Privacy Policy — Translate on Top
Last updated: 7 October 2026
Translate on Top is a menu-bar translator for macOS made by an independent developer. This policy explains what the app and this website do with your data. The short version: the text you translate is sent to the translation service, purchases are handled by Apple’s App Store, nothing else leaves your Mac, and the app has no accounts, analytics or tracking.
What the app sends and where
- Text you translate. When you type, paste or send text to the app, that text is sent over an encrypted connection to a third-party translation service to obtain the translation, language detection, dictionary entries and pronunciation audio. How that service handles the text is governed by its own privacy policy. The app sends only the text and the language codes; it does not send your name, e-mail address, device identifiers or location.
- Nothing else. The app collects no analytics, sends no crash reports and contains no advertising. Apart from the translation service, and Apple’s App Store when you buy or restore a purchase, it contacts no other server. If you have allowed macOS to share crash data with app developers, that happens through Apple, under your control in System Settings, and not through this app.
Clipboard
Two optional features read your clipboard, and both are off by default:
- Automatically translate clipboard watches for newly copied text while the app is running.
- Use clipboard when opening reads the clipboard once, when you open the app with an empty editor.
When either is on, clipboard text is treated like typed text (sent for translation as described above). macOS may ask for your permission the first time the app reads text copied from another app. Copying a translation with the app’s own Copy button writes to the clipboard and reads nothing.
Selected text
“Translate on Top” in the Services menu sends the text you selected to the app. Nothing is read unless you invoke the service.
Purchases
Buying Translate on Top Pro, starting the free trial and restoring a purchase are handled entirely by Apple’s App Store. The app asks the App Store what you are entitled to and receives an answer. It never sees your Apple ID, your name or your payment details, and it stores none of that on your Mac. The text you translate is never attached to a purchase, and it is never sent anywhere except the translation service.
So that it works between checks and without a connection, the app stores three things on your Mac: whether a purchase was verified, the date the trial started, and how many translations you have used today. None of them identifies you, and none of them leaves your Mac.
What stays on your Mac
Your preferences (languages and favourite languages, layout, shortcut, toggles) are stored locally in the app’s sandboxed container, together with a count of how often you have used the language shortcuts, so that the hints teaching them can stop appearing. Recent translations are kept in memory only, to avoid repeated requests, and are discarded when the app quits. The app keeps no history on disk.
If the app ever stops because of an unexpected error, it writes a short technical description of that error to a file named last-exception.log in the same container, so the cause can be found if you choose to send it with a bug report. The file stays on your Mac, the app never sends it anywhere, and you can delete it.
Deleting your data
The developer holds no data about you, so there is nothing to ask anyone to delete. Everything the app keeps is on your Mac, in its sandboxed container (~/Library/): deleting the app and then that folder removes your preferences, the purchase and trial records, and the error file. A purchase also stays with your Apple ID at Apple, and Restore brings it back.
To withdraw your consent to the clipboard features, turn them off in Preferences, and the app stops reading the clipboard at once. Text already sent for translation was handled by the translation service under its own privacy policy.
This website
translateontop.com uses no cookies, no analytics and no trackers, and loads nothing from other companies. It is hosted by Cloudflare, which handles the IP address and browser details that every visit sends, in order to deliver the pages and protect the site from attacks. Cloudflare’s handling of that data is governed by Cloudflare’s Privacy Policy. The light and dark switch remembers your choice in your browser’s local storage, which stays on your device.
Children
The app is not directed at children under 13 and collects no personal information from anyone.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version is published at this address with a new date.
Contact
Questions about privacy: support@translateontop.com