Lokalise TMS is built around projects. A project holds everything needed to translate your app, website, or game: languages, keys (text placeholders), translations, screenshots for context, contributor access, and project settings.

In most cases, you use one project per product. If your product has several platforms (iOS, Android, web, backend), it’s usually easier to keep all their keys and translations inside the same project. That way you don’t split work across multiple places.

All projects live inside a team. A team is just a container for its projects, people, and settings.

A team can have multiple projects and manages user access and the subscription plan. Each team is independent: it has its own members and settings, and nothing is shared with other teams. Keys and translations always stay inside the project they belong to, while user roles and general settings are controlled at the team level.

To create a project, first make sure you’re working inside the correct team. You can switch teams by clicking your avatar in the bottom left corner and selecting the desired team.

Once the right team is selected:

If needed later, you can move a project to another team. See the Move project to a different team article for details.

Lokalise does not offer project templates, but you can reuse an existing setup in two ways:

After clicking New project, select the project type. The type determines the supported file formats and integrations.

Currently, we support three project types:

You can find all the supported file formats in the corresponding articles collection.

After choosing the project type, you'll be presented with the following dialog:

When creating a project, you’ll see several options. Most of them can be changed later.

When everything looks good, click Create project. The project will be created and ready to use.

Each project gets a unique alphanumeric ID when it’s created. You can see it in the project URL, for example:

You can also find the ID in the project settings:

This ID is used when working with the Lokalise API or CLI. If you’re not using those developer tools, you usually won’t need the ID — the project name will be enough.

That's a good question! It depends on what you want to do. Let's explore some options.

A common first step is checking the project settings. To open settings, click More > Settings in the top menu.

Here you can change your project name, description, enable or disable additional features, create project snapshots (backups), set up automation rules, and perform other actions.

Once your project is set up, you can upload the content you want to translate. To do this, go to the Upload page in the top menu.

Choose one or more files and adjust the upload settings as needed.

When you created the project, you selected a base language and some target languages. If you upload files that include new languages, Lokalise will add them automatically. You can also add languages manually at any time.

Click the Languages dropdown in the top bar and select New language.

Choose one or more languages and click Add.

Once your files are uploaded, return to the Project editor to view and edit your keys and translations.

The editor is where you’ll spend most of your time reviewing text, adding translations, filtering keys, and attaching screenshots.

When you upload a translation file to Lokalise, the content is stored as keys and values inside your project. How this works depends on the type of file you upload. Let’s break down the basics.

First of all, let's discuss some important terminology.

Any file containing text you want to translate. This could be a DOCX document or a key-value format like JSON, YAML, .strings, etc.

A key is a placeholder used to reference text. In code, the key is replaced with the translated text based on the user’s language.

Example:
Your app contains a key: index.hello

If the app is shown in Latvian, index.hello → Sveiki.

Document-type files don’t use key-value pairs. So Lokalise generates keys automatically:

This way, every part of the document can be translated and tracked like normal.

The actual text for one language. One key has one value per language. If your project has 5 languages, each key will have 5 values.

A platform is a tag you assign to a key. Platforms help Lokalise know which export formats to use when generating files.

Available platforms:

Every key must be assigned to at least one platform, but you can assign the same key to multiple platforms if needed. This is especially useful if you’re working on both a web app and a mobile app that share the same translations.

A platform determines which file formats a key will be exported in. When you download translations from Lokalise, you’ll select an output file format.

For example:

If a key is assigned to Web, it appears in .json exports. If it’s not assigned to iOS, it will not appear in .strings exports (unless you choose to override that on export).

When you upload translation files, Lokalise reads the file and extracts:

Based on the file format, Lokalise also assigns platforms automatically:

After upload, your content is structured so you can translate, filter, edit, and export it in a consistent way.

Keys and values will be displayed in the following way:

So, what's happening here?

Now we can create a simple hierarchy:

If you’re working with others, you can invite them to the project and set their access level. To do this, open the Contributors page from the top menu.

Here you can add new contributors, assign roles and permissions, remove or update existing users.

Once contributors are invited, you can assign translation work to them or use Lokalise AI to assist. Go to the Tasks page to create a task.

On this page, you'll be able to create a new task, choose translations to include, and assign this task to specific contributors.

If your content lives on a third-party platform (like GitHub, WordPress, GitLab, etc.), you can connect it to Lokalise using apps. Apps make it easy to sync, import, and export content without handling files manually.

To get started, open the Apps page from the top menu.

Browse the list, pick the app you need, and install it.

Once your translations are ready, you can download them in the format your app or system expects. To do this, open the Download page.

Here, you'll need to choose an output file format, the language to include, and adjust other options.

To delete a Lokalise project, you'll need a Manage project settings permission for that project.

Open a project, navigate to More > Settings, scroll to the bottom of the page, click Delete project, and type the project name to confirm the action.

We archive inactive teams and the corresponding projects on a regular basis. However, all your data is still preserved. Please check the Archiving inactive teams article to learn more about this process and how you can unarchive your projects.