DA Assistant

A system-tray assistant for Linux that translates and answers questions about whatever is on your screen or in your clipboard, using any OpenAI-compatible chat API.

Warning

DA Assistant is beta software. Expect rough edges, and settings that may change between versions. Everything you capture or copy into it is sent to the API provider you configure: check what is in a screenshot before you send it, and read Privacy Mode if that matters to you. Answers are written by language models and can be wrong, even when they sound sure.

What it does

Eight operations, from the tray menu or a global shortcut you choose:

Action	Suggested key	What it does
Translate clipboard text	Ctrl+Shift+1	Translates the clipboard into your language
Translate image selection	Ctrl+Shift+2	Reads the text in a screen region, then translates it
Query clipboard text	Ctrl+Shift+3	Ask a question about the clipboard
Query image selection	Ctrl+Shift+4	Ask a question about a screen region
OCR only	Ctrl+Shift+5	Reads the text in a screen region, word for word
Look up word	Ctrl+Shift+6	Every entry your own dictionaries (DSL, StarDict) have for a word
Search Encyclopedia	Ctrl+Shift+7	Read your encyclopedia DVD - off by default
Ask Encyclopedia	Ctrl+Shift+8	Answers from the encyclopedia alone, every quotation checked - off by default

Ask anything, at the top of the tray menu, opens a chat with nothing captured, to type into straight away (suggested key Ctrl+Shift+9).

No shortcut is set until you choose one - see Shortcuts.

Answers open in a chat window that streams as it writes, renders Markdown, and takes follow-up questions. Any chat can take attached pictures and text files (Markdown, JSON, logs, code). Pictures, and screen regions you ask about, can have anything sensitive blacked out first, and are re-encoded from their pixels alone, so no metadata goes with them. You choose which model does each job, and can switch models mid-conversation. Web search is optional, per request. Privacy Mode sends everything only to models running in an attested trusted execution environment, proving each one before anything is sent.

The manual covers all of it in detail.

Installing

The AppImage

The simplest way: one file, with its own Python and everything else it needs from Python.

chmod +x DA_Assistant-*-x86_64.AppImage
./DA_Assistant-*-x86_64.AppImage --probe     # what it found on this machine
./DA_Assistant-*-x86_64.AppImage             # start it: look for the icon in the tray

It needs a system with GLib 2.80 or newer: Ubuntu 24.04 / Linux Mint 22, Debian 13, or current Fedora, Arch and CachyOS. GTK 3 and WebKitGTK come from the system, so they get its security updates. Install WebKitGTK for the full chat view (without it, answers show as plain text):

Distribution	Install
Ubuntu, Mint, Debian	sudo apt install gir1.2-webkit2-4.1
Fedora	sudo dnf install webkit2gtk4.1
Arch, CachyOS	sudo pacman -S webkit2gtk-4.1

Every release can be rebuilt from its source and checked byte for byte against the one published; packaging/README.md says how.

From source

Python 3.10+, GTK 3, and:

Debian / Ubuntu / Linux Mint

sudo apt install python3-gi python3-gi-cairo gir1.2-gtk-3.0 \
  gir1.2-webkit2-4.1 gir1.2-notify-0.7 gir1.2-ayatanaappindicator3-0.1 \
  python3-pil python3-requests python3-markdown python3-pygments python3-xlib \
  python3-cryptography python3-keyring

Arch / CachyOS

sudo pacman -S python-gobject gtk3 webkit2gtk-4.1 libnotify \
  libayatana-appindicator python-pillow python-requests \
  python-markdown python-pygments python-xlib python-cryptography python-keyring

Fedora

sudo dnf install python3-gobject gtk3 webkit2gtk4.1 libnotify \
  libayatana-appindicator-gtk3 python3-pillow python3-requests \
  python3-markdown python3-pygments python3-xlib python3-cryptography python3-keyring

Then:

./run-assistant --probe     # what it found on this machine
./run-assistant             # start it

On Wayland, install wl-clipboard (KDE needs nothing: it uses Klipper), and on KDE, spectacle for selecting screen regions. The manual has the details: What it uses from the system.

First run

1. Open Settings from the tray icon.
2. Under General, enter your provider's API URL and API key, and choose the models: Browse… lists everything the provider offers, with prices.
3. Press Test connection: it shows the provider's own error message if anything is wrong.

Your settings are kept in ~/.config/da-assistant/config.json. The API key is not: it goes into your desktop's keyring (GNOME Keyring, or KWallet on Plasma), which encrypts it. Without a keyring, a key typed into Settings works until the app quits, and Settings says why it cannot be kept.

Shortcuts

Open Settings > Shortcuts, click an action's button and press the keys you want, or press Use suggested keys for Ctrl+Shift+1 to 9. Nothing is bound until you do. How they are bound depends on your session, and the page says which:

• X11 (Cinnamon, MATE, XFCE, or KDE and GNOME on Xorg): the app listens for the keys itself, and tells you if another program already has one.
• KDE Plasma 6, GNOME 48 and later on Wayland: your desktop binds them, through the GlobalShortcuts portal, and may ask you to confirm them. Change them later in its own shortcut settings.
• GNOME before 48, Cinnamon, Hyprland and Sway on Wayland: the app writes them into the desktop's own keybindings when you press Save, and leaves everything else there as it was.
• Anything else: the page lists the commands to bind by hand.

See Global shortcuts for more.

The encyclopedia

If you have a purchased copy of the Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2015 DVD, copy its data folder to your computer and turn on Settings > Reference > Search Encyclopedia and Ask Encyclopedia. Both are off by default: until then they are not in the tray menu, and no shortcut is bound to them. Earlier editions of the DVD may work too, but only the 2015 edition has been tested.

DA Assistant is not affiliated with Britannica in any way. The purpose of these two windows is simply to make it easy to read your own DVD on Linux, without needing Bottles or a virtual machine to run the program it came with. None of the DVD's content is part of this app; it is read from your copy. Setting it up is described under Search Encyclopedia and Ask Encyclopedia.

Help

Run --probe, or open Diagnostics from the tray menu (it has a Copy button), to see what the app found. The manual's Troubleshooting covers the common problems.

License

DA Assistant is free software: you can redistribute it and modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3 or (at your option) any later version. See LICENSE. It comes with no warranty.