Yep — free for 30 days, then a one-time $4.99 to keep it forever. No subscription, no auto-renew, no surprise charge.

Why do I need iShot when my Mac already takes screenshots?

Your Mac captures — it doesn't make captures useful. iShot pulls text off any screen, decodes QR codes, translates, annotates, redacts, records with a camera bubble, and scroll-captures long pages. Text recognition, QR, and annotation run entirely on your Mac; translation runs through the AI key you add. The built-in tool stops at the picture; iShot starts there.

Which Macs does it run on?

Any Mac on macOS 12 (Monterey) or newer. There's one Universal download that covers both Apple Silicon (M1–M4) and Intel Macs — it picks the right one automatically.

Can I grab text and links out of a screenshot?

Yes. Select any text in your capture and copy it with ⌘C, or pull everything off the screen at once with the on-device OCR panel — in a bunch of languages. Point it at a QR code and it'll decode the link, so you can open or copy it straight from the shot.

Can I record my screen with a camera bubble?

Yes. Record your screen and mic, and optionally float your webcam in a round bubble you can drag and resize — turn it off in one click. You can also drop your capture on a clean custom background and mute notifications while you record.

Does it work offline?

Mostly, yes. Grabbing text from screenshots (OCR) and scanning QR codes run entirely on your Mac, no internet needed. Only translation needs a connection.

Is my data safe? What happens to my screenshots?

They stay on your Mac. OCR and QR scanning run entirely on-device — nothing is uploaded and nothing trains a cloud model. Only translation needs an internet connection. The app is notarized by Apple, and downloads come straight from the official site.

How do I capture a long page?

Hit scroll capture, scroll down or sideways yourself at your own pace, then press your finish key. iShot stitches everything into one tall, seamless image and copies it ready to share.

Guide · Translate

How to translate text in a screenshot on Mac

Name: iShot
Brand: iShot
Price: 4.99 USD
Availability: OnlineOnly
Author: Tuan Tran

Saw a UI, blog post, or tweet in another language? Translate it right off the screen — no copying, no retyping.

Photos and previews don’t let you select text, so translating them usually means retyping the whole thing into Google Translate. A screenshot tool that reads text can save you that entirely.

The free way: Apple’s Live Text

Recent macOS versions can already translate text inside an image, and most people never find it. Take your screenshot, open it in Preview (or Photos, or just hover the image in Safari), hold the pointer over the text until the cursor turns into a text selector, drag to select, then Control-click and choose Translate. Apple’s own guide to Live Text in Preview covers the exact clicks, and it works without installing anything.

Where it stops being enough is the same place Live Text always stops: it works on small selections, one at a time. Translating a full dialog, a menu, or a page of foreign-language UI means many select-right-click-translate round-trips, and the system translation is the terse, literal kind — fine for a sign, rough for anything a human wrote.

Two ways to translate on-screen text

Free option: Live Text as above, on Mac or iPhone. It works, but it expects a phrase, not a page.

On your Mac with iShot: capture the text, then translate it in-place into 12+ languages. It produces natural, conversational output rather than word-by-word translation.

Translate any on-screen text without retyping it.
12+ languages with natural, not literal, output.
Powered by your own GPT, Claude, or an OpenAI-compatible API — you stay in control.

When it’s handy

Reading foreign-language UI copy or docs.
Understanding a tweet, post, or comment that isn’t selectable.
Working with international design mockups.

Which way to go

A street sign, a product label, one sentence: use Live Text, it’s already there. A whole error dialog in Korean, a Japanese form you need to fill in, a Chinese README screenshotted by a colleague: that’s paragraph-level work, and you want the text recognized once and translated in a single pass, with room for tone. That’s why iShot pairs the on-device text reading with a translation model of your own choosing — nothing about the screenshot is uploaded to us; the text goes only to the AI service whose key you pasted.

One privacy note worth saying out loud: if a screenshot contains credentials or client data, translating it sends that text to your chosen AI provider. Blur the secrets first, then translate — the redaction happens on-device, before anything leaves.

Need the text as well as the translation? Start with copying text from a screenshot — OCR comes first, translation builds on it. Deciding between capture apps in general? The screenshot app comparison covers all six with sources.

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