Every translation, saved on your device

How does automatic history work?

Every time you translate selected text — quick popup or full panel — the entry is saved locally the moment the translation appears. There's nothing to click and nothing to configure. Translate the same text again and Sonic Translate updates the existing entry instead of creating a duplicate, so your history stays clean. Each entry keeps the original text, the translation, and the language pair, so you can see at a glance what you looked up.

To browse it, open the full panel with Shift + E and switch to the History tab. Your starred favorites sit at the top, with the Recent list below — the last 20 entries are shown there.

Click any entry to re-translate it instantly, complete with the full dictionary with definitions and synonyms. That word you looked up on Tuesday and half-remember on Friday is two clicks away, not another search.

What are favorites?

Star any entry and it becomes a favorite — an entry that is never removed automatically. History holds 100 entries in total, and when it's full, the oldest non-favorite entries are evicted to make room. Favorites are exempt: they stay put no matter how many new translations come in.

The same rule applies to clearing: the Clear history button wipes your recent entries but keeps every favorite. So the vocabulary you're actually trying to learn survives both the cap and the cleanup — star it once and it's yours until you unstar or delete it yourself. Individual entries, favorite or not, can be deleted by hand straight from the History tab.

Does my history stay private?

Yes. Your history lives in the extension's local storage on your device — it is not synced between your browsers, not uploaded, and not readable by anyone but you. There is no server on our side that could receive it: no tracking by us, no analytics, no telemetry, no developer server. Selected text is sent only to Google Translate over HTTPS to be translated — the resulting history entry never leaves your machine.

That also means history doesn't follow you between computers. Your settings travel through your browser's own sync, but history is deliberately kept out of it — each browser profile keeps its own list, and uninstalling the extension removes it.

This is the same principle behind the whole extension: read how Sonic Translate handles privacy.

Can I turn it off?

Yes, with one switch. Open Options via the gear icon in the toolbar popup and flip the "Translation history" toggle off — from that moment, nothing is saved. Translations still work exactly the same; they just leave no record, which is worth knowing if you share a computer or translate anything sensitive. You can also clear what's already stored at any time: how to clear your translation history.

Frequently asked questions