easy-write

Easy Write is a small Mac menu bar app that translates and rewrites text anywhere on your computer. You select some text in any app, press a keyboard shortcut, and that selection is replaced in place with the translation, entirely on your device. It uses the AI model already built into recent versions of macOS, called Apple Intelligence, so there is no account to create, no API key to paste in, and no cloud service involved. Nothing you type or select ever leaves your Mac.

The project explains its reasoning like this: cloud translators such as DeepL or Google Translate require sign-ups, have usage limits, and send your private text off your machine. Tools built around local AI models solve the privacy problem but usually make you install something like Ollama and download a separate model first. Easy Write avoids both problems by relying on the translation model Apple already ships with the operating system.

Beyond plain translation, it can switch between formal and informal tone, such as choosing the formal or informal way to say the word for you in German, French, or Spanish, which a basic dictionary translator cannot do. It also has a read mode that pops up an English translation of foreign text you cannot edit, such as a webpage or a chat message. It supports 13 languages, lets you teach it your preferred wording through a personal style guide, and lets every keyboard shortcut be rebound. The whole app is described as roughly 600 lines of Swift code with no network code at all.

To use it, you need a Mac with Apple Silicon running macOS 26 or later, with Apple Intelligence turned on in System Settings. Since it is not distributed through the Mac App Store, due to how it simulates keystrokes to swap text in other apps, you build it yourself from source using two included scripts, then grant it Accessibility permission so it can read your selected text and paste the translated result back. The project is open source under the MIT license.