# Overtext

> Overtext is an iPhone app that translates the whole screen of any app with one gesture and lays the translation over the original text, in place. Translation runs on the phone (Google ML Kit), so it works offline after a one-time language download, and the app does not send screenshots or their text anywhere. It is free, with no ads and no account. It is made for newcomers handling daily life in a new country: school and preschool apps, health care, banks and authorities, and group chats.

## Key facts

- Platform: iPhone, iOS 26.1 or later. No iPad, Android or desktop version.
- Price: free. Offline translation has no limit. No ads, no account, no tracking, and no analytics of the app's own (Google ML Kit sends its own usage data, see Privacy).
- App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6829275904
- How to start a translation: Back Tap (double-tap the back of the iPhone), the Action button on iPhones that have one, or a floating on-screen button (AssistiveTouch). The app sets this up through a ready-made shortcut in Apple's Shortcuts app.
- What happens: Shortcuts takes one screenshot, Overtext reads the text with Apple's on-device text recognition, translates it on the device with Google ML Kit, and draws the translation over a copy of the screenshot with the same size, weight, colour and position. The result opens in a preview; closing it returns to the app the user was in. The preview can be zoomed, saved or shared.
- Optional setting: "Copy translated text after each translation" puts the translated text on the clipboard.
- Screen languages (17, Latin alphabet only): English, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Czech, Romanian, Turkish, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese. Swedish is the most tested. Screens in Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Thai cannot be read yet.
- Translation languages (55): Afrikaans, Albanian, Belarusian, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Filipino (Tagalog), Finnish, French, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Maltese, Marathi, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh. Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Hebrew are not supported yet.
- App interface languages: English, Spanish, Hindi, Chinese (Simplified), Ukrainian, French, Romanian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Turkish.
- Internet: needed only to download a language (about 30 MB each, Wi-Fi by default).
- Privacy: screenshots, their text and translations are not sent off the phone. Data that is sent to Google: crash reports without screen content and a periodic crash-reporting settings check (Firebase Crashlytics), and Google ML Kit's own usage data (device and app information, an installation identifier, performance figures, error codes, the languages used).
- Quality: machine translation. Good for understanding what a message is about; it can get names and short words wrong; not a certified translation.
- Developer: Daniel Han, an individual developer in Sweden (https://danielhan.dev/). Contact: overtext@danielhan.dev

## Pages

- [Home](https://overtext.danielhan.dev/): what the app does, how it works, languages and questions
- [Privacy policy](https://overtext.danielhan.dev/privacy/): exactly what stays on the phone and what is sent
- [Terms of use](https://overtext.danielhan.dev/terms/): licence, translation accuracy, liability, Swedish law