Translate Anywhere - Select & Hover Translator

English | 简体中文

Select text in VS Code's Chat, Markdown preview, Release Notes, Settings, extension pages and other built-in pages. A small red dot appears next to the selection; hover it for an instant translation. Single words come from an offline dictionary (English → Chinese); phrases, sentences and paragraphs are translated by the AI model you choose: GitHub Copilot through VS Code, or OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Qwen and other providers with your own API key.

Text editors are never touched. The extension does nothing while you edit code.

Inspired by the reading experience of browser "immersive translation" extensions. Not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them. The screenshots are rendered from the extension's real UI on demo pages.

Features

Dictionary	AI translation
Chat	Full page (Alt+W)

Supported surfaces

Each surface can be switched off in the sidebar or with translateAnywhere.surfaces:

• Markdown preview
• Release Notes
• Chat (responses, the question box shown when an agent asks you something, tool confirmations and input notices)
• Settings and Keyboard Shortcuts editors
• Extension details pages (README and changelog)
• Welcome page and walkthroughs
• Notifications, dialogs, workbench hover cards, the Workspace Trust page and view messages

Getting started

1. Install the extension.
2. Click Enable… in the welcome notification, or click Enable / Repair in the Translate Anywhere sidebar. Read the disclosure, then confirm.
3. Reload the window when prompted.
4. Select some text in Chat or a Markdown preview, then hover the red dot.
5. Pick an AI provider in the sidebar. With VS Code language models (the default), the first AI translation asks for permission to use a model. If you dismissed that prompt, click Test AI in the sidebar.

Settings sidebar

Click the 文A icon in the Activity Bar. The sidebar shows:

• Integration status, with Enable / Repair and Disable & Restore.
• Translation: target language, full-page display mode, automatic AI.
• AI engine:
  • provider list;
  • model list (with an optional speed test for VS Code models, or Fetch list for API providers);
  • API key status with a link to the provider's key page;
  • an optional base URL.
• Dictionary: status, Download, Choose file, Use default.
• Surfaces: on/off per page type.
• Shortcuts: click a field and press the new key combination; Backspace clears it.
• Vocabulary: open, export, remove.

All values are ordinary VS Code settings, so they also appear in Settings → Extensions → Translate Anywhere and sync with Settings Sync. API keys are the exception: they never leave VS Code's Secret Storage.

AI providers

• Change the model in the sidebar. Fetch list loads the provider's model list; you can also type any model name.
• Base URL overrides the endpoint. Use it for proxies, regional endpoints such as https://dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1, or self-hosted gateways.
• Model names change often. If a default stops working, pick another model from the list.
• Only lightweight models are suggested by default: translation needs speed, not reasoning.

API keys are stored with VS Code's encrypted Secret Storage, one per provider. They are never written to settings.json and are not synced. Set or clear them with Set key in the sidebar or Translate Anywhere: Set API Key.

Offline dictionary

The English → Chinese dictionary is ECDICT: 770,000 entries, 15 MB compressed. There are three ways to get it:

Behind a firewall, set translateAnywhere.dictionary.downloadUrl to an internal HTTPS mirror of the same file. Set translateAnywhere.dictionary.autoDownload to false to never download.

How it works (please read)

VS Code does not give extensions an API to read selections or draw popups inside Chat, Release Notes, Settings or the built-in Markdown preview. To make this possible, the extension adds a small script to VS Code's own UI files:

• out/vs/workbench/workbench.desktop.main.js
• out/vs/code/electron-browser/workbench/workbench.html
• the webview index.html
• the matching checksums in product.json

Safeguards:

• Nothing is changed until you explicitly enable the integration (translateAnywhere.integration.enabled defaults to false).
• Original files are backed up byte-for-byte in the extension's global storage. The patch is applied atomically and refuses to overwrite files it did not write.
• Disable and Restore VS Code restores the originals. The restore also runs automatically when the extension is uninstalled, after VS Code restarts.
• After a VS Code update replaces the files, the integration is reapplied automatically (translateAnywhere.integration.autoRepair).
• If the VS Code installation folder is not writable by you, each patch operation asks for administrator confirmation once: UAC on Windows, the system password dialog on macOS, the polkit (pkexec) dialog on Linux. No persistent service or scheduled task is created, and the files the extension keeps are handed back to your user account.
• Because checksums are updated, VS Code does not report a "corrupt installation". After disabling, the warning may appear once until VS Code is fully restarted.

