Bob is a free, open-source Mac translation utility that lets you translate selected text, screenshots, and manually typed phrases instantly — all without leaving the app you're working in.
What is Bob?
Bob is a lightweight macOS translation client that sits quietly in your menu bar and springs into action the moment you need to understand something in another language. Built by developer ripperhe and hosted on GitHub, it has quietly become the go-to translation companion for Mac power users who find browser-based translate pages too disruptive to their workflow.
Where most translation tools force you to alt-tab, paste, wait, and copy back, Bob intercepts that friction at every step. It hooks into a wide variety of translation engines — including DeepL, Google Translate, Youdao, Baidu, and several others — and surfaces results in a floating panel that appears on command and disappears just as quickly.
What does Bob do best?
Bob's headline trick is screenshot translation: press a shortcut, drag a selection over any text visible on screen — a PDF, a foreign-language video subtitle, a UI buried inside a non-localised app — and Bob OCRs it and hands the result to your translation engine of choice. It is genuinely magical the first time you do it.
Beyond OCR, Bob also integrates with the macOS system accessibility API, so it can grab selected text from almost any native app and translate it in under a second. Input translation (where you type or paste your own text into Bob's input box) rounds out the three core modes. Switching between engines is a single click, which is handy when you want DeepL's literary fluency for a letter but Google Translate's breadth for an obscure technical term.
- Screenshot OCR translation — translate anything visible on screen, not just copyable text
- Selection translation — bind a shortcut to translate whatever is highlighted in any native app
- Input translation — a clean floating panel for deliberate, copy-paste-free translation
- Multi-engine support — swap between DeepL, Google, Youdao, Baidu, and more per query
- Apple Silicon native — snappy on both M-series and Intel Macs
Is Bob free?
Bob itself is completely free to download and use — it is open-source software distributed under a permissive licence on GitHub. However, several of the translation engines it connects to require their own API keys, and some of those engines (DeepL Pro, Youdao) charge usage fees beyond a free tier. Google Translate API is metered, though the free quota is generous for personal use. Apple's built-in translation service, where available, requires no key at all. In short: Bob costs nothing; the engines you connect it to may cost something at scale.
Who should use Bob?
Bob is purpose-built for anyone whose daily Mac workflow regularly collides with foreign-language content. That is a broad group: software developers reading Japanese or Chinese technical documentation, researchers parsing academic papers in German or French, designers using non-localised tools, or remote workers collaborating across language barriers in Slack threads filled with screenshots.
If you are a casual traveller who translates a restaurant menu once a month, Google Translate on your iPhone is probably enough. But if translating is something you do dozens of times a day — and you resent the context-switching tax that involves — Bob earns a permanent spot in your menu bar within about twenty minutes of first use.
What are the best Bob alternatives?
The closest Mac-native competitor is Pockity and the paid app Translatium, though neither matches Bob's screenshot-first approach. PopClip with a translate plugin gets you selection-based translation without a dedicated app, but lacks OCR. Raycast has a translation extension that covers the text-input case neatly if you are already a Raycast user. For pure screenshot OCR without translation, TextSniper is excellent but does not feed into a translation engine. Bob's real advantage is that it unifies all three modes — OCR, selection, and manual input — in a single free package.
How does Bob compare to Translatium?
Translatium is a polished, paid App Store app with a more consumer-friendly interface; Bob is a free, developer-oriented menu-bar tool distributed outside the App Store. Translatium's onboarding is gentler, but Bob's keyboard-shortcut-driven flow is faster once you invest fifteen minutes in setup. For power users comfortable with API keys and GitHub releases, Bob is the stronger daily driver. For someone who wants a single payment and zero configuration, Translatium is a reasonable trade-off.
