The system-wide translation introduced in macOS Monterey could not be evoked from some apps like Edge. So will popclip support it?
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That’s an excellent question @panjie. Thanks for posting and welcome to the forum. If PopClip can support it, it will. However I suspect it is not possible.
macOS has also had a similar feature for “Look Up” for many years, which I have never been able to integrate with. The implementation of Translate is similar.
If macOS provided an API for an app to trigger the Translate/Look Up feature it would be easy. But the I don’t know of one. It only works when activated from the right click menu.
(By the way, if anyone reading does know a way for an app to trigger the native Look Up or Translate feature, please let me know!)
it looks the url scheme works as if look up.
open "dict://word"
But I don’t know the url scheme for translation.
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Good idea to look for that. The dict:// url scheme opens up the Dictionary app and this is what PopClip’s Dictionary action uses. However, it’s not quite the same as the Look Up popover which pops out from the text itself.
We can list all URL schemes on the system with the following:
lsregister=/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister
$lsregister -dump URLSchemeBinding
However, unfortunately, I don’t see anything that looks like translate. It makes sense, since there is no actual Translate app for it to launch.
So our goal here is to somehow trigger these system popovers that are only found in the right click menu.
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