We’ve already written about the Apple Translate app coming to the Apple Watch for the first time with watchOS 11. However, there are also new features coming to Translate on iPhone and iPad. More specifically, there’s a new API available that lets developers integrate Apple’s translation tool into their apps.
Apple Translate API for iOS apps
As detailed in one of the WWDC 2024 sessions, Apple recently introduced a new Translation API with iOS 17.4 that integrates Apple Translate into third-party apps. With the API, developers no longer have to rely on third-party platforms to provide translation features in their apps.
“Discover how you can translate text across different languages in your app using the new Translation framework. We’ll show you how to quickly display translations in the system UI, and how to translate larger batches of text for your app’s UI,” the session description reads.
With the API, these apps can take advantage of the same machon-device machine learning models used by Apple Translate. This means that translations also work offline and downloaded models are shared between the main app and any third-party apps using the API. This is good news since the models used by the apps won’t use unnecessary storage.
Although this API is available for devices running iOS 17.4 and later, there are some exclusive features coming with the iOS 18 SDK. This includes the ability to translate a single string or batches of strings and show translation results in any user interface.
iOS 18 is available as a beta preview for developers. A public beta is coming next month, while the official launch is set for this fall.
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