Translate selected text in any app

The workflow

Typeme is a menu-bar app, so there is no window to switch to. The panel opens beside the text you selected and disappears when you are done.

1. Select a sentence in the app you are already using.
2. Press ⌥D. The panel appears next to the selection.
3. The last action you used runs automatically. If it is not Translate, press Tab until Translate is highlighted, then Return — or use its shortcut.
4. Read the result as it streams in. You can edit the source text in the panel and press Return to run again.
5. Press ⌘C to copy, or ⌘Return to write the translation back into the app.

The panel opens next to the selection rather than at a fixed screen position. If it does not fit below the text, it opens above. Once you drag it somewhere, it stays where you put it.

What Translate does

The default Translate action is deliberately narrow, which is why it works well on workplace text:

• It translates between Chinese and English. Mostly-Chinese text becomes English; mostly-English text becomes Chinese.
• It keeps the tone of a workplace conversation, and leaves names, code, links, and product terms unchanged.
• It uses your context to resolve references, but translates only the source text — it does not summarize or explain.
• It outputs the translation alone, with no preamble.

That last point matters: a general chat model often answers with “Here is the translation:” and a note about nuance. Typeme's default prompt asks for the text only, so ⌘Return can replace the original without cleanup.

Change the language pair

Open Settings › Actions, select Translate, and edit its prompt. The action is just a saved instruction, so any language pair is possible. For Spanish and English:

Translate the user's text into English. If the text is already English, translate it into Spanish.

Match the tone of a workplace conversation. Keep names, code, links, and product terms unchanged.

Use the context to resolve references, but translate only the source text. Output only the translation, no explanation.

Two practical options if you translate several pairs:

• One flexible action. Describe the rule (“translate into the language the reader expects, based on the context”) and let the model choose.
• One action per pair. Duplicate Translate, rename the copies (for example “Translate → JA” and “Translate → EN”), and give each its own shortcut. Actions are listed in the panel, so Tab cycles through them.

Where it works

Typeme works wherever macOS exposes selected text. In practice that covers most of the apps where translation comes up:

• Chat and email: Slack, Teams, Discord, Mail, Outlook, Gmail in a browser.
• Issue trackers and docs: Linear, Jira, Notion, Confluence, Google Docs.
• Code and terminals: editors expose selections, so commit messages, comments, and error text work. Code identifiers are left unchanged by the default prompt.
• Web pages: any selectable text in Safari, Chrome, or Firefox.

Some apps draw their own text and never expose a selection. For those, use region capture with ⌥S. The OCR result goes through the same panel and the same actions.

Write the result back

⌘Return replaces the selected text in the app you came from. This works in editable fields — a message box, a document, a ticket description. In a read-only view there is nothing to replace, so use ⌘C instead.

If you want to keep the original and the translation side by side, copy the result and paste it where you need it. Typeme does not keep a separate translation history; the previous panel's text and result can be recalled with ↑ / ↓ while the panel is open.

Better translations

• Give the model a name. If a ticket says “the CPS flow”, select the sentence that defines it once. Typeme's context layer can carry that forward; you can also add a line to profile.md or the relevant store.
• Translate a whole paragraph, not a fragment. Pronouns and ellipses need the surrounding sentence. The panel accepts edited text, so you can widen the selection there.
• Polish after translating. Translate preserves meaning; Polish adjusts tone. Run Translate, then press ⌘2 if Polish is the second action.
• Do not translate code. Select the comment, not the block. The default prompt preserves identifiers, but comments and string literals are usually what you actually want.

Questions