Native macOS menu-bar app: select text anywhere, press a hotkey, get an AI translation, grammar fix, or rewrite in a popup near your cursor.
- 🌐 Translate to any target language. Optional auto-detect picks the target from your language pairs (defaults: Russian ↔ Ukrainian, English → Ukrainian); otherwise uses the default target
- ✓ Fix grammar — spelling, punctuation, and grammar only; meaning and style stay the same
- ✨ Rewrite — clearer wording in the same language; meaning and tone preserved
- 🖼️ Screen Translate — press the hotkey, drag a selection over any screen region, and get the recognized text instantly. Press Translate in the popup to run AI translation, or just grab the OCR text as-is. Works across multiple monitors
- ✨ Magic — one hotkey that fixes grammar, improves style, and translates in a single AI call. Write your own system prompt in Settings → Magic; use
{{targetLanguage}}as a placeholder. Requires Claude, OpenAI, or Gemini - ⌨️ Each operation has its own configurable global hotkey. Translate ships with ⌥T; others are unset until you assign them
- 📋 Popup actions: Copy, Replace (pastes back into the source app), Retry with another provider
- 🤖 Seven providers: Claude, OpenAI, Gemini (all three operations + vision), Google (Free), Google Translate, DeepL, and Microsoft Translator (translate only)
- 🔁 Per-provider fallback — on 429, 5xx, or network errors, retries once with the fallback you pick for that provider
- 📜 Translation history (0–100 entries, default 10). The three most recent results appear at the top of the menu-bar dropdown for one-click copy
- ☁️ Settings and history sync via iCloud Drive when available (on by default). API keys stay on each Mac, encrypted with AES-GCM
- Download the latest
LingoPop-X.Y.Z-mac-universal.dmgfrom Releases. - Open the dmg and drag LingoPop into the Applications folder.
- First launch: the app is ad-hoc signed (not notarized), so macOS Gatekeeper will warn. Right-click
LingoPop.appin Applications → Open → click Open in the dialog. You'll only see this once. - Grant Accessibility access when prompted:
- System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility
- Enable the toggle next to LingoPop
- Fully quit LingoPop (menu-bar icon → Quit) and relaunch — macOS only reads the new permission on app start.
cd ~/Downloads
unzip LingoPop-X.Y.Z-mac-universal.zip
mv LingoPop.app /Applications/
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/LingoPop.app # bypass Gatekeeper without right-click
open /Applications/LingoPop.app| Asset | Size | Runs on |
|---|---|---|
LingoPop-X.Y.Z-mac-universal.dmg / .zip |
~1.2 MB | Apple Silicon and Intel |
LingoPop-X.Y.Z-mac-arm64.zip |
~800 KB | Apple Silicon only |
LingoPop-X.Y.Z-mac-x86_64.zip |
~830 KB | Intel only |
When in doubt, take the universal build.
After first launch, click the LingoPop icon in the menu bar → Settings… (or ⌘,).
- Target language — choose a fixed target, or turn on Auto-detect input language and edit language pairs (source → target). Unmatched sources use the default target
- Limits — Max input characters (default 5000) and History size (0–100, default 10)
- Startup — Launch at login
- iCloud Drive sync — sync settings and history between Macs on the same Apple ID (enabled when iCloud Drive is available). API keys are never synced
- Accessibility — required to read selected text via simulated Copy. Grant access in System Settings, then fully quit and relaunch LingoPop
Sidebar lists all seven providers. The starred one is active (used for hotkeys and menu actions).
Per provider:
- Set as active — switch which provider runs your next operation
- API key — required for all providers except Google (Free)
- Endpoint / Model — defaults work out of the box; override base URL or model if needed
- HTTP Referer — optional, only for Google Translate (for API keys restricted by HTTP referrer in Google Cloud Console)
- Region — optional, only for Microsoft Translator (required for multi-service or regional Azure resources; leave empty for global free-tier F0 resources)
- Fallback — pick another provider to try once on rate-limit, server, or network errors
Configure keys for several providers and switch the active one anytime. Fix grammar, Rewrite, and Magic require Claude, OpenAI, or Gemini — the four translation-only providers are DeepL, Microsoft Translator, Google Translate, and Google (Free).
Click Save on the detail pane after editing a provider.
Assign a global shortcut per operation: Translate, Fix grammar, Rewrite, Screen Translate, Magic. Click the field, press a combination with ⌃ ⌥ ⇧ ⌘ plus a key; Esc cancels, ✕ clears.
Write a custom system prompt for the Magic operation. Use {{targetLanguage}} as a placeholder — it's replaced at runtime with your configured target language. Click Save to apply changes. Reset to default restores the built-in prompt. Requires Claude, OpenAI, or Gemini.
App version and a short overview.
Besides Settings… and History…:
- The top of the menu lists up to three recent results — click to copy
- Translate / Fix grammar / Rewrite run the operation on the current selection (shortcut shown in parentheses when set)
- Target: submenu — quick switch for the default target language
Workflow: select text in any app → press your hotkey (or pick an operation from the menu) → popup appears near the cursor.
| Provider in Settings | Operations | Key |
|---|---|---|
| Claude | Translate · Fix grammar · Rewrite · Magic | console.anthropic.com |
| OpenAI | Translate · Fix grammar · Rewrite · Magic | platform.openai.com/api-keys |
| Gemini | Translate · Fix grammar · Rewrite · Magic | aistudio.google.com/apikey |
| DeepL | Translate only | www.deepl.com/pro-api — free tier (500k chars/mo) available. Free keys end in :fx; change the base URL to https://api.deepl.com for paid keys |
| Microsoft Translator | Translate only | Azure Cognitive Services — free tier (F0) gives 2M chars/mo |
| Google Translate | Translate only | console.cloud.google.com — enable Cloud Translation API |
| Google (Free) | Translate only | No key — unofficial public endpoint |
The maintainer doesn't pay for an Apple Developer Program subscription ($99/yr), so the app is ad-hoc signed instead of notarized. The signature still proves the binary hasn't been tampered with after build, but Gatekeeper can't verify the publisher. You only see the warning on first launch.
If you'd rather not bypass Gatekeeper at all, build LingoPop from source (request access to the private source repo from the maintainer).
- macOS 13 (Ventura) or later
- Accessibility permission (to capture selected text via simulated copy)
- Screen Recording permission (for Screen Translate — to capture screen content)
- An API key for the active provider, unless you use Google (Free) or only need translate via a configured Google provider
See PRIVACY.md. Short version:
- API keys live in
~/Library/Application Support/LingoPop/secrets.dat— AES-GCM encrypted, key bound to your machine's hardware UUID. - Settings and translation history sync via your iCloud Drive folder (you can disable this in Settings → Main).
- The app makes outbound HTTPS calls only to the AI provider you choose. No telemetry, no analytics.
See CHANGELOG.md or browse Releases.
Open an issue with your macOS version, LingoPop version, and steps to reproduce.
See LICENSE.