Readlang is a good tool for reading web pages, and nothing below replaces it if that is your reading. The case for an alternative is the text that is not on a web page: a PDF, a book, a game, an app, a photo. That is where LeafyApp comes in.
What Readlang is good at
Readlang lets you click words or phrases on a web page and see a translation. Words you translate are saved for practice as flashcards, and it has iOS and Android apps. Its homepage lists a handful of main languages and "+ 100 More Languages", and the pricing page shows a free plan, Premium at $6 a month or $48 a year, and Premium Plus at $15 a month or $120 a year (as of November 2026).
That is a complete loop for one kind of reading: web articles and graded texts, on a laptop or a phone. If that is what you read, stay put.
Readlang on Safari
Readlang's browser extension is a Chrome extension. Its forum says the web reader works on "desktop Chrome and other browsers which support installing Chrome Extensions". There is no Safari extension. In December 2024 a user asked for one "instead of using bookmarklet", and the bookmarklet is what Safari gets.
The Safari bookmarklet does work. Users report that it did on older MacBooks, with one needing to turn off cross-site tracking first. The limits are in the staff post: it "won't work on certain websites which prevent external scripts from running". The Safari setup guide was written for Safari 13, so some steps may look different now. Both are on the Readlang forum.
Where a web reader stops
A web reader needs a web page. Most of what language learners read is not one. A scanned PDF, an article in a locked viewer, a game menu, a screenshot a friend sent, a textbook open in Preview. None of those has a page for a bookmarklet to attach to.
LeafyApp works on the screen instead of the page. Press ⌥A anywhere on a Mac, drag a box over the text, and macOS text recognition reads that patch of screen. The word you choose comes back explained for the sentence it is in. A separate shortcut translates the whole boxed passage.
That covers books and PDFs in any reader, images, video subtitles in IINA or VLC, and apps that do not let you select text. The screen translator page goes through the cases.
What you keep
Every word you look up is saved with its sentence, the source and the date. You can search it, sort it into folders, and mark favourites. Review is fill-in-the-blank cards built from your own saved sentences, scheduled with FSRS-5. Words go to Anki with a card preview, and export to CSV, Excel, JSON or PDF.
It is not a copy of Readlang's flashcards, which translate a word. The cards here hide the word in the sentence you met it in.
What LeafyApp does not do
It has no reader. It cannot open an article for you, grade the text to your level, or turn a web page into something clickable. There is no iPhone, iPad or Android app, so nothing for the commute, and no Windows version. It is not a browser extension. It runs only on a Mac with macOS 14 or later, and it is free while it is in beta.
If you read mostly on your phone or want a reader that does the work, Readlang is the better fit. If you read on a Mac and the words come from everywhere, LeafyApp fits.
Using both
They overlap less than you would think. Readlang for the web articles you read in Chrome. ⌥A for the PDF in Preview and the video in IINA. Words from the second can go to Anki, and you can bring an existing list in with the word list import.
The picture is read on your Mac and thrown away. Only the word and its sentence go out so the AI can explain it, with nothing attached that says who you are, and your library stays on the Mac. See the privacy page.
Questions people ask
Is there a Readlang extension for Safari? No Safari extension. The Readlang extension is for Chrome, and Safari on a Mac uses a bookmarklet that does not work on sites blocking external scripts.
What is a good Readlang alternative for Mac? It depends what you read. For web pages, stay with Readlang. For PDFs, books, images, video and apps on a Mac, LeafyApp reads the text from the screen and saves each word with its sentence.
Are there apps like Readlang? Language Reactor and Trancy add click-to-translate to browser video, and LeafyApp lets you look up text anywhere on a Mac. Readlang is the one built as a reader with flashcards and phone apps.
Does LeafyApp have flashcards like Readlang? It has fill-in-the-blank review cards made from the sentences you saved, and it sends words to Anki. It does not make word and translation flashcards, and it has no phone app.
Read in the browser. Look up everywhere else.
Free while LeafyApp is in beta. One download, macOS 14 and up.
Readlang, Language Reactor, Trancy, Anki, Safari, Preview, IINA and VLC are trademarks of their respective owners. LeafyApp is an independent app, not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them, and the names are used here only to describe compatibility and for comparison.