Introduction
Tagent translates text where you are: select it in any application, press a hotkey, and read the translation. It also looks single words up in a dictionary, corrects their spelling, and reads text aloud.
It comes as two separate applications. Pick the one that fits how you work, or use both:
| tagent-cli | tagent-gui | |
|---|---|---|
| Where results appear | In a terminal | In a window, and in a popup next to the mouse cursor |
| Ways to translate | Global hotkey, an interactive prompt, the command line | Global hotkey, a text box |
| Runs | In a terminal window | In the system tray |
| Settings | A commented text file, tagent-cli.toml | A Settings dialog (and a JSON file) |
| Extra | One-shot use in scripts, translation history | Colors, fonts and themes; click any result to hear it |
The two don’t share settings: each has its own file, and changing one doesn’t affect the other. They do share how translation works underneath, so everything under Providers applies to both.
What it can use
By default, Tagent uses Google: no account, no key, no setup. It can also use DeepL, or a language model, local or in the cloud, through any OpenAI-compatible server such as Ollama. Translation, the dictionary and speech each have their own provider setting, so they can be mixed.
Platforms
Both applications run on Windows and Linux, with the global hotkeys on X11 and on Wayland desktops with the Global Shortcuts portal, such as GNOME. On macOS, translation, the dictionary and speech work, but the global hotkeys and the clipboard features don’t yet. See Troubleshooting: Platforms.
Which version this guide describes
This guide follows the development of Tagent: it is updated whenever the project’s main branch changes, which can be ahead of the latest release. What a release doesn’t have yet is listed in each application’s changelog (tagent-cli, tagent-gui) under the version that has no release on the releases page yet.
Where to start
- Install one or both.
- Make a first translation with tagent-cli or tagent-gui.