diff --git a/configure.in b/configure.in
index 3d0512aa..693de9cb 100644
--- a/configure.in
+++ b/configure.in
@@ -38,6 +38,7 @@ dnl ================================
 dnl = checking for various headers =
 dnl ================================
 AC_CHECK_HEADERS([dirent.h regex.h], , AC_MSG_ERROR(vital headers missing))
+AC_CHECK_HEADERS([langinfo.h], , AC_MSG_WARN(locale detection disabled))
 
 dnl ======================
 dnl = checking for iconv =
diff --git a/doc/config b/doc/config
index fc59eb81..3f425ca8 100644
--- a/doc/config
+++ b/doc/config
@@ -43,8 +43,13 @@
 #
 ##### system encoding #####
 ##
-## if you use encoding other than utf8, set it in
-## order to handle utf8 encoded strings properly.
+## ncmpcpp should detect your charset encoding
+## but if it failed to do so, you can specify
+## charset encoding you are using here.
+##
+## Note: Since MPD uses utf8 by default, setting
+## this option makes sense only if your encoding
+## is different.
 ##
 #
 #system_encoding = ""
diff --git a/src/settings.cpp b/src/settings.cpp
index 6b019f2b..931a8899 100644
--- a/src/settings.cpp
+++ b/src/settings.cpp
@@ -31,6 +31,10 @@
 #include "lyrics.h"
 #include "settings.h"
 
+#ifdef HAVE_LANGINFO_H
+# include <langinfo.h>
+#endif
+
 const std::string config_file = config_dir + "config";
 const std::string keys_config_file = config_dir + "keys";
 
@@ -318,6 +322,11 @@ void DefaultConfiguration(ncmpcpp_config &conf)
 	conf.lyrics_db = 0;
 	conf.regex_type = 0;
 	conf.lines_scrolled = 2;
+#	ifdef HAVE_LANGINFO_H
+	conf.system_encoding = nl_langinfo(CODESET);
+	if (conf.system_encoding == "UTF-8") // mpd uses utf-8 by default so no need to convert
+		conf.system_encoding.clear();
+#	endif // HAVE_LANGINFO_H
 }
 
 void ReadKeys(ncmpcpp_keys &keys)