GC Design System Components
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Language toggle
<gcds-lang-toggle>

Also called: language switch, language selector.

The language toggle is a link to the same content in the other Official Language.

  • Required on Canada.ca
  • Required on GC sites

  • GitHub
  • Figma

Language toggle component preview

On this page

Coding and accessibility for language toggle

  • Place the language toggle in the top right of the header landmark for predictability and findability.
  • Use the href-attribute to set the url of the page in the other Official Language.
  • Set the lang attribute with en to indicate the language toggle in French and fr will indicate the language toggle in English.

Note: If using the header component, the language toggle can be assigned using the lang-href attribute.

Examples Explore the different ways you can configure the component. Each example shows a working implementation and ready-to-copy code.

In this section

Essential attributes These attributes are needed for the component to function correctly.

href

The href attribute specifies the URL of the same page in another language, typically English or French. Use this attribute to provide a link that allows users to switch between available language versions.

<gcds-lang-toggle href="#">
</gcds-lang-toggle>

Code builder

Generate an instance of the component you need by selecting its code properties.

  1. Explore by choosing different code values to generate the instance you want.

  2. Get the code and pull it into your environment.

  3. Add any copy you need to the component (like text for a label).

Note: The code builder uses English for all code elements, which follows standard practice.

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2026-05-20