What is moepeek?

MoePeek is a lightweight translator app that lives in the macOS menu bar. The core idea is simple: select any text on your screen in any app, and a small floating panel pops up with the translation. It also supports a few other ways to get text translated: capturing a screenshot and translating the recognized text (OCR), translating whatever is currently on your clipboard, or just typing text in manually. For translation, MoePeek can connect to a wide range of services. Free options include Google Translate, Bing Translate, and Youdao Translate. It also supports paid API services like DeepL, Baidu, and DeepLX, plus AI language models such as OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, and local models run through Ollama or LM Studio. On macOS 15 and later, it can also use Apple's own on-device translation, which keeps your text private since nothing leaves your computer. The app is built entirely in Swift 6 with almost no external dependencies, which keeps the install size around 5MB and background memory use around 50MB, small numbers compared to apps built with Electron or similar frameworks. It also includes text-to-speech playback, automatic language detection across 14 languages, customizable keyboard shortcuts, and an auto-updater. The author describes MoePeek as a personal project built with AI assistance rather than a fully polished commercial product, and notes that some edge cases in text selection may not be handled as smoothly as in mature paid alternatives like Clicknow or PopClip. Installation is a simple drag-and-drop of the app into the Applications folder, followed by granting Accessibility and Screen Recording permissions on first launch. Because the app is not notarized by Apple, macOS may show a warning that needs to be cleared with a terminal command. The project is licensed under AGPL-3.0, which means anyone who builds and distributes a modified version must also release their changes as open source.