Support

No. Word Garner translates on the device, using the translation engine built into your phone. That is free, works offline, and needs no account. There is no API key to get at all: the app stopped taking one on 27 September 2026, and deletes any key an older version stored.

Any language can be added in Settings ▸ Languages — up to four at once. What differs is what the phone can do for each one, and the language picker marks both: a bolt for translation on the phone, a book for a dictionary pack.

Translated on the phone (Apple’s translation, iOS 18 or later; this is the list on iOS 26 — your phone is asked, so an older version may offer fewer): Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. The language models are free downloads, fetched from Settings ▸ Languages once, and work offline from then on.

Dictionary packs, downloaded on request: Chinese, Danish, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. A pack adds a noun’s gender and how a word is said, and finds the dictionary form of a word you captured inflected (casas → casa). English and German also show their irregular forms (went, Bücher); Chinese gives pinyin and finds a word captured in either script.

A pack also knows when a word is more than one kind of word — spar is a noun and a verb — and the word says so. Pick the one you meant under Edit capture, or keep both as separate words; a kind you chose travels with the word when you send it to someone.

A word can also mean more than one thing: Schloss is a castle and a lock. When you add a word or edit its capture, say which meaning you mean in a few words of your own — or, signed in to Lexis, tap the wand for the word’s meanings of every kind and pick one. Each kind and meaning is its own word, so the castle and the lock are kept apart, and the meaning shows beside the word. Lexis translates the meaning you chose; the phone’s own translator only ever sees the word. Editing a translation still lists its other meanings.

What each language’s pack does and does not cover is under what Word Garner cannot do yet.

A language the phone cannot translate still works: the word says the phone cannot translate it, and you can write the translation yourself, or ask Lexis for one with a tap.

The app

• It is for iPhone only. Android follows later.
• Translation on the phone needs iOS 18 or later. On an older version a captured word is kept, but is not translated until you type the translation yourself or ask Lexis for one.
• At most four languages at a time.
• Traditional Chinese is not supported yet. Simplified Chinese is.
• Sync between devices is iPhone and iPad only, iOS 17 or later, through your own iCloud (Settings ▸ Data ▸ iCloud sync, off by default). There is no sync with Android yet; move words there with Settings ▸ Data ▸ export and import.
• Lexis needs a network connection and an account (Sign in with Apple, or an email address), and has a daily allowance.
• A capture is a word (up to 40 characters), a phrase (80) or a sentence (300), not a page of text.
• One vocabulary holds at most 60,000 words.

The languages

• Irregular forms (went, Bücher) are shown for English and German only. For Danish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish the pack gives the gender and finds the dictionary form of an inflected word, but lists no conjugations or plurals.
• Swedish and Danish are supported, with thin pronunciation: the packs hold about 4,400 Swedish and 6,500 Danish pronunciations, so most words have none. Their nouns show c (common gender, the en-words) or n (neuter, the ett/et-words). Danish also resolves fewer inflected words to their dictionary form than the larger packs.
• Russian pronunciations are sometimes a narrow phonetic transcription in square brackets rather than the usual slashes.
• Chinese shows Mandarin pinyin rather than IPA, and no gender or forms, because Chinese has neither.
• No pack for Arabic, Dutch, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian or Vietnamese: they are translated on the phone, and Lexis can add a pronunciation, an explanation and an example.

From Lexis, Word Garner’s own service — the things a machine translator cannot give you. Sign in to use it: with Apple, with Google, or with an email address and a password. It is optional, you are asked about it once (when you tap something that needs it, or on the Lexis row in Settings ▸ Translation), and saying no leaves everything else exactly as it was.

There is a free allowance each day: every field you ask for counts once, and it starts again at midnight UTC. Settings ▸ Translation shows what is left. Nothing is ever sent without a tap: capturing a word does not reach the service, and an explanation, an example or a pronunciation is bought only when you ask for it. Requests are never queued — offline, the app says so rather than sending it later.

