explaingit

tisfeng/easydict

★ 13,130SwiftAudience · generalComplexity · 1/5LicenseSetup · easy

TLDR

Easydict is a free macOS app that translates text instantly via typed input, on-screen selection, or screenshot OCR, querying 20+ services like DeepL, OpenAI, and Google simultaneously.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Text translation
      OCR screenshot
      Instant lookup
    Input Methods
      Typed text
      Selected text
      Screenshot OCR
    Services
      DeepL
      OpenAI
      Google
      Baidu and more
    Setup
      Homebrew install
      macOS 13 required
Click or tap to explore — scroll the page freely

Code map

Detail Auto

An interactive map of this repo's files and how they connect — its source is parsed live in your browser. Click Visualize to build it.

filefunction / class

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Select foreign-language text in any macOS app and get an instant side-by-side translation from multiple services at once

USE CASE 2

Use screenshot OCR to translate text embedded in images that cannot be copy-pasted

USE CASE 3

Compare translations from OpenAI, DeepL, Google, and Baidu simultaneously to find the most natural result

Tech stack

SwiftmacOS

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

Requires macOS 13 or later.

Free to use and modify, but any software you distribute that includes this code must also be released under the GPL.

In plain English

Easydict is a free macOS app for looking up words and translating text. The idea is to make translation as quick as possible, without switching browser tabs or opening a separate website. You install it and it sits in the background, ready to translate in a few different ways. You can type text directly into the app window and hit Enter to translate. You can also select any text on screen (in a web page, document, or anywhere else) and either hover over it to get a query icon, or press a keyboard shortcut to translate immediately. There is also a screenshot mode where you press a shortcut, draw a box around text on screen, and the app reads the text from the image using OCR (optical character recognition) and translates it. This works on text inside images, which ordinary copy-paste cannot handle. What makes the app unusual is the number of translation services it supports at once. It can query more than 20 services simultaneously and show you all the results side by side: Apple Translate, OpenAI, Gemini, DeepL, DeepSeek, Google, Bing, Baidu, Youdao, Tencent, and more. You can configure which services appear and in what order. The app also integrates with macOS system dictionaries for word definitions. Installation is through Homebrew or by downloading a release directly from GitHub. The app requires macOS 13 or later. It is open-source, written in Swift, and licensed under the GPL.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
How do I add my own OpenAI API key to Easydict to use GPT for translations instead of the built-in service?
Prompt 2
Set up Easydict on macOS 13 with DeepL and Google Translate enabled, walk me through the configuration steps
Prompt 3
I want to translate Japanese text inside screenshots on my Mac, how do I use Easydict OCR mode to do this?
Prompt 4
How do I configure a keyboard shortcut in Easydict to instantly translate selected text in any app?
Open on GitHub → Explain another repo

← tisfeng on gitmyhub — every repo by this author, as a profile.

Verify against the repo before relying on details.