Language Detector API on Android

Category: Miscellaneous
Type: Chromium catches up
Status: Proposed (Chrome Proposed)
Intent stage: None

Breaking change: No
Enterprise impact: None
Spec maturity: Incubation
Web Platform Tests: Yes

WPT details: Covered by existing WPTs under external/wpt/ai/language_detection/ (detector.https.window.js, detector-locale.https.window.js, availability-detached-crash.https.html, etc.) as well as cross-platform PlatformBrowserTest coverage in LanguageDetectionModelServiceBrowserTest (android_browsertests).

Summary

Exposes the LanguageDetector JavaScript Web API on Chrome for Android (Clank). This allows web applications to detect text languages locally on mobile devices using fast, privacy-preserving, and offline-capable on-device machine learning models and not rely on cloud endpoints.

Motivation

Exposing the Language Detector API on Chrome for Android allows web applications to perform fast, privacy-preserving, and offline-capable language identification directly within mobile browsers.

Standards & signals

Specification: https://webmachinelearning.github.io/translation-api
Firefox: Negative
Safari: No signal
Web developers: Positive
Tracking bug: https://crbug.com/549896512

Ecosystem

Web Platform Tests: https://wpt.fyi/results/?q=ai%2Flanguage_detection
Chrome Platform Showcase: https://chrome-platform-showcase.paulkinlan-ea.deno.net/features
GenDN reference: https://gendn.paulkinlan-ea.deno.net/features
chrome.dev demos search: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Achrome.dev+Language%20Detector%20API%20on%20Android
MDN Web Docs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?q=Language%20Detector%20API%20on%20Android
Baseline status: https://webstatus.dev/?q=Language%20Detector%20API%20on%20Android

Explainers: https://github.com/webmachinelearning/translation-api

View on chromestatus.com