Case study
Open sourceHandyTranslate (iOS + macOS)
A custom iOS keyboard and a macOS menu-bar app that translate whatever text you just typed or selected the instant you switch keyboards or press a shortcut.
Facts
- Status
- Open source
FIG. 001 / ARCHITECTURE
How the system connects
Live model
Problem
Translating a message on iPhone or Mac normally means copying text out of the current app, pasting it into a separate translator, and pasting the result back — slow enough that people often just don't bother, on either platform.
System
On iOS, a custom keyboard extension (Swift/UIKit) reads the text already typed in the active field via the system text-document proxy; switching to the HandyTranslate keyboard triggers an OpenAI (gpt-4o-mini) call that auto-detects Turkish or English, replaces the text with its translation, and switches back to the previous keyboard automatically. On macOS, a Swift/AppKit menu-bar app registers a global shortcut (⌘⇧⌥M) via the Carbon Hot Key API, grabs the current selection, sends it to the same OpenAI model, and replaces the selection in place — restoring the clipboard afterward.
FIG. 002 / HOW IT WORKS
How it works
HandyTranslate turns a keyboard switch or a single shortcut into the entire translation action, on both of Uba's daily platforms. The iOS version is a proper Keyboard Extension with App Groups for sharing the API key between host app and extension; the macOS version needs no special Accessibility permission, driving the same translation through low-level keyboard-event simulation instead. Both are published as public, from-scratch Swift projects rather than wrappers around an existing translator app.
Stack
What it runs on
Related systems
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