Settings

The popup UI is divided into three sections: Engine, Translate, and Limits. Settings are stored in chrome.storage.local under the hoverTranslateState key.

Engine

The Engine section reports Chrome built-in Translator API readiness.

Ready for English ⇄ Japanese means Chrome already has the required language packs.
Prepare language packs before first use means Chrome can download the packs, but the download must start from a user click.
Prepare starts the English → Japanese and Japanese → English language pack setup.
Chrome 138+ desktop required means the browser does not expose the Translator API.

Translate

The Translate section is the main control surface.

ON/OFF toggle

The coral pill toggle enables or disables the extension globally. When off, Hover Translate does nothing regardless of mode.

Mode switch

Hover translates the nearest paragraph after a 300 ms debounce.
Selection translates only the text you explicitly select.

Switching modes applies immediately and discards any in-flight translation from the previous mode.

Trigger switch

When Mode is Selection, choose how translation fires:

Shortcut: press Alt+Shift+T while text is selected.
Auto: translate automatically 300 ms after mouse release.

Shortcut row

The current shortcut binding is shown only in Selection + Shortcut mode. The Change link opens chrome://extensions/shortcuts.

Limits

The Limits section defines the maximum number of characters in a single translation.

Max characters per request accepts values from 500 to 5000.
The default value is 1500.
This number is used for the Text too long error.
In Hover mode, this also caps how far up the DOM tree Hover Translate looks for a containing block.

Stored state

Hover Translate keeps the following fields inside hoverTranslateState:

{
  "enabled": true,
  "mode": "hover",
  "selectionTrigger": "shortcut",
  "maxChars": 1500
}