---
title: TextCat
url: 'https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide/antispam-plugins/textcat'
markdown: 'https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide/antispam-plugins/textcat.md'
date: '2026-10-01'
description: 'This plugin will try to guess the language used in the message body text. You can use the ok_languages directive to set which languages are considered okay for incoming mail and if the guessed language is not okay, UNWANTED_LANGUAGE_BODY is triggered. Alternatively, you can use the X-Languages meta…'
taxonomy:
  category:
    - docs
  tag:
    - textcat
---

[](#)  [ Basics ](https://docs.danami.com/warden/)     [ User Guide ](https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide)     [ Anti-spam Plugins ](https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide/antispam-plugins)      TextCat    

# TextCat

This plugin will try to guess the language used in the message body text. You can use the `ok_languages` directive to set which languages are considered okay for incoming mail and if the guessed language is not okay, `UNWANTED_LANGUAGE_BODY` is triggered. Alternatively, you can use the X-Languages metadata header directly in rules.

Note that the language cannot always be recognized with sufficient confidence. In that case, no action is taken.

## How it works

Warden enables the `Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::TextCat` plugin in SpamAssassin, which builds a language guess from n-gram models of the message body text. `ok_languages` lists the languages that are considered okay for incoming mail, and the `UNWANTED_LANGUAGE_BODY` rule is triggered if none of the detected languages is in that list (this is the only effect of the list - it does not act as a welcomelist against any other form of spam scanning). `inactive_languages` controls which language models are considered when guessing, and `textcat_max_languages` limits how many languages a single message may match at the same time before its classification is treated as unknown.

The results are always stored as an `X-Languages` name-value pair in the message metadata, where they can be used as Bayes tokens or in rules for scoring. The `_TEXTCATRESULTS_` tag exposes the internal n-gram scoring, which might help fine-tuning the settings.

## Rules

| Area | Rule name | Description | Default scores |
|---|---|---|---|
| body | `UNWANTED_LANGUAGE_BODY` | Message written in an undesired language | 2.800 |
| body | `BODY_8BITS` | Body includes 8 consecutive 8-bit characters | 1.500 |

## Related Pages

- [TextCat Settings](https://docs.danami.com/warden/settings/antispam/plugin-settings/textcat "TextCat Settings")

 [](https://docs.danami.com/warden/command-line-interface/antispam/antispam-plugin-textcat)

---

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- Parent: [Anti-spam Plugins](https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide/antispam-plugins.md)
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