I Built My First macOS App: TSnap – Instant OCR & Text Translation Anywhere

Source: Dev.to

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:

1. Select text or take a screenshot
2. Open a translation app or website
3. Paste the content
4. 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:
• 💻 Source code:

Key features

• Instant translation via shortcut
• OCR from screenshots
• System‑wide support
• Menu bar design
• Privacy‑focused
• Open source

Why it’s not on the Mac App Store (yet)

This is a small but honest reason 😅
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.
• 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 🙏