Easydict is a free, open-source Mac application that lets you look up words and translate text instantly without switching away from whatever you are doing — select text anywhere on screen and a floating result appears in seconds.
What is Easydict?
Easydict is a native macOS dictionary and translation utility that intercepts selected text system-wide and queries multiple translation engines simultaneously, displaying results in a compact, always-on-top panel. Built by the open-source community and distributed free through GitHub, it sits in your menu bar and gets out of the way until you need it.
The killer feature is auto-selection mode: highlight any word or paragraph in any app — Safari, Xcode, Notion, a PDF viewer, you name it — and Easydict pops its result without a keyboard shortcut, a copy-paste, or a context-menu click. For anyone who reads technical documentation, foreign-language articles, or academic papers daily, that single behaviour saves dozens of micro-interruptions per hour.
What does Easydict do best?
Easydict's strongest suit is parallel multi-engine lookup: it can query Apple's built-in dictionary, Youdao, DeepL, Google Translate, OpenAI, and others in a single pass, stacking results so you can compare a machine translation against a native dictionary definition at a glance.
Linguists and developers who read across English, Chinese, Japanese, and European languages will find this especially useful — no single engine handles every language pair well, and Easydict lets you keep two or three running simultaneously at no extra cost. The interface is clean enough that seeing four results at once never feels cluttered; each engine's output is neatly labelled and collapsible.
- Auto-select translation — zero keystrokes, result appears on highlight
- OCR lookup — screenshot a region to translate text trapped in images
- Mini window mode — floats over full-screen apps without breaking focus
- Pronunciation playback — hear the word or phrase spoken aloud in the target language
- Word history — everything you have looked up is searchable later
Is Easydict free?
Yes — Easydict is completely free to download and use. The app itself costs nothing; however, some translation engines it connects to (DeepL Pro, OpenAI GPT) require API keys you supply yourself, and those providers may charge for high-volume usage. The built-in Apple dictionary and several free-tier engines work out of the box with no account required.
Because it is open-source under a permissive licence, there is no freemium nag screen, no subscription upsell, and no telemetry you did not opt into. Compared to paid alternatives like Pockity or the now-discontinued Lungo-style one-trick utilities, Easydict punches well above its price point — which is zero.
Who should use Easydict?
Easydict is built for people who live inside text: developers reading foreign-language GitHub issues, academics parsing research papers, translators who need a second opinion from a different engine, or anyone learning a second language who wants frictionless lookups without leaving their flow state.
It is not a replacement for a professional CAT tool like Trados or a polished dictionary app like Dictionary.com's standalone experience — it is the layer that sits on top of everything else. If you find yourself cycling through browser tabs to hit DeepL, then Google Translate, then an Oxford entry, Easydict collapses that ritual into a single highlighted selection.
How does Easydict compare to PopClip or Pockity?
PopClip is a general-purpose text-action bar that can be extended with a translation plugin, but translation is an afterthought; Easydict is translation-first and therefore considerably deeper. Pockity is more of a note-taking companion. The closest direct competitor is Bob — another open-source Mac translator — which offers a similar multi-engine approach and OCR. Bob has a slightly more polished UI and an App Store edition, but Easydict has caught up quickly in engine support and is arguably easier to configure for newcomers. Neither costs anything meaningful to try.
Against the built-in macOS Dictionary and Spotlight translation, Easydict is in a different class: it queries live neural engines rather than static dictionary databases, handles full sentences fluidly, and works in apps where the system dictionary lookup (Control-click) is unavailable or broken.
What are the best Easydict alternatives?
The most direct alternatives are Bob (open-source, App Store edition available, very similar feature set), Lingvanex (cross-platform, paid), and the built-in macOS Translate app (system-integrated but no multi-engine, no auto-select). For pure offline dictionary depth, Dictionary.app bundled with macOS is unbeatable — but it cannot translate sentences. Power users who want to stay in the terminal sometimes reach for translate-shell, though that obviously sacrifices the seamless GUI experience Easydict provides.
