Pikslovo

Every story
in your language.

Pikslovo translates text exactly where you see it. A game, app, comic, or book — you don’t need to know the language to enjoy the whole story.

Download APK Android 12+ See it in action

Free · open source · no ads, no account
Needs your own Google Cloud API key — what that means

Two handheld consoles before and after translating in-game text
originalon-screen translation

Full screen or
a selected region.

Call Pikslovo whenever you want. Freeze a frame, select just the dialogue, or translate the entire screen. The result appears on the same image, so the context always stays in place.

In-game dialogue in Japanese: “この遺跡には、まだ誰かがいる気がする…”
The same dialogue translated: “I have a feeling someone is still lurking in these ruins…”
Drag to compareThe same frame before and after

Don’t translate everything.
Translate what matters.

When you only care about one sentence, draw around it with your finger. Pikslovo crops the selection and lays the finished translation over it — the rest of the screen stays untouched.

ES-DE screen with the MS-DOS system description and the Pikslovo floating button
1Spot text you can’t read.
Expanded Pikslovo floating-button menu over a game screen
2Call Pikslovo with the button or a hotkey.
Selecting a paragraph with a frame and draggable corners
3Drag the frame’s corners and confirm.
MS-DOS description translated into Polish, laid over the original
4Read the translation right where the original was.

Lots of text?
Translate the whole screen.

System descriptions, emulator menus, settings screens — full-screen mode translates everything at once. It works in games, frontends, and any other app Android shows on screen.

PICO-8 system screen in the ES-DE frontend with an English description
Before · PICO-8 in ES-DE
The same screen with the description translated into Polish
After · the whole screen in Polish

Small app.
A lot of freedom.

Simple where
it should be simple.

Set the overlay appearance, app language, button behaviour, and text-recognition parameters. No getting lost in dozens of screens — and the diagnostics screen shows how long each step of a translation takes.

Pikslovo main settings: permissions, Google Cloud API key, languages, shortcut, floating button
Every setting on one screen
Diagnostics: capture 96 ms, OCR 460 ms, translation 387 ms, total 952 ms
952 ms from screenshot to overlay in this run · depends on your connection

Three steps
to your first translation.

No store, no account. Pikslovo is free; text recognition and translation are billed by Google directly to your own Google Cloud project.

  1. Download the APK

    The latest build from GitHub Releases, for Android 12 or newer. Android will ask you to allow installs from that source. Tested on an ANBERNIC RG 477M (GammaOS) and a Samsung Galaxy S21 FE.

    Download APK

    Prefer automatic updates?

    Add to Obtainium

  2. Add a Google Cloud key

    Create a project with billing enabled, turn on Cloud Vision API and Cloud Translation API, then paste the key into the app’s settings. Google bills usage to your project.

    Step-by-step guide ↗

  3. Call up a translation

    Start a session, open your game, and tap the floating button. You can also map a global hotkey to a physical button — it needs the accessibility service, and Android doesn’t pass through every device button.

    Hotkey setup ↗

Don’t let language
stop you halfway through the story.

Take Pikslovo anywhere you run into text you want to understand.

Download APK Android 12+ Source code

Android 12+ · your own Google Cloud API key · no account

Pikslovo is free. If it helps you, buy us a coffee on Ko-fi ↗