Translate text and documents on a Mac with no internet
macOS translates on-device once you download a language in System Settings, for free. DeepL Pro for one person costs $8.74 a month billed annually, about $10.49 paid monthly, and the free tier caps you at 50,000 characters a month. Offline translation is good for meaning and for confidential text, and weaker on idiom and formatting.
- Apple Translate
- Free, built in, offline after a language download
- DeepL Pro, one user
- $8.74 a month billed annually, about $10.49 monthly
- DeepL free tier
- 50,000 characters a month, text may be kept
- Vocemo
- $15 a month or $144 a year, translation on your Mac
Can you translate text on a Mac without internet?
Yes, and it has been possible for free since macOS Monterey. Open System Settings, go to General, then Language and Region, then Translation Languages, and download the languages you need. After that you can select text almost anywhere, right click, and choose Translate, with the network off.
Two things to know about it. The language list is short compared with a web translator, roughly twenty languages rather than a hundred. And on iPhone there is an explicit On-Device Mode switch, which is a reminder that translation is only local when the app says it is local.
Why not just paste it into a translation website?
Because a translation website is an upload, and people forget that when the box looks like a text field. Whatever you paste is transmitted to a company's servers and processed there.
The retention rules differ, and they are worth reading. DeepL states that texts submitted by Pro subscribers are deleted after translation. The free version is a different arrangement: DeepL's own terms describe text from the free service being usable for improving its models. Google Translate is free and sends everything to Google. None of this is a scandal, it is how the products are paid for, but it means the phrase "just run it through Google Translate" is a decision about someone else's document.
The cases where this matters are specific and common: a supplier contract under negotiation, a patient record, a witness statement, an unfiled patent, a due diligence pack, an internal memo. Several professional bodies and many company policies already forbid pasting client material into a public translation tool.
What do translation tools cost on a Mac?
Prices verified September 2026, from each company's own pricing page.
| Tool | Works offline on a Mac | Price | What happens to your text |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple Translate, built into macOS | Yes, after a language download | Free | Stays on the Mac when translated on-device |
| Vocemo | Yes, after a model download | $15 a month, or $144 a year | Never leaves the Mac |
| DeepL free | No | Free, 50,000 characters a month | May be used to improve DeepL's models |
| DeepL Pro, one person | No | $8.74 a month billed annually, about $10.49 monthly | DeepL says texts are deleted after translation |
| DeepL Pro for teams | No | $28.74 per user a month, billed annually | Same as Pro, with admin controls |
| Google Translate | No, the desktop version is a website | Free | Sent to Google |
If you would rather this ran on your own Mac, that is what Vocemo does. Free for 7 days, then $15 a month for 3 Macs.
Download free for MacOne detail catches people out. Google Translate does have offline language packs, but they are a feature of the iPhone and Android apps. There is no official Google Translate application for macOS, so on a Mac you are using the website, and the website is online by definition.
How good is offline translation, really?
Better than its reputation and worse than DeepL. The models that run on a laptop today are the same family of systems that ran on servers a few years ago, and for ordinary prose they produce translations you can act on.
Where local translation holds up well:
- Understanding a document you have received: emails, invoices, manuals, forms, reports.
- Common European pairs, which have the most training data behind them.
- Plain technical and administrative writing, where the sentences are literal.
- Long documents, because there is no character quota and no meter running.
Where DeepL is still clearly ahead:
- Text you will publish in the target language. DeepL reads more naturally to a native speaker, and that gap is real.
- Idiom, humour, marketing copy and anything where tone carries the meaning.
- Formal and informal register control, which DeepL exposes as a setting.
- Rare language pairs and low-resource languages.
- Glossaries that force a company's approved terms across a whole team.
A workable rule: translate locally when you need to know what a document says, and pay for DeepL or a human when someone else will read your translation as if you wrote it.
What offline translation does not do
The limits, stated plainly.
- It does not preserve layout. A translated PDF does not come back looking like the original, with the same tables and the same page breaks. Vocemo converts the document to text first and translates the text, so you get the content, not the design.
- It does not cover every language. Apple ships around twenty. A web translator lists more than a hundred. If your pair is unusual, offline may simply not exist.
- No translation memory and no shared glossary. Agency workflows depend on those, and a local tool has neither.
- No live conversation translation between two people. That is a phone feature.
- It costs disk space. Each language model is a download, and it has to arrive before the offline promise means anything. Vocemo downloads a pack only when a feature needs it and shuts it down after 120 seconds idle, but the file stays on disk.
- It can be slower on very long text. A laptop has less memory bandwidth than a rack of accelerators, so a 200-page document takes minutes, not seconds.
Which one should you use?
Use Apple's built-in translation first, because it is free, already installed and genuinely on-device. It is enough for a paragraph, an email or a sign.
Buy DeepL Pro at $8.74 a month billed annually if you translate for publication, need glossaries, or work in a pair Apple does not support. It is the better translator and the price is fair.
Use a local tool like Vocemo when the document is the confidential part and it is longer than a paragraph: contracts, medical notes, HR files, research under embargo. The pitch is not that the output beats DeepL, because it does not. It is that nothing was uploaded, so there is no copy on anyone else's disk and no policy to trust. If you want the reasoning behind that, read what on-device AI means on a Mac.
Questions
Can I translate a document offline on a Mac?
Yes. macOS can translate selected text on-device once you download the language under System Settings, General, Language and Region, Translation Languages. For whole documents a local tool such as Vocemo converts the file to text and translates it on the Mac. Neither approach preserves the original layout, so you get the content rather than a formatted copy.
How much does DeepL Pro cost in 2026?
DeepL Pro for a single user is $8.74 a month when billed annually, and about $10.49 a month if you pay monthly. The team tier is $28.74 per user a month billed annually. The free version allows 50,000 characters per user per month. Prices checked in September 2026 on DeepL's own pricing page.
Is it safe to paste confidential text into Google Translate?
Pasting text into any translation website transmits it to that company. Google Translate is free and processes your text on Google's servers. Many law firms, hospitals and employers forbid this for client or patient material, so check your own policy before using it for anything confidential.
Does Apple Translate work without internet on a Mac?
Yes, for the languages you have downloaded. Go to System Settings, General, Language and Region, then Translation Languages, and download the pair you need. After that, selecting text and choosing Translate works with the network off. The language list is shorter than a web translator's, at roughly twenty languages.
Is offline translation as accurate as DeepL?
Not for text you intend to publish. DeepL reads more naturally in the target language and handles idiom, tone and register better. Offline translation is accurate enough to understand a document you have received, and it has no character limit, so it suits long confidential files.
Can I translate a PDF without uploading it?
Yes. A local tool extracts the text from the PDF on your Mac and translates it there, so the file never leaves the machine. The result is translated text rather than a rebuilt PDF, so tables and page layout are not preserved. Cloud services return a formatted file, but only after you have sent them the original.
Sources
Every price on this page was read from the vendor's own page on the date shown above. Prices change; if you find one out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Competitor prices in this article were checked in September 2026. Prices change; if you find one out of date, write to us and we will correct it.