panic‑kit®

03 · macOS · Free · Open source

Skald.

Five translators, one hotkey, five tones.

Hit ⌥ /, type a phrase, hit return — the translation lands at your cursor. Apple offline, Google, DeepL and Claude, all in one menu-bar app. With Claude you can also dial the tone: corporate, simple, original, youth, vulgar.

~2 MB download 30 MB idle RAM 13 languages 0 accounts
Universal DMG · macOS 15+ Release notes View source Download DMG →
Skald glass input panel with the tone slider open, showing Simple selected on a gradient from Corporate to Vulgar
The tone slider — corporate to vulgar

Five tones

01

Corporate

Dry, neutral, formal. Fit for a brief to legal.

Simple

Stripped for clarity. Short sentences, no jargon, understandable on first read.

Original

Matches the register and rhythm of the source as closely as possible.

Youth

Casual, current, slangy. How someone under 30 would actually phrase it.

Vulgar

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

02
AppleFree · offline

On-device

Translation via the system framework. Zero network. Used automatically when you’re offline.

GoogleFree · no key

Fast default

The public translate.googleapis.com endpoint. Fast and good enough for short phrases.

DeepLBYOK

Nuanced European

Your DeepL API key. Better than Google for nuanced European source. The key lives in the Keychain.

ClaudeBYOK

The tone engine

Your Anthropic API key. The only engine that respects the tone slider. Claude 4.7 Sonnet by default.

How it works

03
01

Press the hotkey

Default ⌥ /. A glass panel slides up at the bottom of your screen. Rebindable in Settings if you already use that combo for something else.

02

Type, hit return

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.

03

Or translate selection

Second hotkey ⌥ ` translates whatever’s selected in place, or the clipboard if nothing is selected. No panel, no return key.

Specs

04
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.
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