First translation (tagent-gui)
tagent-gui needs no setup: it translates with Google out of the box, into your system
language (English if Tagent doesn’t know it).
Start it
Start tagent-gui from the application menu (on Linux, after installing the .deb or
running tagent-gui --install-desktop; see Install), or from a terminal
(the terminal is free again at once; the app runs on its own).
It starts in the system tray, without a window: look for its icon in the tray or the top bar. Click the icon to show the window. To have the window open at start, untick “Start minimized to tray” in Settings > Hotkeys & Tray.
If you see no tray icon (GNOME, for one, has no tray without an extension), the window
can’t be shown: quit Tagent (pkill tagent-gui), set "start_minimized": false in
tagent-gui.json (see File locations), and start it
again. See Tray and startup.
Translate a selection
Select text in any application and press Alt+A. The translation appears in a small popup next to the mouse cursor (on Wayland: in a corner, or where you last dragged it), and is added to the main window’s transcript. The popup hides itself after a few seconds.
Alt+S reads the selected text aloud; pressing it again stops it, and so does Esc (Windows and Linux with X11).
The hotkeys need Windows or Linux. On a Wayland desktop such as GNOME, the first start
asks you to confirm them in a system dialog, and they need the menu entry (installed by
the .deb, otherwise run tagent-gui --install-desktop once); see
On Wayland. On macOS, use the window.
Translate in the window
Pick the languages at the top of the window, type text in the box at the bottom, and
press Enter (Shift+Enter starts a new line). A single word gets a dictionary entry
instead of a plain translation. Click the [… 🔊]: prompt before a phrase or a translation to hear it.
Next steps
- The window in detail: The main window.
- Change the hotkeys, the popup and the look: Settings.
- Translate with DeepL or a local model: How providers work.