Hello everyone,

This week I want to introduce SnapTrans (macOS) for those who often need to learn new words right on the screen or work in a multilingual environment without the hassle of copying and pasting back and forth.

I created SnapTrans out of a very real annoyance when using Mac daily: whenever I encounter a text that I want to translate but can't copy, I have to take a screenshot, use OCR, and then paste it into Google Translate. Even when I can copy it, it still requires a few more steps to understand the meaning. It may not seem like a big deal, but doing this repeatedly takes a lot of time and disrupts the flow of reading.

Apple has a built-in translation feature when selecting text, but in reality, not every place allows you to highlight text, and it's not really convenient if I want to translate quickly. Sometimes it's a screenshot, subtitles, game text, scanned files, or content within apps that don’t allow selection, so I still have to go through several manual steps.

SnapTrans will combine these two tasks into one: scanning a screen area, recognizing text, and translating it right in a popup window. No need to copy to another app, no need to open another tab, reducing interruptions and making it much faster.

Initially, my app supported input keys from OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, Ollama, or LM Studio. But when I submitted it to the store, the packaging and subscription selling mechanism was quite cumbersome, so I abandoned that direction. Currently, the app only retains Google’s monthly cloud translation package and Apple’s offline translation through the Pro Lifetime package.

Key features:

- Translate Area: select a screen area to capture and translate immediately.

- Translate Clipboard: quickly translate the content just copied from the clipboard.

- Copy OCR Text: recognize text from images and copy the text for use if translation is not needed.

- Custom hotkeys: you can set your own hotkeys for translation functions

- Save translation history: every translation is saved, making it easy to check and look up.

- Two-way support for 13 popular languages