How to translate text on your screen on Mac

Press ⌘ ⇧ 2, choose Translate in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen and drag over the text. The panel shows the translation next to the original, made on your Mac with Apple’s translation. It needs macOS 15 Sequoia or later, and the first time macOS may ask to download the languages.

Buy for $4.99$4.99 once · macOS 14 Sonoma or later

How to translate with Copyable

Press ⌘ ⇧ 2 and choose Translate
The screen freezes and a toolbar appears at the bottom. Choose Translate there.
Drag over the text
A sign in a photo, a game menu, a slide, a subtitle or an app in another language. Copyable detects the language.
Copy the translation or the original
The panel shows the translation in your language with the original below it. Copy whichever you need.

Without Copyable

The free ways, and where they stop working. If one of them covers what you need, you don’t need an app.

Translate in the right-click menu

When the text can be selected, as in Safari, Notes, Mail and most Mac apps, select it, Control-click and choose Translate.

Where it stops: Only for text you can select. Text in images works only where Live Text is available.

Safari’s page translation

Safari can translate a whole web page from the address bar.

Where it stops: Web pages in Safari only, and only real text, not text in images or videos.

Google Lens in Chrome

In Chrome, right-click the page, choose Search with Google Lens and drag over the text. Lens can select and copy the text it finds.

Where it stops: Only inside Chrome, and the selected area is sent to Google.

Tips for translating

The language pairs you can use depend on your macOS version. See them, and download languages ahead of time, in System Settings → General → Language & Region → Translation Languages.
Once the languages are downloaded, translation works offline.
For menus and signs, select one block at a time so the translation keeps related lines together.
On macOS 14 Sonoma, Copyable still recognizes and copies the text. Paste it into an app and choose Translate from the right-click menu.

Questions

Which languages can it translate?

The ones Apple’s translation offers on your macOS version, including English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Ukrainian and Russian.

Is the text sent to a translation service?

No. Translation happens on your Mac with Apple’s translation. Copyable makes no network requests; macOS may download a language once, from Apple.

Does it work on macOS 14 Sonoma?

Text recognition does. Translation in Copyable needs macOS 15 Sequoia or later; on Sonoma, paste the text into an app and use Translate from the right-click menu.

Copy text from anything on your screen

Copyable reads the text in any area you select with ⌘ ⇧ 2, on your Mac, without uploading anything. $4.99 once, plus tax where it applies. Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later, Apple silicon or Intel.

Buy for $4.99