MACOS · FREE · OPEN SOURCE
skald
five translators, one hotkey, five tones.
hit ⌥/, type a phrase, hit return — translation lands at your cursor. apple offline, google, deepl, claude, all in one menu-bar app. with claude you can also dial the tone: corporate, simple, original, youth, vulgar.
FIVE TONES
dry, neutral, formal. fit for a brief to legal.
stripped for clarity. short sentences, no jargon, understandable on first read.
matches the register and rhythm of the source as closely as possible.
casual, current, slangy. how someone under 30 would actually phrase it.
no filter. swears when the source swears, and sometimes when it doesn’t.
note: tone control requires the claude engine. apple, google, and deepl translate without tone.
FOUR ENGINES
on-device translation via the system framework. zero network. used automatically when you’re offline.
the public translate.googleapis.com endpoint. fast and good enough for short phrases.
your DeepL api key. better than Google for nuanced European source. key lives in the keychain.
your Anthropic api key. the only engine that respects the tone slider. claude 4.7 sonnet by default.
HOW IT WORKS
default ⌥ /. a glass panel slides up at the bottom of your screen. rebindable in settings if you already use that combo for something else.
type your phrase in any of 13 languages. skald detects the source language on-device. press return and the translation lands at your cursor in whatever app you were in.
second hotkey ⌥ ` translates whatever’s selected in place, or the clipboard if nothing is selected. no panel, no return key.
SPECS
- REQUIRES
- macOS 15 Sequoia or later · arm64 or x86_64
- SIZE
- ~2 MB compressed, ~30 MB idle ram
- DISTRIBUTION
- signed + notarized DMG via GitHub Releases
- AUTO-UPDATE
- Sparkle, EdDSA-signed, 24h check interval
- LICENSE
- MIT — source on github
- TELEMETRY
- none. api keys stay in the keychain. requests go directly from your mac to whichever engine you picked.
- LANGUAGES
- en, ru, uk, es, fr, de, it, pt, pl, ja, zh, ko, tr
- PRICE
- free. byok costs are whatever DeepL / Anthropic charge directly.