Setting the application locale to en-AU via GPO does not work

Copper Contributor

When applying a GPO that configures the Application Locale and Spellcheck Languages as "en-AU", the browser does not automatically install the language and instead defaults to English (United Kingdom). If we then manually set the language in the browser to English (Australia) after the policy has applied, the browser then "locks in" that setting and the user is unable to change the language off of English (Australia).

I don't think this has ever worked. We tried applying this GPO last year sometime and it didn't work then. We have tried again this week and it's still not working even in the Canary release.

We don't see any errors. In edge://policy we can see the policy value is correct and status is "OK".

We are running Windows 10 Enterprise, primarily version 1909 or higher. Our computers are joined to an AD and the policy is applied via GPO.


To troubleshoot this, I have tried:

I've tried tweaking the language in the policy a bit. I.e. "AU", "en_AU", "en-au" etc to no avail.
I've tried a completely different locale (specifically, "en-GB") which does apply as expected. So this isn't an issue with the policy, just specifically when trying to apply en-AU via this policy.
I've tried all versions of Edge as of 23/12/2020 (Stable, Beta, Dev and Canary) and this issue exists across all of them.

6 Replies

@TheHarley  thanks for posting. Have had this issue since implementing v79 for my organisation and was hoping it would be resolved by now. 

If Microsoft were able to provide a method of automatically installing languages e.g. en-AU, then policy should apply correctly.

Will log a premier support case in the near future if I see no action here.

@gyost I've checked again today and it's still not fixed in any release channel. It's a bit disappointing Microsoft won't even acknowledge the issue exists. I've even submitted a feedback report via the browser but got no response from that either. We'll probably open up a premier case as well. 

Yep exact same issue here.

 

We've opened a premier case as this is just crazy

@gyost @ThatConfigMgrGuy 

 

I've got a workaround/solution. This is what you do:

 

Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge, create a new string value named DefinePreferredLanguages
Set the value to be en-AU

 

msedgeregkey.png

 

Once you open Edge, English (Australia) will now be selected and enforced in the languages section without the need to manually select it. I haven't tested with just the reg key and no GPO but you might still need it.

Fantastic work Harley. I can confirm it has worked on Edge 89.0.774.45.
Thank you for posting this issues here and putting the time and energy into the premier support case.

@TheHarley  @gyost 

 

Thanks mate, Yeah just got a reply to my prem case too.

 

I've also just confirmed that this setting in endpoint manager does the same thing and works as expected on v89

ThatConfigMgrGuy_0-1616987340612.png