XPLOIT Translator
Copy a sentence or a screenshot anywhere in Windows, press Ctrl + Alt + T, and a small window rises above the taskbar with the translation. No tab to open, nothing to paste, nothing to close.
Free app, no account Your own OpenAI key Key stays in Windows Credential Manager
Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. Needs the WebView2 Runtime, which is already part of Windows 11. The installer writes into your user profile, so no administrator rights are required; the portable build is a single file that runs from anywhere.
Neither build is code-signed, so SmartScreen warns on the first launch — choose More info → Run anyway. Every release ships a checksum file if you would rather verify the download first.
Copy anything
A sentence, a whole page, or a screenshot — the clipboard decides which of the two it hands over, so a copied picture stays a picture.
Press Ctrl + Alt + T
A small window rises from the left edge of the screen above the taskbar, on whichever monitor your cursor is on.
Read the translation
It streams in word by word. Press Esc or click anywhere else and the window is gone, along with what it held.
Screenshots, not just text
Copy a screenshot, a photo of a menu, or a dialog box you cannot read. A vision model reads the text off the image and translates it — there is no separate OCR step to configure.
Source language detected for you
You only ever pick the target. English, Tiếng Việt, 中文 and Русский are the four available today, switchable from the tray.
Two rebindable hotkeys
Ctrl + Alt + T translates the clipboard, Ctrl + Alt + N opens a blank window for typing by hand. If a combination is already taken, the app says so and keeps the working one.
Optional: translate the selection
Off by default. When on, the hotkey picks up whatever is selected in the active window so you skip Ctrl + C — at the cost of replacing your clipboard.
Repeats are free
The last 200 translations are cached in memory, keyed by model and target language, so pasting the same thing twice costs nothing and answers instantly.
Stays out of the way
Lives in the tray, starts with Windows, and never appears in Alt+Tab or on the taskbar. Losing focus hides it and drops the session.
Three steps, once
- 01
Download and run the installer
It installs into your user profile — no administrator rights. The build is not code-signed, so on the first launch Windows SmartScreen shows a warning: choose "More info", then "Run anyway".
- 02
Paste an OpenAI API key
On a first start without a key the settings window opens by itself. Paste your key once; it is stored in the Windows Credential Manager and the app never asks again.
- 03
Copy something and press Ctrl + Alt + T
The overlay appears with the clipboard already translating. Pick your target language and model in the settings from the tray icon.
The app is free — you pay OpenAI for tokens
There is no subscription, no licence and no account here. The app talks to OpenAI with the key you paste on the first run, so translation is billed to you directly, at OpenAI's rates. Pick the model in the settings; the cheapest one handles ordinary text perfectly well.
| Model | $ / 1M tokens (in · out) | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| gpt-5-nano | 0.05 · 0.40 | Cheapest. Fine for ordinary text. |
| gpt-5.6-luna | 0.20 · 1.20 | The default — fast and accurate. |
| gpt-5.6-terra | 2.00 · 12.00 | Rare languages and heavy terminology. |
Rates are OpenAI's and can change — check their pricing page for the current figures.
The key never leaves the Rust side
Everything you can change
| Setting | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Clipboard hotkey | Ctrl + Alt + T | Rebindable. Must include at least one modifier — a bare key would be swallowed Windows-wide. |
| Blank-window hotkey | Ctrl + Alt + N | Rebindable, same rule. |
| Target language | English · Tiếng Việt · 中文 · Русский | Applied to the next translation. The tray tooltip always shows the current one. |
| Model | gpt-5-nano · gpt-5.6-luna · gpt-5.6-terra | Defaults to gpt-5.6-luna. |
| Translate the selection | Off | Replaces your clipboard, interrupts console programs that read Ctrl + C, and silently does nothing against an elevated window. |
| Start with Windows | On | Reconciled with the OS entry at every launch, so disabling it from Task Manager sticks. |
Why a hotkey overlay instead of a browser tab
Translating something on a web page costs five actions: copy, switch windows, find the tab, paste, read, switch back. Each one is small and all of them together are why people stop bothering and guess at the meaning instead. A resident widget collapses that into one keystroke, and because the window hides the moment it loses focus, there is no sixth action to close it.
Windows 11 has no supported way to embed a control in the taskbar — the Windows 10 toolbars and deskbands are gone with no public replacement. So the window is positioned from the working area of whichever monitor your cursor is on, which puts it just above the taskbar and gets multi-monitor and per-monitor DPI right without any configuration.
Translating what you cannot select
A lot of the text you actually need translated cannot be copied: an error dialog, a game menu, a restaurant board in a photo, a scan someone sent you. Copying a picture to the clipboard and pressing the same hotkey sends the image itself, and the model reads the text off it and translates that — no OCR to install, no accuracy cliff on stylised fonts. What the app translates is decided by the clipboard: whichever format the copying application offered first wins, so copying a screenshot gives you the screenshot and copying a sentence gives you the sentence.
Why you bring your own API key
A middleman relay would mean a subscription, an account, and your clipboard passing through someone else's server. Pointing the app at your own OpenAI key removes all three: the request goes from your machine to OpenAI and back, you see exactly what you spend, and there is no service that can go away and take the app with it.
What it is not
It is an early build — version numbers still start with a zero. There is no auto-updater, no translation history, no offline mode, and four target languages rather than forty. It is 64-bit Windows only, and the binaries are unsigned. If any of that is a dealbreaker, this is the wrong tool and you should not download it.
Source is published on GitHub. No licence has been attached yet, so the usual defaults apply — ask before reusing the code.
- Do I need an OpenAI API key?
- Yes. The app itself is free and there is no account to create, but translation runs on your own OpenAI key, which you paste once on the first launch. Nothing is billed through this site.
- How much does it cost to run?
- You pay OpenAI for tokens and nothing else. On the default model that is $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens, so ordinary day-to-day use costs cents. Prices are OpenAI's and can change.
- Why does Windows warn me the first time I run it?
- The builds are not code-signed, so SmartScreen shows its "unrecognised app" warning. Choose "More info", then "Run anyway". Every release also ships a SHA256SUMS.txt you can check the download against.
- Does it translate text on screenshots?
- Yes. Copy an image instead of text and the model reads the text off it and translates that. The full-size picture stays in the app's Rust layer and is sent only to OpenAI as part of the request.
- Where is my API key stored?
- In the Windows Credential Manager, under xploit-translator/openai_api_key. It is never written to a config file and never handed to the app's own web layer, which has no HTTP or clipboard permission at all.
- Does it work offline?
- No. Translation is an OpenAI API call, so the machine needs a connection. Repeated input is served from an in-memory cache, which does survive a brief drop but not a restart.
- Which languages can it translate into?
- English, Tiếng Việt, 中文 and Русский. The source language is always detected automatically, so you only choose the target.
- Does it update itself?
- Not yet — there is no auto-updater. New versions are published on the GitHub releases page; download the installer again to upgrade in place.