Place the lens.
Move and resize it over text on your desktop. A document, a website, a menu—wherever the words are.
A NEW PERSPECTIVE FOR YOUR DESKTOP
Read through
language.
Meet the little lens that makes unfamiliar words feel familiar. Place it over an app and read the translation right where you need it.
Made for GNOME on Linux. Powered by your computer.
Notes from elsewhere
EIN KLEINER GEDANKE
Die Welt ist voller Geschichten.
Manchmal braucht es nur einen neuen Blick, um sie zu verstehen.
DE → EN LocalThe world is full of stories.
Sometimes all it takes is a fresh perspective to understand them.
Interactive example
English / German / Spanish Entirely offline at runtime GNOME desktop extension
LESS FRICTION. MORE UNDERSTANDING.
Same apps.
A more open world.
No copying text into another tab. Bring the translation to what you’re already reading.
Read in your language.
The lens recognizes the text and translates it in place. English ↔ German and English ↔ Spanish.
Keep doing your thing.
Click and scroll through the lens. As the content changes, your translation follows along.
YOUR WORDS STAY YOURS
A little lens.
No cloud required.
Recognition and translation run locally on your CPU. No API key, no cloud account, and no translation service. Once the models are installed, you can go offline.
Captured images stay in memory. Captured text isn’t logged.
A fresh project, taking shape.
Babelglass is in early development, currently tested on GNOME Shell 50 with Wayland. This page shows an illustrative preview of the experience.