New: Quick Translate — drag over anything on screen and read it there
Playto used to be an app you opened when it was time to study. From this update, it stays quietly in your system tray — and the new Quick Translate is the reason you’ll actually use that: when something on screen needs reading, you’re two clicks away from a translation.
What Quick Translate is
Press [Fixed area] or [Cursor] on the Home screen and drag over what you want to read — translation starts right there. No pack to pick, nothing to configure, and it works on any app’s screen.
- Fixed area — pins the dragged rectangle in place and keeps translating it. Good for subtitles and message windows.
- Cursor — a box of the dragged size follows your mouse. Good for tooltips and menus.
It isn’t limited to game windows, either. Anything on your screen can be translated where it is — browser games, wiki pages, launchers. If you’ve ever wanted to point Playto at something that isn’t a regular game client, this is the entrance. We wrote a separate walkthrough for the biggest case: how to translate browser games.
Throwaway by design
Quick Translate sessions are deliberately disposable: they don’t appear in your Journal. But the two things worth keeping do stay — saved words (with their review schedule) and the translation log. Grab the words that catch your eye, let the rest go.
That makes the split with a regular session simple:
- Quick Translate — translate on the spot; only saved words and the log remain. For quick reads and casual play.
- Learning Session — learn while it’s recorded to a Pack: history, album and review build up over time.
Nothing about the learning loop changes. Quick Translate is a lighter door into the same pipeline — the words you save land in the same word book, on the same review schedule.
Always within reach
Closing the window no longer quits Playto — it keeps running in the system tray. From the tray icon you can show the window, start or stop translation, or quit. Enable launch-at-startup in Settings and Playto is there without opening it by hand.
And while it’s there, your daily review finds you: with review reminders enabled, Playto notifies you when saved words are due. Words you met in games, reviewed before they fade.
A tip for clean results
While text is still animating in, or when a dense multi-line subtitle is on screen, recognition can briefly flicker before it settles. Set the capture region so its edges rest on blank margin instead of cutting through text — either box the whole text with a little room above and below, or capture just the dialogue and keep the name plate and UI outside. A slightly taller region beats a tight one.
How to try it
Open Playto, look at the Home screen, and press [Fixed area] or [Cursor]. That’s the whole setup. The details live in the Quick Translate docs, and if your target is a browser game, start with the browser game guide.
If you prefer capture that covers a whole game window with no region at all, that’s window mode — the two make good neighbors: window mode for the game you’re settled into, Quick Translate for everything else on your screen.