Let me guess how your last localization sprint went. 🧐

Product says “let’s ship in 12 languages.” You open values/strings.xml, copy 340 strings into a spreadsheet, paste them into some translation site, copy them back, and then spend an hour hunting the one place where %1$s turned into % 1 $ s and crashed the settings screen on Turkish devices.

I did that. More than once. Then I built Localyze so I’d never have to again.

And here’s the part that matters: it’s free. You bring your own Google Cloud Translation API key, and download the plugin for Android Studio! 🔥

What Localyze actually is 🎌

It’s an Android Studio / IntelliJ plugin. You install it, sign in, click a button.

That’s genuinely the whole ritual. But under that button:

• It scans your entire project for every strings.xml — not just the one you have open. Multi-module projects included. Android + KMP.
• It detects your locale folders automatically. values-de, values-fr, values-pt-rBR, all of them. You don't configure a list.
• It translates into 120+ languages with one click, from Spanish and Chinese down to Amharic and Assamese.
• It writes the results back in place, correctly indented, comments intact, Unix line endings, entities decoded. Your diff stays readable.

No zip files. No spreadsheets. No “export, translate, re-import” ceremony.

The three markers that make it feel smart 💡

This is the bit people message me about.

You put these in your default values/strings.xml only — never in a localized file:

<!-- Translate this one on the next run, then forget about it -->
<string name="onboarding_title" tools:new="true">Welcome aboard</string>

<!-- Never translate. Brand names, debug labels, that kind of thing -->
<string name="app_name" tools:skip="ALL">Localyze</string>
<!-- Delete this from every localized file on the next run -->
<string name="old_paywall_cta" tools:remove="true">Upgrade now</string>

And the lifecycle:

• tools:new="true" → translated, then the marker is stripped automatically. You never clean up after it.
• tools:skip="ALL" → never touched, and the marker stays, so it keeps protecting the string forever.
• tools:remove="true" → the string is deleted from every localized strings.xml on the next run. Don't hand-delete localized strings — let the plugin do it so nothing gets orphaned.

Changed the wording of an existing string? Slap tools:new="true" back on it and it gets re-translated. That's the entire "incremental translation" workflow. No state file, no cache to invalidate, no dashboard to babysit. Your source of truth is the XML you already have in Git.

“But is it AI? Will it hallucinate my strings?”

No, and no. Localyze uses the Google Cloud Translation API — deterministic machine translation. Same input, same output.

That’s a deliberate choice. LLMs are lovely conversationalists and terrible localization pipelines: they drop entries, rewrite your placeholders, decide <b> tags are optional, and occasionally answer your string instead of translating it. For a file where a single malformed %d is a production crash, boring and predictable wins.

How the free part works 🤔

Sign up and you get free credits to try it out. When you want it to be genuinely unlimited, you add your own Google Cloud Translation API key:

1. Create a Google Cloud project.
2. Enable the Cloud Translation API.
3. Credentials → Create credentials → API key.
4. Paste it at localyze.app/api-keys.

The key is encrypted before it’s stored and never shown back to you — only the last four characters, so you can tell which one it is.

From that moment on, every translation — in the plugin and on the web — runs on your key. Zero credits deducted. No subscription. No plan gate. Any signed-in account can do this.

You pay Google directly for what you use, and Google’s free tier is generous enough that most solo devs and small teams translate an entire app for roughly the price of nothing. A saved key always takes precedence over credits; remove it and you’re back on credits instantly.

The realistic before/after

Before: 340 strings × 12 languages, a spreadsheet, three hours, one broken placeholder you find in a Play Store review two weeks later.

After: open the Localyze panel, click translate, watch the locale folders fill in. Review the diff. Commit.

The second time is better, because now you only mark the handful of strings you actually changed and the run takes seconds.

Try it 🔥

• Plugin: search Localyze in the JetBrains Marketplace, or Android Studio → Settings → Plugins.
• Web: localyze.app
• Docs & markers: localyze.app/rules
• Questions: localyze.app/faq

If you break it, tell me — I’d genuinely like to know. And if it saves you an afternoon, go spend that afternoon on literally anything other than a spreadsheet.

Every screenshot you share is a small privacy choice.

A friend recently sent me a screenshot of her inbox. She’d “blurred out” the sender’s name using the macOS Preview tool. I could still read it. Easily.

That’s not a rare bug. Most built-in screenshot tools just paint a smudge on top of the image. The real pixels are still there. Zoom in and the “hidden” text comes right back.

So I went looking for something better and found ImageBlur. It’s free, works in a browser tab, and never uploads your image. I’ve used it for two weeks and it’s already replaced three apps.

Here’s why.

Most online blur tools are shady

Search blur screenshot online and you get pages of sites that all do the same thing:

1. You upload your screenshot.
2. Their server keeps a copy.
3. You get a watermarked PNG back.

Fine for a photo of your dog. Not fine for a Stripe dashboard, a bank statement, or API keys.

ImageBlur is the opposite. The whole editor is a static site. Your image is decoded in your browser and stays in memory. Nothing goes over the network — you can watch the DevTools network tab stay empty. The privacy page says it plainly: no uploads, no accounts, EXIF stripped on export.

The redaction is done right

Drop an image, drag a mask, done.

One tool, Secure mask, with three modes:

• Blur — softens the area. Good for faces or logos. Not good for passwords: patient people with the right model can sometimes recover blurred text.
• Pixelate — same idea, retro look. Same caveat.
• Cover — a solid shape that actually paints over the pixels on export. Use this for card numbers, tokens, and addresses. The original bytes are gone.

The tool tells you this in the UI. That’s rare.

You can draw rectangles or ellipses, resize with handles, select multiple by dragging, and undo/redo like normal.

Face detection runs on your device

One click. The image never leaves the tab.

Click Detect faces and a small on-device model blurs every face it finds. Ten or a hundred, same speed.

Two things:

1. It works with Wi-Fi off — a good sign nothing is uploaded.
2. Face detectors miss profiles sometimes. Review before exporting.

Beautify mode replaces mockup apps

Device frame, gradient, shadow, aspect ratio — all in one panel.

Hit Export and a side panel opens with two modes: Raw or Beautify.

Beautify gives you:

• Solid, gradient, or mesh backgrounds (six tasteful presets).
• macOS and browser window frames.
• Padding and shadow sliders.
• Presets for Twitter/X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and 16:9.

If you post product updates, this quietly replaces a paid app.

The export is honest

• Renders at original resolution, not the preview size.
• EXIF metadata is stripped — no GPS, no camera model.
• Copy to clipboard as PNG in one click.

PNG, JPEG, or WebP, with a quality slider.

The 30-second flow

1. Open imageblur.cc.
2. Drop or paste a screenshot.
3. Press M, drag over the sensitive part, pick a mode.
4. Optional: click Detect faces.
5. Export, optionally Beautify, download or copy.

No signup, no upgrade prompt, no watermark.

Who it’s for

• Designers posting shots without opening Figma.
• Indie hackers sharing MRR without leaking customer emails.
• Support and QA sending bug repros with real user data.
• Journalists redacting sources and documents.
• Anyone who’s posted a screenshot and later realized their notification bar showed their bank balance.

If this was useful, a clap helps. Got a tool you like more? Drop it in the replies.