What the service sends, what it keeps, and how to delete the account is set out in the privacy policy.

Settings ▸ Account ▸ Delete account. It removes everything the service holds — an anonymous identifier and a daily counter — and revokes the Sign in with Apple grant. You are asked to sign in once more to confirm, because revoking requires it.

Your words, translations, history and backups are on your phone and are not touched. Signing out, in the same place, just ends the session on that phone.

Turn on Settings ▸ Capture ▸ Check a share before saving and every share opens a small sheet over the app you were reading, showing exactly what will be saved. Trim it to the word you meant and tap Save; the link is kept as the source and stays out of the field. It is off by default, because a share that lands without a word from anybody is what a share sheet is for — and a capture that arrived wrong can still be stopped and edited on the entry.

Reading apps do not agree on what a share contains. Kindle and Apple Books send the highlight with the book title after it, and Word Garner knows those shapes and keeps only the highlight. Other apps — Gospel Library among them — send a reference, the passage and a link, and nothing in the text says which part is which: “Mosiah 3:19” and the line beside it are both just lines.

For anything saved without trimming, Word Garner asks rather than guesses. A share it cannot read on its own waits on the home screen; tap it, pick the part you meant to keep, and the rest becomes the entry’s source, so the reference is not lost. Links are always dropped, and the app they point at is used as the source name where it is one we recognise.

Yes. Open the entry and tap Stop on the “Translating…” row. The entry stays, the reply is discarded even if it arrives afterwards, and the word can then be edited — which is not possible while a translation is in flight — and asked for again. This is the way out of a capture that arrived wrong: stop it, fix the text, retry.

Yes, and it depends on what you capture: a word up to 40 characters, a phrase up to 80, a sentence up to 300. Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters count twice, so there it is 20, 40 and 150 — one of those characters says about what two or three letters do elsewhere.

The limits keep Lexis a dictionary rather than a free way to have long texts written about: they are checked in the app as you type, when you share, and again by Lexis itself. A longer capture is refused with a message saying so rather than saved and left unanswerable. Lexis also has a daily allowance per account; Settings ▸ Translation shows what is left.

The whole vocabulary has a ceiling too: 60,000 words. Past it a new word is refused with a message until you delete some, and an import adds words up to it and says how many it left out. A word you already keep can still be captured again. The number is set by what a backup, and restoring one, can handle on a phone.

No. It is for the words you actually meet while reading: rare, specific, easy to forget. It is not a general dictionary, and it is a poor fit for very common words and for words with many senses. Those get one short translation and one short explanation, not the full entry a dictionary would give. For a word like that, keep the sentence you found it in; the sense it had there is the one worth remembering.

A capture past its limit is refused while you type it, with the limit named. If a request simply failed, the entry keeps a retry button; if Lexis says today's allowance is spent, it comes back at midnight UTC.

Settings ▸ Data exports the whole vocabulary as a Word Garner file — a .wordgarner file with plain JSON inside — or as an Anki deck. The file can be imported back into Word Garner on another device (an older .json export still imports too); importing never overwrites or deletes anything, it only adds what is missing.

The app writes periodic backups into its own folder on the device and keeps the last few. Those are local: if you lose the phone, they go with it. For a real backup, export to a file and keep it somewhere of your own.

Not to capture, translate, revise or export — those never need one. Lexis, for pronunciations, explanations and examples, does. Hosted storage that survives a change of phone is being considered for later and would need one too; the privacy policy is updated before any of it ships.

Delete individual words by swiping them away in the list, or uninstall the app to remove everything at once — vocabulary, settings and local backups. If you signed in, delete the account first (Settings ▸ Account), which removes what Lexis holds.

Detection is a guess, and a word can belong to more than one language (Gift is German for poison). Open the word and use Language: … — change; the app records it as your decision and translates again, and nothing overrules it afterwards.

Yes, please — the report form, or the email address above. Concrete cases help most: the word you captured, what you expected, and what you got.