OpenCircle v0.1.1

OpenCircle v0.1.1: calm, fast and stable. Circle anything on your screen, then choose: search it in your browser, copy its text, or translate it in place. Free, open source and private by design.

Highlights

• Circle, then choose. Nothing is sent until you pick an action. Search in browser opens Google Lens in your own browser with the exact crop; OpenCircle uploads it nowhere else.
• Instant text on Windows. Text on screen is selectable right after the overlay opens (Windows' own text recognition, about 0.1 s for a full screen). Drag, double-click or triple-click, then Ctrl+C.
• Translate in place, much faster. About 2.7× faster on a full page (5.2 s → 1.9 s on a desktop PC), first lines in under a second, appearing from the top as they're ready. Offline by default.
• Adjust the selection. Resize it by its edges, move it, Alt+drag over text, nudge with the arrow keys. Ctrl+C copies the image, Ctrl+S saves it, with a small confirmation.
• A calmer look. A soft, static glow around the screen; a smooth opening; opaque, readable widgets.
• New installer. One small setup in the new design: install, update or repair, with a single uninstall window that asks whether to keep your settings. Silent install for IT: OpenCircle-Setup-<version>-x64.exe /quiet.
• Settings save themselves and open at a size that fits.
• Diagnostics without telemetry. A local log, and Settings › About › Copy diagnostics (no secrets) and Report a problem.
• Labs. Unfinished features (snip, image editor, song search, search history, pins, live translate) are off and hidden until you turn them on in Settings › Labs.

Install

• Windows: OpenCircle-Setup-<version>-x64.exe (setup), or OpenCircle-<version>-x64-portable.exe (no install). Updating from v0.1.0 keeps your settings; installed copies update themselves.
• Linux (preview): AppImage, .deb and .rpm.
• Verify your download against SHA256SUMS.txt (signed: SHA256SUMS.txt.minisig).
• Code signing: see the README's Code signing policy. The installers aren't signed yet, so SmartScreen may warn: choose More info → Run anyway.

Privacy

Nothing leaves your PC unless you press an action that needs the internet (Search in browser, Ask AI, update check). No telemetry, no accounts, no image-hosting services.

Known limits

• Linux is a preview: text reading is slower than on Windows (no Windows OCR), the overlay takes about half a second to appear on Wayland, and popups are square there.
• Translating with an AI provider (instead of the offline engine) can be much slower and shows the result all at once.
• Live translate is in Labs while it's being rebuilt for v0.3.0.

Thanks

Text recognition: Windows OCR and PaddleOCR (Apache-2.0) via ONNX Runtime (MIT). Offline translation: OPUS-MT by Helsinki-NLP (CC BY 4.0). UI: iced, tiny-skia, cosmic-text, Lucide icons, Inter and Noto Sans Arabic. Full list in the app's About page and NOTICE.

OpenCircle v0.1.0

OpenCircle v0.1.0: Circle to Search for your PC. Press Ctrl+Shift+Space, circle or select anything on screen, and search it, read it, translate it or ask AI about it. Free, open source, and private by design. Windows is fully supported; Linux builds are a preview.

Highlights

• Circle to search: draw around anything; it snaps to a box and Google Lens results open in a floating card inside OpenCircle. The card stays on your side, keeps its size, and moves out of the way of what you selected.
• Select text like a document: drag to select letter by letter, double-click a word, Ctrl+C to copy. (The text reader, ~29 MB, downloads once when you first use it.)
• Ask AI: type a question in the bottom bar: about your screen, your selection, or just a plain question. Works with no key (Google AI Mode in the card), or with your own Anthropic / OpenAI-compatible key.
• Translate the whole screen in place: the original text is erased and the translation drawn in its place. Offline by default (Arabic as the default target), plus a live mode for games and videos.
• Snip and annotate: region, window, full screen or scrolling capture; arrows, shapes, text, blur, steps; drag any drawing to move it; copy image + text straight into an AI chat.
• Looks: Default, Frost (frosted glass) and Graphite widget themes, a glass on/off switch, and 7 live-border looks.
• Stays current: signed auto-updates install quietly when you're not using the app and show what's new (you choose on first run).
• Starts with Windows (can be turned off) and runs quietly in the tray at about 14 MB of memory.

Install

• Windows: download the .msi installer (or the -setup.exe) and run it. The binaries are unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen may warn: choose More info → Run anyway.
• Linux (preview): AppImage, .deb and .rpm. See Known limits.
• Verify your download against SHA256SUMS.txt (signed: SHA256SUMS.txt.minisig).

Privacy

Nothing leaves your PC unless you press an action that needs the internet (Search, Ask AI, song search, update check). No telemetry, no accounts, no image-hosting services.

Known limits

• Linux is a preview: on Wayland, popups are square, live translate is limited, and Google may show its "unusual traffic" check to Lens more often. A Linux round comes in v0.1.1.
• Live translate on large screens can take several seconds for the first full page on slower PCs.
• The opening animation can drop frames on very large (e.g. 3440×1440) screens.

Thanks

OCR: PaddleOCR (Apache-2.0) via ONNX Runtime (MIT). Offline translation: OPUS-MT by Helsinki-NLP (CC BY 4.0). UI: iced, tiny-skia, Lucide icons, Inter and Noto Sans Arabic. Full list in the app's About page and NOTICE.

Made by Amer Alreyahi · Project page