SwiftyCrow
Translate anything on your screen.
Entirely on your Mac.
brew install --cask PangMo5/tap/swiftycrow
Translate anything on your screen.
Entirely on your Mac.
brew install --cask PangMo5/tap/swiftycrow
The translation is drawn right where you're reading.
Capture
Drag a region or pick a whole window. The translation lands over a blurred copy of the original.
Drag to select any area, or press Space to highlight and click a whole window, like the macOS screenshot tool.
The result opens in a floating window with each line blurred behind its translation.
Save a PNG, copy the image, or copy just the original or translated text.
Live overlay
Place an overlay on a region or window and it keeps translating as the content changes.
Pick a region or a window and the overlay lands right on it, translating live from the first frame.
Clicks and scrolling pass straight through to the app below. Move it by the top-left handle and resize from the edges; the LIVE badge pauses and resumes, and × closes it.
Draw the translation over the source, or send it to a separate window while the overlay stays a thin frame.
The overlay remembers its region, so a shortcut (or the menu bar) flips it back on over the same spot — and off again — without re-selecting. Handy for a game panel or a fixed HUD.
Recognition
Recognition follows the page's structure, so even busy and vertical layouts come out right.
Groups text into reading-order paragraphs, so comics and multi-column pages don't get scrambled.
Vertical Japanese and Chinese stay vertical, with the translation drawn over the original.
Separates ruby (furigana) from the body text it annotates and handles dense layouts without jumbling lines.
Private by design
Recognition and translation run on-device with Apple's Vision and Translation frameworks. Nothing leaves your Mac.
Powered by Apple's on-device models. Works offline, with nothing sent to a server.
Source and target lists come from the languages installed on your Mac. Set the source to Auto to detect it per line.
Translating the same screen again is served from cache, so repeat captures are immediate.
Always at hand
No Dock icon, no clutter. Trigger everything with a shortcut and keep it current automatically.
Open the popover or fire any action from a global shortcut, even with no window open.
Bind capture, live overlay, show/hide overlay on the last region, pause/resume, display mode, and the save/copy keys in Settings.
Sparkle keeps SwiftyCrow up to date, and it can launch at login if you want.
Free, open source, and lives in your menu bar.
brew install --cask PangMo5/tap/swiftycrow