# Strapi i18n plus Croct, how does locale selection work per slot?

Asked by meiling on 2025-11-13. Tags: strapi, localization, i18n.

We are a Singapore retailer serving en, zh, and ms locales from Strapi i18n.
Our pages already resolve the right Strapi locale from the URL, so I expected
the Croct slot to follow the page locale automatically.

Actual behavior: the slot always returns content in the default locale, even
on /zh pages. The default fallback from Strapi is fine since we pass it
ourselves, but variant content authored in Croct comes back in English

Is there a way to tell the slot which locale the page is in, or does it only
ever serve one locale?

## 1 answer

### Answer from kenji_m (2025-11-13)

The slot does not infer the locale from the URL, you have to pass it. All the
fetching APIs accept a `preferredLocale` option: `fetch` in the JS SDK,
`useContent` in React, and `fetchContent` on the Next.js server side. So wire
your route locale through:

```ts
const content = await fetchContent('home-hero', {
    preferredLocale: locale, // 'zh', 'ms', 'en'
});
```

If most of your app runs in one locale you can also set
`defaultPreferredLocale` in the plug options instead of passing it per call.

One thing to check on the workspace side: localization with per-locale
default content is an add-on, so make sure it is enabled and that the
experience actually has zh and ms content authored. If a locale has no
content, you get the default locale back, which matches what you are seeing.
The [localization docs](https://docs.croct.com) cover the option on each SDK.