Guide

PopLingo is designed to stay out of your way — it never hijacks your text box or changes how you type.

Workflow

Click into any text box (chat, form, search field…) to place the caret
Press Ctrl+Alt+T. A translucent card appears next to the caret and takes focus
Type in the card — your IME works normally and the translation appears as you type
Press Enter to insert the translation into the original text box
Press Enter again on an empty card to send, exactly like pressing Enter in the box
Press Ctrl+Alt+T again to turn translation mode off

Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
`Ctrl+Alt+T`	Toggle translation mode
`Ctrl+Alt+C`	Bring focus back to the card (when focus wandered off)
`Ctrl+Alt+Enter`	Insert the translation from anywhere (when the card doesn't have focus, e.g. in PowerPoint)
`Enter`	Insert the translation; on an empty card, send
`Ctrl+Enter`	Insert only, never send
`Ctrl+Shift+Enter`	Insert the original text instead
`Shift+Enter`	New line (for multi-line messages)
`Esc`	Cancel and clear the card

About Ctrl+Alt+C

After you click around other text boxes, focus leaves the card. Instead of hunting for the card, press Ctrl+Alt+C and focus jumps straight back so you can keep typing. (This hotkey can be changed in the config file.)

The floating card

Follows the caret: it appears below the text caret, not the mouse pointer
Auto-resizes: the more you type, the taller it gets
Draggable: drag the thin bar at the top, or the translation area
Translucent: it never fully hides what is behind it
Follows your focus: click another text box and the card moves there
Stays where you put it: dragging to a second monitor works correctly

Card appearance

Right-click the tray icon → Settings → the Card appearance tab. You can change the font size and colour of both the input text and the translation text, with a live preview above that updates as you adjust.

System tray icon

State	Icon
Translation mode on	Lit (blue)
Translation mode off	Greyed out

Right-click the icon for the menu:

Settings — translation service, languages, style, card appearance
Help — an in-app version of this guide
Sponsor — opens the sponsor page
Check for updates
Quit — fully exits the program

Closing the help window does not exit the program — it only hides it. Use Quit in the tray menu to exit.

Translation styles

Style	When to use
Academic (default)	Formal and precise. If the source has no trailing period it is treated as a title and translated in title style.
Business	Professional, polite, formal business tone.
Casual	Natural, conversational tone.

Second language (conditional translation)

Source language	Result
Not the target language (e.g. Chinese)	Translated into the target language (e.g. English)
Already the target language (e.g. English)	Translated into the second language (e.g. German)

With "target: English" and "second language: German", typing Chinese gives English and typing English gives German. It does not produce two translations at once. Set the second language to "(None)" to disable it.

Troubleshooting

Nothing happens after launching

Check that the tray icon exists. Translation mode must be toggled on with Ctrl+Alt+T.

The hotkey does nothing

Another program may have claimed Ctrl+Alt+T. Change it in %APPDATA%\PopLingo\config.json.

Translation keeps failing

Check your API key (see Setup) and read the status bar message. Common causes: invalid key, insufficient balance, no network.

It pasted in the wrong place

Don't switch windows right before inserting. If it fails, the translation is already on your clipboard — just press Ctrl+V.

Turn off the update check at startup

Set check_update_on_start to false in the config file.