How to Translate Text on Your Screen on Mac

Translating a web page on a Mac is easy. Translating text inside an app, an image, a game, a video or a remote desktop session is not, because you usually cannot select it. This guide covers the built-in macOS options and a faster screenshot-based workflow that works on anything you can see.

Translate selectable text with macOS

If you can select the text, macOS can translate it:

1. Select the text in Safari, Notes, Mail, Pages or most native apps.
2. Right-click and choose Translate "…".
3. A popover shows the translation. Click Copy Translation or Replace with Translation where supported.

Safari can also translate whole pages: look for the translate icon in the address bar.

Translate text in images with Live Text

For text inside an image or a screenshot:

1. Open the image in Preview or Photos.
2. Select the text with Live Text.
3. Right-click the selection and choose Translate.

This works well, but it is several steps and only applies to images you have already saved.

Translate anything on screen with a screenshot

Some text cannot be selected at all: dialogs, canvas-based apps like Figma, chat apps rendered as images, video frames, or a screen share in a meeting. The reliable way to translate those is to capture them.

With ScreenVerb:

1. Press your capture hotkey (Option-Shift-S by default).
2. Drag over the text you want translated.
3. Press the number key for Translate.

ScreenVerb sends the capture to the AI model you chose and pastes the translation back into the app you were typing in. If you are replying to a customer in Linear or Slack, the English version lands right in the message box.

Choosing a model and keeping it private

You can run translations through ScreenVerb Cloud, which is included with Pro and Max, or bring your own key from OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Groq or OpenRouter. With your own key, screenshots go straight from your Mac to the provider and never pass through ScreenVerb servers. With a local Ollama model, nothing leaves your Mac at all.

Tips for better translations

• Capture a little context. Including the heading or the sender name helps the model pick the right tone and terms.
• Make a custom action for your language pair. If you always translate Japanese to English, add a custom action with a prompt like "Translate to English. Keep product names and code unchanged."
• Use Extract Text first for long documents. For multi-page content, extracting the text and translating it in one go is often cheaper and faster than translating several screenshots.

Also on iPhone and iPad

The ScreenVerb iOS app includes the same Translate action. Import a screenshot from Photos or the share sheet and translate it on the go.