Playto: Learn Languages Through Games

Learn languages through the games you love. Playto reads the on-screen text of any PC game with local AI and shows the meaning right there as an overlay.

There's no fiddly setup that gets between you and the game. Pick how it reads to fit how you play: keep a fixed region in view, follow your mouse, read the whole screen, or show a translation only when you ask. Save the words and sentences you care about to your Word Book, and the ones you register quickly become study material — flashcards and more — that deepen your grasp of the game. Play with Playto, and the words you run into again and again start to make sense without stopping to look them up.

Translate any spot you point at — dialogue or UI

Cursor-follow mode reads the text wherever you point your mouse — dialogue, menus, item descriptions. Fixed-region mode watches a set area such as subtitles or a status bar. Window mode (beta) translates the whole screen in the background and shows the overlay only when you want it. Whatever the game, you read any spot you like — not just subtitles. Captured text appears as an overlay with the original and its meaning, without pausing the game.

After playing, grow your Word Book

When you stop playing, a session summary lets you look back over the text you met today. Nothing is saved automatically — only the words and sentences you choose to keep enter your Word Book. So your Word Book becomes a learning record you selected yourself.

Make it stick with review and quizzes

Saved items go into SRS (spaced repetition) timed to the forgetting curve, and 8 quiz modes turn them into lasting memory. The more you play, the more your own dictionary grows — as wide as the games you've played.

From reading the screen to logging every line

Playto's work goes well beyond the translation itself. First, OCR that reads the on-screen characters accurately; stylized fonts and Japanese vertical text that ordinary OCR struggles with are handled by a vision-model mode that reads the image directly. Next, it sorts that text into dialogue, menus, and item descriptions and breaks it into units a language model can translate cleanly. The meanings themselves are produced by a local LLM running on your own PC. Their quality depends on the model you run, and local models keep getting better, so Playto is built to get the most out of them. And every translation that appears on screen is kept in a log you can read back after you play. A per-game glossary pins character names and terms the way you want them.

Key features

• Real-time translation overlay — Reads on-screen text and shows the original together with its meaning, without pausing the game.

• Capture modes — Cursor-follow reads wherever you point your mouse; fixed-region watches a set area; window mode (beta) translates the whole screen in the background. Dialogue, menus, UI — read any spot you like.

• Automatic log — Everything you encounter is recorded. Look back anytime during play to check meanings or pronunciation.

• Word Book + SRS + 8 quiz modes — Save the words and sentences you want to remember, and make them stick with spaced repetition and quizzes (Flashcard, Multiple Choice, Fill Blank, Dictation, and more).

• Album — Save captured scenes as full images with their translation, to look back on memorable moments anytime.

• Vision Mode — Stylized fonts, Japanese vertical writing, and other text that ordinary OCR struggles with are read by AI interpreting the image directly.

• Per-game glossary — Register character names and custom terms, and they're reflected in that game's translations.

• Fully local — Translation runs on your own PC, works offline while you play, and the text on your screen is never sent anywhere. 12 languages for the UI and in-game meanings.

Before you buy

• Try the free demo — Local AI needs GPU VRAM in addition to your game (typically 2–4 GB extra). Please confirm compatibility with the free Playto Demo before purchasing.

• Speech support varies — Text-to-speech is fully supported for English; quality varies for other languages, and 5 (KO, DE, RU, PL, VI) currently lack TTS. Check the free demo for your languages before buying.

• How translation works — Meanings are produced by a local LLM: words and short phrases are fairly stable, while longer sentences come through as a meaning hint alongside the original, and quality depends on the model you run. It's there to support your reading of the real text, not to replace it with a dub.