This release mainly focuses on macOS improvements, while other platforms just get a bit of extra polish this time. More substantial updates are on the way soon!

New file formats

Two widely used translation formats are now supported:

• Qt Linguist (.ts), the standard format in Qt applications
• Microsoft RESX, the XML-based format common in .NET projects

With these additions, Poedit can handle more of the formats translators encounter in day-to-day work, without resorting to external tools.

Gettext 0.26 and more languages

Poedit now ships with GNU gettext 0.26. Besides all the usual bug fixes and improvements that come from staying current, this version also adds extraction support for newer programming languages. You can now extract strings from Rust, TypeScript, Go and D source code directly. JavaScript/JSX support is improved as well.

Glossaries in DeepL pre-translation

If you use DeepL through Poedit Pro, glossaries can now be applied automatically during pre-translation. This reduces the amount of post-editing needed, because project-specific terminology is respected from the start instead of needing manual cleanup afterwards.

And the usual fixes

As always, 3.7 also includes many smaller fixes and quality-of-life tweaks.

Merging for non-PO file formats

msgmerge has long been used in gettext-based workflows to update PO translations based on new POT files. However, many projects rely on other formats for localization. Poedit 3.6 introduces merging support for JSON, XLIFF, bringing similar functionality to all formats editable in the app.

How it works

When updating translations, Poedit intelligently aligns existing entries with the new source material. This means:

1. Existing translations remain intact when the corresponding source string is unchanged.
2. New source strings are added as untranslated entries.
3. Strings that no longer exist in the source are removed.
4. For strings with IDs, translations are preserved even if the source text has changed slightly.

This makes updating translations for non-PO formats as seamless as it has always been for gettext users. Whether you’re working with a JSON-based system or XLIFF files for software internationalization, or other structured translation files, you now have an easy way to keep them up to date, without having to manually pre-translate from scratch or copy-paste.

Improved WordPress files compiler

Previously, Poedit could only handle WordPress .l10n.php and JSON files when connecting to a remote WordPress installation. In Poedit 3.6, we’ve introduced local compilation of these files. In fact, we’ve built a custom compiler for Poedit to ensure consistent behavior with gettext.

Performance and UI improvements

The progress UI has been enhanced with better status updates, including summaries for pre-translation, Excel operations, and other imports. The UI is much more responsible when running background tasks.

Excel import and export in particular are now significantly faster.

Other improvements

• Apple XCLOC Support – Apple’s XCLOC format is used for Xcode localization projects, and Poedit now includes initial support for it.
• Updated bundled GNU gettext to 0.23.1.
• Added Serbian (Latin) and Uyghur translations.

Excel import/export

You can now export translations to an Excel file, as well as import translations from Excel spreadsheets into translation files in any of the formats supported by Poedit. This is especially useful if you need to work with translation agencies or otherwise manage translations outside of Poedit.

WordPress 6.5’s Performant Translations

WordPress 6.5 introduced Performant Translations, a new storage format for translations that brings ~25% improvement in loading speed. Poedit now supports this and will automatically compile translations into l10n.php files when uploading translations via FTP.

Laravel Blade templates

Poedit now supports the Blade template format for string extraction, in addition to Twig and Volt. Blade templates are used by the popular Laravel framework and Poedit fully supports them, including the handling of embedded PHP blocks. By default, the *.blade.php extension is used, but you can customize this in the translation file’s properties.

Windows 11 improvements

Poedit has been optimized for Windows 11.^[1] The visuals have been updated, and the app is now 64-bit and runs better on modern systems. Accessibility with the NVDA screen reader has also been improved.

And more…

As usual, there’s a bunch of small (or sometimes not so small) things:

• Added a tool to the Translation menu to remove translations that are identical to the source text, which is a nuisance that some software produces.
• Further improvements to JSON support, e.g. better compatibility with Angular files.
• Significant performance enhancements to QA checks and text editing.
• Many under-the-hood plumbing improvements: 64-bit Windows binaries, system ICU is now used (resulting in smaller downloads), etc.

Happy translating! 🌍📝

Cloud sync with Localazy

One of the standout features of Poedit 3.4 is the addition of support for syncing with the Localazy localization platform directly from the app.

Localazy is a highly automated translation management platform that strives to make the localization process efficient and enjoyable. It is also very developer-friendly and has various features to help you manage your translations effortlessly, such as automated workflows or rich context banks with screenshots and glossaries to ensure your contributors have all they need for precise translation.

Poedit 3.4 offers seamless two-way integration with Localazy, enabling you to switch between desktop editing in Poedit and web-based translation in Localazy effortlessly. This integration ensures that your work remains synchronized, whether you’re online or offline. You can even work on translations offline in Poedit and then upload your changes in bulk to Localazy when you’re back online, simplifying your workflow and enhancing efficiency.

macOS Sonoma

Poedit 3.4 is fully compatible with macOS 14 Sonoma. However, please note that with this update, we have had to drop support for macOS 10.13 (you can use an older version there, though).

