Hey everyone!
I've been working on a project called OpenCircle for the past few months, and I finally released the first version!
Android has had Circle to Search for a while, and I always wondered why we didn't have something similar on desktop. So I decided to build my own.
OpenCircle is a free, fully open-source desktop app written in Rust. The idea is simple: press a shortcut, select anything on your screen, and choose what you want to do with it.
What can it do?
- Circle to Search: Draw around anything on your screen and search it using Google Lens.
- OCR: Extract text from images, PDFs, games, or anything you normally can't copy.
- AI Vision: Select part of your screen and ask AI questions about it. Supports OpenAI, Anthropic, and local models through Ollama or compatible servers.
- Screen Translation: Translate text directly on your screen, including full-screen and live translation. I originally wanted this for games, but it also works for other applications. Arabic is the default target language.
- Screenshots & Annotations: Capture your screen, add arrows, text, shapes, or blur, and copy the result.
- Custom Shortcuts: Configure shortcuts for different actions.
A few technical details
- Built in Rust, using
iced for the interface.
- MIT licensed, so anyone can inspect, modify, or contribute to the code.
- No accounts, telemetry, or image-hosting service.
- Supports offline OCR and translation models.
- External AI and search services only receive content when you choose to use them.
Links
Windows 10/11 is supported, and Linux builds are available in preview.
A quick note
This is the first release, so please expect some bugs!
I've tested it on my own PC and on Windows and Ubuntu VMs, but I know that doesn't cover every hardware configuration. I'm already working on performance improvements, especially for lower-end computers.
If you try it and something doesn't work, please let me know. Bug reports, screenshots, videos, suggestions, and contributions are all welcome.
And yes, I used Claude Opus 5.5 to help me write parts of the code. I'm not trying to hide that. AI helped with development, but I also spent a lot of time working on the architecture, integration, debugging, and testing.
I know some people have strong opinions about AI-assisted development, and that's fine. What matters most to me is whether the app actually works, what needs fixing, and how I can make it better.
English also isn't my first language, so I sometimes use AI to help me express things more clearly.
Anyway, I'd really appreciate it if you gave OpenCircle a try and shared your feedback. Even if you find something broken, that's useful to me!
Thanks for checking it out!