Launched this week
Plae
The missing translation app for macOS
50 followers
The missing translation app for macOS
50 followers
Plae is a macOS menu bar app for on-device translation. Private, fast, always one shortcut away. $4.99 one-time purchase on the Mac App Store.
FlareBar
@butttons Congratulations on the launch! As somebody who is also in a multi-lingual partnership, I can definitely see the benefit of this. It's great that you took your life experience and translated it (no pun intended) into something actionable!
Has the product had a noticeable effect on the communication between you two?
FlareBar
@michael_nash2 Oh 100%. It's too early to say, but I'm constantly using it and it is noticeably faster than doing the usual ritual of normal browser translations.
The different models also give different kinds of results. Some give more professional responses, some give more casual ones and it's great to ask my partner the differences.
On-device translation will hit scale pain on model footprint and latency across older Intel Macs, plus handling long text with consistent terminology.
Best practice is a tiered pipeline: use Apple Translation/Apple Intelligence when available, otherwise run a quantized local model with streaming chunks and a small glossary cache for repeated phrases.
How are you choosing between Apple frameworks vs llama.cpp at runtime, and do you plan per-language downloadable packs with offline quality benchmarks?
FlareBar
I really like the idea of being able to display translations across the room. That adds a unique, shared experience to it. My first thought was how this differs from Mac’s built-in translation tool, but that feels more geared toward personal use. This seems to introduce a more in-person, collaborative dynamic that sounds genuinely convenient.
FlareBar
Shipping TranslateGemma via llama.cpp as the third fallback engine is a deceptively tricky build. You're managing model downloads, memory pressure, and cold-start latency on hardware you don't control... and the user just expects instant results from a menu bar shortcut. Having Apple Translation as the fast default with llama.cpp as the offline safety net is the right layering. One thing that'd be interesting to see down the line is per-language quality signals so users know which engine handles their pair best without trial and error.
FlareBar
On-device translation is the way to go. I run a multilingual app (8 languages) and privacy + speed matter so much. Love that it's a one-time purchase too.