How to Translate a Screenshot on Mac (2026)

Translate with Live Text in Preview

macOS can translate the text in a screenshot without any extra app. Live Text makes the words in an image selectable in Preview, and the menu you get by Control-clicking a selection includes Translate. Apple's Preview guide describes it step by step:

Open the screenshot in Preview.
Hold the pointer over the text and drag to select it. If the text won't select, choose Tools → Text Selection to turn the Text Selection tool on.
Control-click the selection, choose Translate, then choose a language.

Two caveats come straight from Apple: Live Text isn't available in all regions or languages, and translation "isn't available in all languages and may not be available in some countries or regions." If the text came from a web page, you can often skip the screenshot and select the words on the page itself.

Method	Reads text from	Where translation happens	Keeps the result	Cost model
Preview Live Text	An image you open	macOS's Translate	No	Free, preinstalled
Google Translate Images	An image you upload	Google's service, after upload	You can download a translated image	Free
Capso Capture & Translate	A screen area you select	Not stated in its README	A floating card you can pin	Free; macOS 15 or later
Snapline Text View	Every capture, and images you bring in	On your Mac, with macOS language packs	Yes, with the capture in History	One-time license; free to try, and translation stays open without one

Google Translate's image upload

When you want the whole screenshot translated in place, Google Translate's website does it for free. Per Google's help page:

Go to Google Translate in your browser and choose the Images tab.
Pick the language to translate from (or Detect language) and the one to translate to.
Click Browse your computer and choose the screenshot.
Turn on Show original to see both side by side, then Copy text or Download translation for a translated copy of the image.

The trade is privacy: the screenshot is uploaded to Google to be read, so keep this route for things you would be comfortable posting. Google also notes that small, unclear or stylized text translates less accurately.

Where the free routes stop

Both routes are fine for a sign or a paragraph once in a while. They wear when translation is part of the work: a colleague's screenshot of an app in another language, error dialogs from a localized build, a chat thread. Preview translates one selection at a time and keeps nothing, so the next time you need that screenshot you are selecting and translating it again. Google translates everything at once, but only after the image leaves your Mac, and the result is a separate file. Neither makes a folder of old screenshots searchable by what they said.

Apps that translate from a capture: Capso

Capso, a free screenshot app with its source on GitHub, has Capture & Translate: select any area of the screen and it reads the text and shows the translation in a floating card, where you can change the target language or pin the card above other windows. It needs macOS 15 or later. The OCR modes in CleanShot X and Shottr, and TextSniper, read text out of a selection and copy it to the clipboard; none of their sites lists translation, so from there it is a paste into a translator.

On device, beside the original: Snapline

Snapline recognizes the text in every capture in the background, on device, and its Text View translates it without anything leaving the Mac:

Capture with ⌥⌘S (rebindable), or press ⌃⌘V to open an image copied in any other app (a browser, Slack, Messages) without saving it first.
Choose View Text on the Quick Access card. The Text View shows the capture beside its recognized text, grouped into blocks you can copy one by one.
Translate the blocks. Translation runs on device with the language packs macOS downloads and owns, keeps the original always in view, and needs macOS 15.
Because every capture is indexed, a translated screenshot can be found again later by a word that was in it.

Which languages Snapline can read follows your Mac's preferred languages list (System Settings → General → Language & Region), and Snapline reads that list at launch, so relaunch it after adding a language. Snapline is free to try in full for 14 days (after the trial, capture unlocks with a one-time license: no subscription, no account) and requires macOS 14 or later. Text recognition and translation stay open even without a license.

Questions

How do I translate text in a screenshot on a Mac?

Open the screenshot in Preview, drag across the text to select it, Control-click the selection, choose Translate, and pick a language. Snapline's Text View translates every block of a capture on device instead, with the original beside it.

Can I translate a screenshot without uploading it?

Yes. Snapline's Text View translates on device, using the language packs macOS downloads. Google Translate's Images tab, by contrast, works by uploading the image to Google.

Why can't I select the text in a screenshot in Preview?

Choose Tools → Text Selection to turn on the Text Selection tool. If it still won't select, Live Text may not be available for that language or region; Apple lists availability on its macOS Feature Availability page.

Which languages can Snapline read from a screenshot?

It follows the Mac's preferred languages list, always with English. macOS 14 reads English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Ukrainian, Thai and Vietnamese; Arabic, Turkish, Indonesian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Malay, Polish, Romanian and Swedish need macOS 15 or later. Translation itself needs macOS 15.

Does Snapline need a license to translate?

No. After the 14-day trial only capture is behind the license; the editor, History, text recognition and translation stay open.

Download Snapline · Also see: extracting text from a screenshot, redacting a screenshot, and offline screenshot apps for Mac.

How to translate a screenshot on Mac

The short version