Read web novels in your language before anyone has translated them. NektoTranslate fetches a novel from its site, translates it chapter by chapter with your own Claude subscription, and gives you a reader to follow along as the chapters land. Everything stays on your computer.
- Fetch from a site or paste a chapter. Hundreds of novel sites are recognised out of the box.
- Translate like an editor, not a dictionary. Every chapter is read once, translated a few paragraphs at a time, read back, and corrected. Names and terms stay the same from the first chapter to the last.
- Bring an existing translation. If someone already translated the early chapters, NektoTranslate learns their voice and glossary and continues in the same manner - or cleans up a machine translation that was let go.
- Read while it works. A chapter opens the moment it is finished, in a reader with the original beside it when you want it.
Translating is one dialog: pick the chapters, set a spending ceiling if you want one, and go. The chapters open in the reader as they finish.
Open the latest release. It lists seven files; you need exactly one of them:
| You are on | Take this file | Then |
|---|---|---|
| Windows 10 or 11 | NektoTranslate_<version>_x64-setup.exe |
Run it. Windows will warn that the publisher is unknown - the installer is not signed yet; choose More info → Run anyway. |
| Linux, any distribution | NektoTranslate_<version>_amd64.AppImage |
Make it executable (chmod +x, or right-click → Properties → Allow executing) and run it. Nothing to install. |
| Ubuntu, Debian, Mint | NektoTranslate_<version>_amd64.deb |
sudo apt install ./NektoTranslate_<version>_amd64.deb, then start NektoTranslate from the menu. |
| Fedora, openSUSE | NektoTranslate-<version>-1.x86_64.rpm |
sudo dnf install ./NektoTranslate-<version>-1.x86_64.rpm, then start it from the menu. |
| macOS | Nothing yet | There is no macOS build so far - see Build from source below. |
The other files on that page are not for most people:
NektoTranslate_<version>_x64_en-US.msiis the same Windows application as an MSI package, for people who roll software out through Group Policy or Intune. If you do not know what that means, take the-setup.exe.NektoTranslate.Server-win-x64.zipandNektoTranslate.Server-linux-x64.zipare the application without its window, for running it as a small local server and using it in a browser - see Run it without the window below.
Every file has a sha256 printed under it on the release page, if you want to check a download.
Nothing else needs installing, with one exception: translation runs through the Claude Code command-line tool on your own Claude subscription, so install it and sign in once:
# Windows (PowerShell)
irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex
# macOS and Linux
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
then run claude in a terminal and follow the login. NektoTranslate picks it up from there.
NektoTranslate.Server-win-x64.zip and NektoTranslate.Server-linux-x64.zip are the whole
application as a plain program you run and then open in a browser - handy on a machine you reach
remotely, or if you simply prefer your browser. Unzip it anywhere, start NektoTranslate.Api
(NektoTranslate.Api.exe on Windows) and open the address it prints, http://127.0.0.1:5080. It
needs nothing installed, listens only on your own machine, and keeps its data in:
| Windows | %LOCALAPPDATA%\NektoTranslate |
| macOS | ~/Library/Application Support/NektoTranslate |
| Linux | ~/.local/share/NektoTranslate |
Two flags cover the unusual cases: --ServerUrl=http://127.0.0.1:5099 to use another port, and
--DataDirectory=<path> to keep the library somewhere else, say on another drive.
The server is .NET 10 (ASP.NET Core, EF Core, SQLite) and serves a Vue 3 client from the same
process; NektoTranslate.Desktop is a Tauri 2 shell that starts that server and shows it in a
native window.
# server on its own, with the client built into it
dotnet publish NektoTranslate.Server/NektoTranslate.Api -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained -o <folder>
# desktop application, installers included
cd NektoTranslate.Desktop && npm install && npm run build
You need the .NET 10 SDK and Node 22; the desktop build also needs Rust. For day-to-day work run
the API from NektoTranslate.Server/NektoTranslate.Api and npm run dev in NektoTranslate.Client,
which proxies to it. NektoTranslate.Desktop/README.md describes the shell, its attach mode and
its window chrome. The version lives in NektoTranslate.Server/Directory.Build.props; changing it
on main is what cuts a release.
The site parsers under NektoTranslate.Server/vendor/WebToEpub are from
WebToEpub by David Teviotdale, used with thanks under
their GPL-3.0 licence - which is also why this project is GPL-3.0.