Hi everyone 👋
I want to share my first macOS application called TSnap, a small menu bar tool I built to solve a problem I personally run into every day: translating text quickly without breaking focus.
The problem
When working or reading on macOS, I often need to translate:
A piece of text inside an app
Text inside screenshots, images, or PDFs
The usual workflow was:
Select text or take a screenshot
Open a translation app or website
Paste the content
Switch back to what I was doing
It’s a small friction, but it happens many times a day.
So I decided to build a tool that works directly from anywhere on macOS.
Introducing TSnap
TSnap is a lightweight macOS menu bar app that lets you translate text instantly using keyboard shortcuts.
It supports:
Translating selected text in any app
Performing OCR on screenshots and translating the extracted text
Working system-wide without switching applications
The goal is to keep everything fast, simple, and unobtrusive.
🌐 Website: https://www.tsnap.tech/
💻 Source code: https://github.com/buingoclam147/snap-translate
Key features
Instant translation via shortcut
Select text in any app and translate it immediately.
OCR from screenshots
Capture text from images or PDFs and translate it directly.
System-wide support
Works across apps, not limited to browsers.
Menu bar design
Always available, minimal UI, low resource usage.
Privacy-focused
No accounts, no tracking. Data stays on your machine whenever possible.
Open source
The entire project is public, and anyone can inspect, fork, or customize it.
Why it’s not on the Mac App Store (yet)
This is a small but honest reason 😅
I haven’t enrolled in the Apple Developer Program, so TSnap is currently distributed outside the App Store.
For now, I’m sharing builds directly and making the project open source so people can use it freely or customize it for their own needs.
Build in public
This is my first macOS app, and it’s still rough around the edges.
I decided to share it early to:
Get real-world feedback
Learn from the community
Improve both the product and my macOS development skills
What I’d love feedback on
UX and keyboard shortcut flow
OCR accuracy and performance
Any features you think would improve daily workflows
macOS best practices I might be missing
If you’re interested, feel free to try it out, review the code, or suggest improvements.
Thanks for reading 🙏
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