Tooltip translator
Translate game tooltips by hovering your mouse
The text you get stuck on isn't the dialogue — it's the item descriptions, skill tooltips and menu labels scattered around the screen. Playto is a Windows app that runs alongside your game and reads the screen in real time; in cursor-follow mode it reads whatever your mouse points at and shows the translation right there — no Alt-Tab, no phone camera, no mods.
Built for the text scattered around the screen
A fixed subtitle box is easy. The hard part of an untranslated game is everything else — the text that pops up wherever your cursor goes:
- Item and equipment descriptions
- Skill and ability tooltips
- Quest log and objective entries
- Menu labels, settings and crafting screens
Cursor-follow rides your mouse and reads whatever it lands near, so you check a tooltip the moment you hover it — the same motion you already make while playing. It pairs especially well with menu-heavy RPGs you play on mouse and keyboard.
Playing on a controller instead? There's no cursor to follow — pin a fixed region or use window mode, both on the in-game translation overlay page.
Why reading under a moving cursor is harder than it looks
Hovering to read sounds simple. Doing it well, on a live game, is where the work is — and it's the part Playto puts the most care into.
Where does the tooltip end?
A tooltip has no marked boundary. Read too wide and you pull in the item next to it and the stat bar behind it; read too narrow and you clip the line that mattered. So the capture area around the cursor is resizable on the fly with a shortcut — you size it to the tooltip once and it holds.
The cursor moves, and tooltips flicker in and out
A tooltip appears when you hover and vanishes when you move on, and your mouse rarely holds perfectly still. Reading has to keep up with that without re-translating the same tooltip every frame or leaving a stale one on screen after you've moved away.
Tooltip text is the dense, decision-heavy kind
Item stats, skill effects and status wording are exactly where a game hides the words that change what you do — often in small fonts and invented terms. Getting those right is more valuable, and harder, than reading a line of plain dialogue. Why a reading tool treats this as a craft is in why translating a game live is hard.
Hover, and size it to the tooltip
Move the cursor over what you want to read and Playto captures the text around it. A keyboard or mouse shortcut grows or shrinks the capture area on the fly: size it to the tooltip and nothing else — too large and it picks up unrelated text, too small and it clips the line you care about. The shortcuts are reassignable in Settings.
For text that always appears in a set place — a dialogue band or subtitle line — there's also Fixed Region, covered on the in-game translation overlay page.
Every tooltip you read can become vocabulary
Reading the tooltip is the start, not the end. Each word you hover can be saved and reviewed later, so a game you played turns into vocabulary you keep. Why a reading tool cares this much about getting the text right is in why reading the screen accurately matters, and the bigger picture is in can you learn a language by playing games?
Common questions
Is there a tooltip translator for games?
Yes. Playto is a mouse tooltip translator for PC games — move the cursor over a tooltip, item or menu entry and it reads the text under it and shows the translation in place, without leaving the game.
How do I translate a game tooltip with my mouse?
Turn on cursor-follow capture and hover what you want to read. Playto captures the text around the cursor and translates it on the spot. You can grow or shrink the capture area with a shortcut so it matches the tooltip and nothing around it.
Does it translate item, skill and menu text too?
Yes — anything that shows as on-screen text. Cursor-follow is built for the scattered UI you actually get stuck on: item descriptions, skill tooltips, quest entries and menu labels.
Does cursor-follow work with a controller?
Cursor-follow needs a mouse pointer to ride, so it's the mode for mouse-and-keyboard play. On a controller there's no cursor to follow — use a fixed region on the text, or window mode, both covered on the in-game translation overlay page.
Does it need a mod or a patch?
No. Playto reads the screen from the outside — it does not modify game files, inject code, or need a per-game patch — so the same tooltip translator works across any PC game client.
Try it on your own games
A free demo is on Steam — hover a few tooltips in a game you actually play and see how the reading holds up.