Want to change non-English Command Line interface to English or change the Command Prompt language to English in Windows 11 or 10? It is very easy. You do not need to change the Windows system language or display language in Windows Settings.
Method 1. Change Language of Command Prompt using CHCP syntax in Windows 11?
We will use the CHCP syntax to change non-english to English in MS-Dos Command Prompt on a Windows 11 PC below. You can also the language from English to many other languages in Windows Command Prompt.
- Firstly press the Windows logo key and R on the keyboard, you will then open the Run prompt on your computer screen. Type cmd, then press OK, you will open the Command Line on your Windows 11 PC.
- Input and execute follow command in the CMD prompt:
chcp 437 - You will get the response in command prompt as below:
Active code page: 437
About Chcp Syntax
The chcp command is used to supplement the international keyboard and character set information. CHCP DOS command allows MS-DOS to be used in other countries and with different languages. Chcp displays the number of the active console code page, or you can use it to change the console’s active console code page.
- To display the number of the active console code page, you can type in Chcp without parameters in Windows command prompt line, then execute.
- To change active code page, you can input and execute chcp [nnn], nnn specifies a code page number. See more details of the supported code page and its country/region or language below.
Supported code page and its country/region or language
| Code page | Country/region or language |
|---|---|
| 437 | United States |
| 708 | Arabic |
| 737 | Greek |
| 850 | Multilingual (Latin I) default code page in most of Europe |
| 852 | Slavic (Latin II) |
| 855 | Cyrillic (Russian) |
| 857 | Turkish |
| 860 | Portuguese |
| 861 | Icelandic |
| 862 | Hebrew |
| 863 | Canadian-French |
| 865 | Nordic |
| 866 | Russian |
| 869 | Modern Greek |
| 874 | Thai |
| 875 | Greek Modern |
| 932 | Japanese |
| 936 | Simplified Chinese (PRC, Singapore) |
| 949 | Korean |
| 950 | Traditional Chinese (Taiwan; Hong Kong SAR, PRC) |
| 1141 | Germany |
| 1142 | Denmark-Norway |
| 1143 | Finland-Sweden |
| 1144 | Italy |
| 1145 | Latin America-Spain |
| 1146 | United Kingdom |
| 1147 | France |
| 65001 | Unicode UTF-8 |
| 1200 | Unicode UTF-16, little endian byte order |
| 1201 | Unicode UTF-16, big endian byte order |
Note:
- The chcp syntax works with various Windows OS version, such as Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11. However the nlsfunc and the country.sys must be loaded into the config.sys before you can use this syntax to change language of Command prompt.
- When using chcp to change the Code Page to 437 English or other language in Command Prompt, it works with the current Command Line window only. If you start a new CMD window, it goes back to the original, default language of your Windows system. If you like to permanently change the language in Command Line, follow below instructions to edit the Windows Registry.
Method 2. Change Command Line Language permanently through Windows Registry in Windows 11
On your Windows 11 or Windows 10 PC, do a search for “regedit” in the Windows search bar and select to open the Registry Editor app.
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Command Processor, right click on the blank area, then choose New > String Value, create a new string, name it to Autorun, double click on the string to edit it and add the value “chcp 437” (without the quotes), save the change and exit the Registry Editor app.
Go to run the command line in Windows 11 or 10, now you will see the 437 code page is automatically activated.
Method 3. Set a language for Command Prompt & all non-Unicode apps
In Windows 11, select Start > Settings > Time & language > Language & region > Administrative language settings.
In the Region dialog, on the Administrative tab, click Change system locale.
In the resulting dialog, select the desired Unicode language from the Current system locale list.
Note that you have to install the language pack on your PC first.
Also, you in the Region Settings dialog, you can check the Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support box. This option will activate code page 65001, see the chart Supported code page and its country/region or language above.
Click OK. You will be prompted to restart the computer to apply the changes.
This change applies to all non-Unicode applications installed on your PC, not only the Windows Command Prompt.