GNU gettext 0.22

We’ve updated bundled GNU gettext to version 0.22 with its many improvements.

Glossaries import from CSV

Perhaps one of the most requested features in Poedit 3.4 is the ability to import glossaries from CSV files. To import existing glossaries, use the + button in sidebar’s Terminology tab.

…and more

As always, there are also small UI improvements and fixes all over the app.

Enjoy exploring the new version, and as always, feel free to reach out to us with any feedback or questions.

Happy translating! 🌍📝

JSON

With this new release, users can now use the same editor not only for Gettext and XLIFF files, but also for the increasingly popular JSON translation files. Commonly used by web and mobile frameworks, JSON is now a first-class citizen in Poedit. The ability to translate these files directly in Poedit can save users time and streamline their workflow.

A notable example of a framework that uses JSON for localization is Flutter. Flutter is a popular open-source framework for mobile app development, and its built-in support for internationalization and localization makes it a great choice for developers who want to create multilingual applications. Flutter uses the ARB format for localization, which is essentially a JSON file with additional metadata – and Poedit 3.3 supports it out of the box.

Replacing source text with reference translations

In addition to these new file format capabilities, Poedit 3.3 also includes the ability to replace source text with another translation. This is particularly useful when a file uses only symbolic IDs for the source text instead of real human-readable text.

With this feature, users can now load English – or any other language – as a replacement source text and translate from it. All advanced features such as pre-translation or QA checks, work transparently with the replacement source. This feature isn’t limited to files with symbolic IDs and can be used to change the language pair to a more convenient one.

• You can optionally use your own DeepL Pro API key.
• Added QA warnings about incorrect use of placeholders.
• Added format string highlighting for Objective-C, Qt, KDE, Lua, C# and Pascal.

• It is now possible to configure machine translation directly in the pre-translation window. We also added a new “Don’t mark machine translation as needing work” option for situations when you don’t have high quality requirements.
• Added Go → Previously Edited menu command for easier navigation when you need to return to correct something.
• XLIFF: added support for resname/name attributes.
• This version is fully compatible with the latest macOS 12.4 Monterey release.

What’s New

macOS Big Sur and Apple Silicon

Poedit 3 comes with full support for macOS 11 Big Sur and runs natively on Apple Silicon (M1) Macs.

Modernized user interface

Poedit’s UI was updated thorough with many enhancements:

• A completely reworked welcome screen with quick access to recently opened files
• Entirely new source code occurrences viewers rewritten from the grounds up, with syntax highlighting for virtually all programming languages
• Source and translation string length indicators in the editing area
• Automatic reloading of files modified outside of Poedit
• New application icon on Windows

Terminology search

The new Terminology tab in Poedit’s sidebar provides a quick way to check consistency of your translation. You can search previous translations within the file or even your entire translation memory. You can create a personal glossary too.

Smart placeholders in pre-translation

Machine translation is now much smarter about recognizing special-syntax placeholders in the text and preserving them in the translation unmodified.

More customization

Customizable file extensions: change file extension mappings in Translation → Properties to e.g. treat .html files as Twig templates.

Configurable quality checks: you can now disable categories that are not helpful for your use, or ignore false positives on specific strings.

Gutenberg

WordPress FTP access now supports Gutenberg and JSON translation files and automatically creates the necessary files when you upload translations.

Upgrading to Poedit 3

Poedit Pro 3 is a paid upgrade. If you have an active Pro+ subscription or purchased Poedit Pro on or after November 12, 2020, your license was already upgraded for free. If you have an older license, you can upgrade it with a significant discount.

Poedit’s free version remains free in the same extent as before.

New Updates Model

Up until now, Poedit used the traditional model of infrequent major paid updates (the last one was four years ago!). This forced us to hold back features until a new major version, which was frustrating for everybody.

So we’re trying something else with Poedit 3: features will be released when they’re ready and you decide if and when to pay for an update.

A Poedit Pro license now includes one year of free updates and one year of machine translation. After the year, you can continue using the older version indefinitely, or you can renew the license when it suits you — whether that’s right away or after a few years is up to you. And if you have a Pro+ “soft” subscription, nothing changes: all updates are included and if you cancel the subscription, you still retain a working license, only without machine translation and updates.

On Aug 28, 2000, Poedit 1.0 (then called “poEdit”) was released to the world. By then, I worked on it for a little while, since Autumn 1999; it all started as a toy CS student project. The first version looked like this:

The next year, a new modern operating system was released and Poedit supported it soon afterwards – Windows XP. And Mac OS X followed as well:

Poedit came a long way since then, didn’t it. More than 6,000 code changes later, a lot have changed – GNU gettext evolved, became widely used, Poedit gained XLIFF support, pre-translation and a Pro version. But some original code still lives on.

And now, back to work on Poedit 3.