I'm building an AI-powered translator for iOS Safari that actually works (+ good iOS app), curious if I'm the only one who needs it
I'm on iOS and, like pretty much everyone with an iPhone, I use Safari as my main browser. And the thing that's been driving me nuts for years is that there's no translator on it I can actually rely on. Safari built-in translator sucks, it doesn't support so…
I'm on iOS and, like pretty much everyone with an iPhone, I use Safari as my main browser. And the thing that's been driving me nuts for years is that there's no translator on it I can actually rely on. Safari built-in translator sucks, it doesn't support so many languages I need (no Thai, no Georgian for example). Apple has historically been pretty bad when it comes to languages support, so I don’t expect the situation to improve anytime soon. Where it really gets me is traveling. I'll be somewhere abroad trying to open the local site, and there's no English anywhere, or the translator does maybe half the page and leaves the rest sitting there in a language I can't read. I tried so many iOS apps (on iOS a browser ext has to be an app) and I'm not satisfied with every single one of them. A lot just don't work at all. So I decided to build my own Here's what I'm focused on: good iOS Safari support that doesn't break. It has to handle the cursed stuff, shadow DOM, iframes, dynamic content like modal windows, popups etc, all the hacky frameworks - I spend a lot of time on the translation engine ability to set it as your default iOS translator, so when you select text anywhere and press "Translate" - it opens my translator instead of the built-in one (iOS supports that) voice input (whisper like, with good language support) ability to send screenshots, PDFs, acticles (with reader mode support), all that alternative translations (styles) a "rephase" mode - when you're the one replying and don't want to sound like a tourist Desktop browsers (Chrome, Firefox) will also be supported. It's not out yet, but I'm really close to releasing it. Anyone interested? Any features requests?
Collected discussion
What's wrong with Google translate?
For web pages translation in Safari you have to use a web version and type (or copy and paste) the URL and then open it. And it breaks a lot of websites I personally need and doesn’t handle a lot of what I mentioned. And it’s not AI - the quality of translation is worse than any modern LLM