Rewrite Text in a Different Language on Mac

Rewrite Text in a Different Language on Mac

You copied a paragraph in English, but you need it in Spanish. Or you have a customer message in German and want a clean reply in French. The usual flow is: open a browser tab, paste into a translation site, copy the result back, then fix the tone by hand. That is four context switches for one sentence.

ClipHistory collapses that into a single keystroke. Because every snippet you copy already lives in your clipboard history, you can transform it in place — translate it, rewrite it, or both — without opening a single tab.

How translation works in ClipHistory

ClipHistory is an AI-powered clipboard manager for macOS. It keeps your last 150 unpinned clips (plus unlimited pinned ones) and lets you run AI transforms on any of them. Translation is one of those built-in transforms.

The important detail: ClipHistory uses your own API key. You connect one of five providers — Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, Google, or a custom endpoint — and the request goes directly from your Mac to that provider. There is no ClipHistory cloud, no account, and no middleman storing your text.

The basic flow

1. Copy the text you want to convert (Cmd+C as always).
2. Open ClipHistory with Cmd+Shift+V.
3. Select the clip and choose the Translate transform.
4. Pick the target language.
5. Paste the result wherever you need it.

The translated version becomes a new clip, so the original is never destroyed. If the translation is not quite right, your source text is still one entry up in the history.

Translate vs. rewrite — and why you often want both

A literal translation is rarely a finished sentence. Machine output can be grammatically correct but tonally off: too formal for a Slack message, too casual for a contract clause. This is where combining transforms helps.

Rewrite, then translate

If your source text is messy — bullet fragments, a half-finished thought, an autocorrect mess — run the Rewrite transform first to produce clean prose, then run Translate. You end up with text that reads natively in the target language instead of carrying over the awkwardness of the original.

Translate, then clean

Going the other direction, you can translate first and then apply the Clean transform to strip stray formatting, double spaces, or leftover markup from a copy-paste. The paste stack lets you queue several of these transformed clips and drop them in order.

Why a clipboard tool instead of a translation website

Three concrete reasons:

• It stays local. Your text only leaves your Mac as a direct call to the AI provider you chose. There is no separate service logging your clipboard.
• It is faster in practice. No tab, no cookie banner, no paste-copy-paste. One shortcut, one menu, done.
• It keeps history. Translated a block of release notes last Tuesday? It may still be in your 150 recent clips, or pinned permanently if you marked it.

Picking the right provider for languages

All five supported providers handle mainstream language pairs well. A few practical notes:

• Anthropic and OpenAI models tend to preserve tone and idiom across European languages.
• Google is a natural fit if you already have a Gemini key.
• DeepSeek is a low-cost option for high-volume translating.
• A custom endpoint lets you point ClipHistory at a self-hosted or regional model if you have one.

Because you bring your own key, you pay the provider directly at their rates — ClipHistory does not meter or mark up usage. If you switch providers later, you just paste a different key; the translate transform behaves the same way regardless of which model is behind it.

Keeping translations organized

If you translate the same kinds of text repeatedly — product strings, support macros, recurring announcements — two features keep things tidy. Boards let you group related translated clips into a named collection, so all the strings for one project sit together instead of scrolling past in the general history. And anything you want to keep beyond the 150-clip rolling window can be pinned: pinned clips are unlimited and never roll off, so a canonical translation you reuse stays available indefinitely.

For phrases you translate once and then reuse verbatim, promote them to snippets. A snippet is a saved block you paste instantly with no AI call, which means no token cost and no waiting for a frequently used line you already trust.

A realistic example

Say you support customers in two languages. A ticket comes in. You draft your reply in English in your native flow, copy it, hit Cmd+Shift+V, run Rewrite to tighten it, then Translate to the customer's language. Paste it into the helpdesk. The whole thing took seconds and never touched a browser. Your original English draft is still in history if you need to send the same reply to an English-speaking customer next.

Requirements

ClipHistory runs on macOS 12 or later as a universal binary (Apple Silicon and Intel). It is signed and notarized by Apple, so Gatekeeper opens it cleanly. You add your AI key once in settings, and translation works from then on.

Get ClipHistory for macOS — $19.99, a one-time payment for a 12-month license (no auto-renewal). Download ClipHistory and keep your clipboard local, searchable, and AI-ready.