Tipword
Most learners hit the same wall: the course is fine, but real articles, chats and shows are full of words you don’t know. Looking each one up means copying it, switching windows and losing your place. Tipword removes that step. Hold ⌥ Option, point at a word, and its meaning appears beside it in English, with the meaning of the whole sentence underneath.
All five languages on this page translate on your Mac with Apple, free, on macOS 15 or later. Here’s what tends to trip learners up in each one, and how pointing at words helps.
Spanish
Spanish is full of false friends: words that look like English but mean something else. Embarazada means pregnant, not embarrassed. Librería is a bookshop, not a library. Constipado means you have a cold. When a sentence suddenly makes no sense, point at the familiar-looking word first.
Spanish also drops the subject pronoun, so the verb ending carries who did what. The sentence meaning under each word shows you how the whole line reads.
French
French idioms rarely translate word by word. Avoir le cafard is literally “to have the cockroach”, but it means to feel down. Poser un lapin, “to put down a rabbit”, means to stand someone up. Tipword shows the word’s own meaning and the meaning of the sentence, so you get both the literal word and what the speaker meant.
Watch for false friends here too: actuellement means currently, and librairie is a bookshop.
German
German builds long words from short ones. Handschuh, a glove, is literally a hand shoe. Kühlschrank, a fridge, is a cool cupboard. Point at the whole compound and Tipword translates it as one word, which is usually what you want.
Separable verbs are the other trap. In Ich rufe dich morgen an, the verb is anrufen, to call, split across the sentence. The sentence meaning under the word puts it back together.
Italian
Italian false friends catch English speakers often. Camera is a room, parenti are relatives, not parents, and fattoria is a farm, not a factory.
Everyday idioms matter too. In bocca al lupo, “in the wolf’s mouth”, is how Italians wish you luck. Pointing at lupo gives you wolf; the sentence line underneath tells you it means good luck.
Korean
Korean particles attach to the end of words and change their role: 은/는 marks the topic, 이/가 the subject. Words you know can look unfamiliar with a particle on the end. Point at the whole word and you see its meaning in context.
K-dramas are a common way in. Pause, hold ⌥ and point at a word in the subtitle; see translating subtitles word by word.
One daily habit
Switch one thing you already read every day into your target language: a news site, a newsletter, your phone’s chat on the Mac. Point at the words you don’t know and keep going. It’s slow at first, and it gets faster every week.
Learning Japanese? It has its own challenges, like text with no spaces between words; see learning Japanese by reading on your Mac.
Questions
Are these languages free in Tipword?
Yes. Spanish, French, German, Italian and Korean translate on your Mac with Apple, on macOS 15 or later, with no key and nothing extra to pay beyond $12 once.
Does it work with subtitles?
Yes, in your browser and most video players. Pause, hold ⌥ and point at the word.
Does it work offline?
Yes, for these five languages on macOS 15 or later.
Does it save the words I look up?
No. Tipword shows the meaning where you are; it doesn’t keep a word list.