DevToys New Tab: a Chrome extension localized end-to-end in 52 languages

The numbers

Why a Chrome extension needs two translations

Localizing a Chrome extension is really two jobs, and most tools only do one:

1. In-extension UI — the strings users see after install, stored in _locales/<lang>/messages.json and read at runtime via chrome.i18n. This is what makes the product feel native once a user has it.
2. Chrome Web Store listing — the title, summary, and description shown before install. This is what makes the product discoverable: the Store displays your listing in the visitor’s language and indexes it for native-language searches.

DevToys New Tab localized both with LocalePack, so a user in any of 52 languages finds it in their language on the Store and then uses it in their language after install.

What localization did for discoverability

A translated Chrome Web Store listing is one of the few SEO levers extension developers actually control. When the title and description exist in a user’s language, the listing surfaces for native-language queries — “nueva pestaña para desarrolladores”, “開発者 新しいタブ” — where competition is a fraction of the English equivalent. Pair that with a UI that’s already in their language, and the install-to-retention path stays friction-free from search result to daily use.

The 52 languages

Both the UI and the store listing were delivered in the full set of languages LocalePack supports:

How LocalePack helped

• messages.json in, messages.json out. The in-extension strings came back as a ready-to-extract _locales tree with correctly named locale folders and every $PLACEHOLDER$ token preserved.
• Store-listing copy translated too. The same source ran through the store-listing flow, producing title, summary, and description text for all 52 Chrome Web Store locales.
• One pass, pay once. No TMS subscription and no per-language busywork — upload, pay once, download both deliverables.

Takeaway

For a Chrome extension, “going international” means localizing the listing and the UI. DevToys New Tab did both in 52 languages in a single workflow — turning a global, multilingual developer audience from a missed opportunity into the default.