nynorsk rather than Bokmål, despite Bokmål being the first language in the priority list. In essence, it’s like the script skips the first language in the list for some reason.
Redirects occur regardless of language, when they’re only supposed to happen when I attempt to access an article on English Wikipedia.
Every subsequent page I click on after the initial redirect, redirects me to the equivalent page in the next language in the list: so if I click on the main page from Nynorsk Wikipedia, it loads the Danish Wikipedia’s main page; if I click on one of the articles from the Danish Wikipedia’s main page, it loads the article I clicked on in Swedish, et cetera.

Edit: Thanks Edie for fixing issues 2 and 3

Enjoyer_of_Games [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net · 11 days ago

Those are all features … to uh help you avoid wiki rabbit holes yeah that’s it.

11 days ago

2 (and to some extent 3) can be fixed by replacing

// @match        https://*.wikipedia.org/*

with

// @match        https://en.wikipedia.org/*

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Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net · 11 days ago

That worked, awesome! Should’ve probably figured that out myself, but at least it was a simple enough issue to solve.

11 days ago

Also I think you can remove

    const checkbox = document.getElementById('p-lang-btn-checkbox');
    if (checkbox && !checkbox.checked) {
        checkbox.click(); // Open the dropdown
        console.log('Checkbox clicked to open dropdown');
    }

it doesn’t actually seem to make a difference.

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Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net · 11 days ago

I don’t notice any difference, either.

11 days ago

Here is my modified version which seems to work better. The original one would continuously attempt to navigate to a page, resulting in firefox creating an error, whereas mine doesn’t. I have removed the unnecessary open checkbox. And I have fixed norsk bokmål being nb not no

script

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Erika3sis
// @version      2026-02-12
// @match        https://en.wikipedia.org/*
// @description  Redirects wikipedia pages to alternate language pages in order of predefined preference
// @author       Enjoyer_of_Games
// @author       Edie
// @run-at       document-idle
// @license      AGPL 3+
// ==/UserScript==

const langBtn = document.querySelector('#p-lang-btn');

let result = false;
do{
    if (langBtn) {
        let LanguageList = ['nb', 'nn', 'da', 'sv', 'eo', 'tok', 'ru', 'ja', 'zh'];
        for (const langCode of LanguageList) {
            let linktarget = document.querySelector(`a.interlanguage-link-target[lang="${langCode}"]`);
            if(linktarget){
                let langLink = linktarget.href;
                if (langLink){
                  console.log(window.location);
                  console.log(`Navigating to language: ${langCode}`);
                  result = true;
                  window.location.href = langLink;
                  break;
                }
                else {
                   console.warn(`Could not find language link for "${langCode}"`);
                }
            }
        }
    }
    else {
        console.log('Could not find the #p-lang-btn element');
    }
}
while(result !== true);

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Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net · 11 days ago

Seems to work perfectly, and a lot faster! Thank you for your service, and @Enjoyer_of_Games@hexbear.net for the original version of the script.

buckykat [none/use name]@hexbear.net · 11 days ago

In the classic vector wikipedia skin which is better in every way than the new layout, the links to the same page in various other languages are right there on the bottom left, no dropdown, one click.