Web Profiles

Browser locale and time zone

The language the browser asks for and the clock it runs on. Left alone they inherit the renderer's own settings, which is rarely what your audience has.

The two settings

Both are under Fine-tuning › How the browser introduces itself, next to the user agent. Browser language and Time zone each have two buttons:

ValueMeaning
Follow the locationNothing is set explicitly, and the page gets the browser's own language and clock. The site still sees the country of your Location from the network route. This is how a new profile starts.
Choose oneSet it explicitly, and pick the value from the list beside the buttons.

What the locale changes

The locale is what the browser sends in its language header and what the page reads when it formats anything for a human. Setting it changes:

  • Which translation a multilingual site serves.
  • Date order — 03/04 meaning the third of April or the fourth of March.
  • Decimal separators, thousands separators and currency placement.
  • Sorting, in lists the page orders alphabetically.

Locale is a request, not a guarantee

A site that picks its language from the URL or from a stored preference will ignore the header. If a capture keeps coming back in the wrong language, the site is probably deciding by path — capture the localised URL instead.

What the time zone changes

Anything the page renders as a local time: published dates, countdowns, delivery estimates, opening hours, “last updated” lines, session expiry.

It is worth setting whenever a capture is evidence. A support page that reads “updated 2 hours ago” means very little; the same page with a correct local timestamp is something you can point at.

This is not your account time zone

Your account time zone (or a schedule’s own time zone) is what your schedules run on and how the app shows you capture times. This setting is what the captured page believes. They are independent, and there is no reason they must match.

Using them with Location

These two and Location make one coherent picture of a visitor. Set them together and keep them consistent:

ValueMeaning
A visitor in BerlinLocation DE, locale de-DE, time zone Europe/Berlin.
A visitor in TokyoLocation JP, locale ja-JP, time zone Asia/Tokyo.
An English speaker in FranceLocation FR, locale en-GB, time zone Europe/Paris — a real and common combination worth testing.

Mismatches are a test in themselves

A German address with an American clock is a combination no genuine visitor produces. Sites handle it inconsistently — which is worth knowing about deliberately, and worth avoiding by accident.

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