SelTranslator

Native macOS menu-bar application that translates currently selected text from any app using Apple's Translation framework.

Behavior

• Select text anywhere.
• Press Control + Option + Command + T.
• If the selection is editable, the selected text is replaced with translated text.
• If the selection is not editable, translated text is copied to clipboard.
• A lightweight overlay confirms success or error.
• Target language is selectable from the menu-bar app menu.
• A Settings window is available from the menu bar to configure target language and global hotkey.
• If translation models are missing, onboarding UI opens and can request model downloads.

Requirements

• macOS 26 or newer.
• Accessibility permission enabled for the app.
• Apple translation language models installed for source/target languages.

Install with Homebrew

Single command:

brew tap teobale/seltranslator https://github.com/TeoBale/SelTranslator && brew install --cask teobale/seltranslator/sel-translator

After future releases:

brew upgrade --cask teobale/seltranslator/sel-translator

Run from source

swift run SelTranslator

On first run, allow Accessibility access when prompted.

Troubleshooting

• If you see a translation error overlay saying models are missing:
  1. Open System Settings.
  2. Go to General > Language & Region > Translation Languages.
  3. Download the source and target languages.
  4. Retry hotkey translation.
• Runtime errors are now printed to terminal with [SelTranslator] prefix.

Build .app artifact

chmod +x scripts/build-app.sh
./scripts/build-app.sh

This generates:

• dist/SelTranslator.app
• dist/SelTranslator-macos.zip

Automated releases (GitHub Actions)

This repository includes:

• .github/workflows/release.yml (tag-based release pipeline)
• Casks/sel-translator.rb (Homebrew cask used by brew install)
• scripts/update-cask.sh (cask updater used by CI)

Release flow:

1. Create and push a version tag:

   git tag v0.2.0
   git push origin v0.2.0

2. GitHub Actions automatically:
   • builds SelTranslator.app
   • zips and uploads SelTranslator-macos.zip to GitHub Releases
   • computes SHA256
   • updates Casks/sel-translator.rb on the default branch with the new version and checksum