Locale and region

Locale settings tell YouTube which audience the anonymous client represents. They can affect search ordering, translated labels, availability, and display text. They do not translate the SDK’s property names.

Configure an audience

const yt = new YouTube({
  lang: 'en',
  location: 'US',
  timezone: 'America/New_York',
});

Option	Meaning	Default
`lang`	YouTube interface language, sent as `hl`.	`'en'`
`location`	Two-letter region, sent as `gl`.	`'US'`
`timezone`	IANA timezone used in the request context.	`'America/New_York'`
`enableSafetyMode`	Requests YouTube’s restricted mode.	`false`

Use an IANA timezone such as Europe/London or America/New_York, not a short abbreviation such as EST. Abbreviations can be ambiguous and do not describe daylight-saving rules.

Machine values and display values

When YouTube exposes a machine-readable count, the SDK returns a number. A display field such as viewCountText or joinedDateText may follow the chosen language and region.

Prefer numbers for calculations and sorting. Prefer display text when you want YouTube’s localized presentation.

Use separate clients for separate locales

Locale belongs to the session, so do not mutate it between calls. Create one long-lived client per audience when an application truly needs several:

const us = new YouTube({ lang: 'en', location: 'US' });
const uk = new YouTube({ lang: 'en', location: 'GB' });

This keeps each session internally consistent.