Settings

Changes apply within a few seconds without reloading.

About shortcuts. The paragraph and full-page shortcuts are handled inside the page itself, so they are configured in the sidebar or the settings above rather than in Keyboard Shortcuts.

• Format: modifiers joined with + and one key, such as Alt+Z, Ctrl+Shift+Y or F8.
• Supported keys: letters, digits, F1–F24, Space and `.
• When the mouse is not over a supported page, the key keeps its normal VS Code meaning; for example, Alt+Z toggles word wrap in an editor.

Commands

All commands are under Translate Anywhere: in the Command Palette. Most are also buttons in the sidebar.

Privacy

• No telemetry. The extension collects and sends no usage data.
• Dictionary lookups are offline. The only dictionary-related network access is the one-time downloads described above. The offline VSIX and the local-file option need none.
• AI translation sends only the selected text, or the paragraph or page being translated, to the provider you selected:
  • VS Code language models are called through VS Code's Language Model API, and that provider's terms apply (for example GitHub Copilot's).
  • API providers are called directly over HTTPS with your key, and their terms and data policies apply.
  • Ollama and other local endpoints keep everything on your machine.
  • Turn off translateAnywhere.ai.autoTranslate if you want AI to run only when you click AI translate.
• The UI talks to the extension through an HTTP bridge bound to 127.0.0.1 only. It is protected by a random per-installation token and checks the request origin.
• Your vocabulary is stored locally in VS Code's global storage folder for this extension.

Requirements and limitations

• Windows (x64, ARM64), macOS (Apple Silicon, Intel) and Linux (x64, ARM64, ARMhf). Desktop VS Code Stable 1.100 or newer; Insiders usually works too.
• macOS: Option works as Alt, so the default shortcuts are Option+Z and Option+W. Run VS Code from /Applications: when it runs from Downloads or a mounted disk image, macOS starts it from a read-only copy (App Translocation) that cannot be integrated. Modifying the app bundle invalidates its code signature seal; VS Code still starts normally, and Disable restores the original files.
• Linux: .deb/.rpm installs under /usr/share/code need a polkit agent for the administrator prompt (present on standard desktops). If none is available, the extension offers a terminal command to copy. Snap and Flatpak installations are read-only and cannot be integrated; use the .deb, .rpm or .tar.gz build instead.
• Not available in VS Code for the Web or Codespaces browser sessions. In remote windows (SSH, WSL, containers) the extension runs on your local machine as a UI extension.
• Requires write access to the VS Code installation folder. For system-wide installs this means administrator confirmation.
• The bridge uses local port 17865. If several users of the same computer run VS Code at the same time, only the first one gets translations.
• VS Code UI changes in future releases can break individual surfaces until the extension is updated.
• Offline dictionary lookups translate into Chinese only. Other target languages always use AI.

Uninstalling

Uninstalling restores VS Code's original files after the next full restart. To restore immediately, click Disable & Restore in the sidebar (or run Disable and Restore VS Code) before uninstalling. If enabling needed administrator confirmation, always do this first: the automatic restore after uninstalling runs without administrator rights. Reinstalling or updating VS Code also removes the integration.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome at github.com/MusingZone/vscode-translate-anywhere. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the development setup and how to add an interface language. Run the tests with npm test (unit), python tools/ui-dom-test.py and python tools/panel-test.py (headless Chrome, needs pip install playwright). Build packages with npm run package.

Credits

• English → Chinese dictionary: ECDICT by skywind3000, MIT License.
• Other bundled data and its licenses: see THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.

License

Extension code: MIT. Dictionary data keeps its own licenses; see THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.