⌨️ hotkey-translate (macOS)

Put your cursor in any French text field, press Ctrl+T, and the whole field is instantly replaced by the English translation — in place, in any app, with no visible selection.

Works everywhere: your browser (any web field), Mail, Slack, Notion, a note… The translation runs on a local LLM on your Mac (private, offline, free) via Ollama, with a free online fallback if Ollama isn't set up.

Why

If you write in French but often need to send in English, round-tripping through a translation site is tedious. This makes it a single keystroke, right where you type — no window switching, no copy-paste dance.

How it works

Cursor in a French field  →  press Ctrl+T
        │
        ▼
Read the whole field value (Accessibility API; clipboard fallback)
        │
        ▼
Translate locally with Ollama (qwen2.5:3b)   — private, ~1s
        │
        ▼
Write English back via the Accessibility API (no selection, no flash;
paste fallback for apps that don't expose their field value)

Three small pieces:

Piece	Role
Ollama + a small model (qwen2.5:3b)	local, private translation engine
bin/translate.sh	FR→EN via Ollama's HTTP API; MyMemory fallback
Hammerspoon config	the global Ctrl+T hotkey + read/replace logic

Requirements

• macOS (Apple Silicon recommended)
• Homebrew
• The installer pulls the rest: Hammerspoon, Ollama, and the model.

Install

git clone https://github.com/benjaminb10/hotkey-translate.git
cd hotkey-translate
./install.sh

Then:

1. Add this line to ~/.hammerspoon/init.lua:

   dofile(os.getenv("HOME") .. "/hotkey-translate/hammerspoon/translate.lua")

   (adjust the path to wherever you cloned it)
2. Launch Hammerspoon and grant it Accessibility (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility → add Hammerspoon) — this is required to read the selection and paste the result. Then click the Hammerspoon menu-bar icon → Reload Config.

Usage

Put your cursor in any French text field, press Ctrl+T. A brief 🌐 Translating… appears, then the whole field is replaced by the English — no manual selection, no visible highlight.

Configuration

• Hotkey — edit HOTKEY_MODS / HOTKEY_KEY at the top of hammerspoon/translate.lua.
• Model / quality vs. speed — set OLLAMA_MODEL (e.g. qwen2.5:7b for higher quality, a 3B for speed). bin/translate.sh reads it.
• Languages — the prompt in bin/translate.sh targets French → English; change it there for other pairs.

Privacy

With Ollama, the text never leaves your Mac — no key, no account, offline. The online MyMemory fallback is only used if Ollama isn't reachable; disable it by removing the fallback block in bin/translate.sh if you want strictly local.

Notes & limitations

• Ctrl+T overrides the rarely-used Cocoa "transpose characters" binding.
• Some apps expose selected text poorly; the clipboard fallback covers most.
• Quality is whatever the chosen local model gives (qwen2.5:3b handles idioms like « sans faute » → "without fail" well).

Credits

• Hammerspoon — the macOS automation glue
• Ollama + Qwen2.5 — the local translation engine
• MyMemory — free online fallback

License

MIT