Droidlate

July 5, 2026 · View on GitHub

Droidlate is a lightweight, local, web-based translation workspace for Android strings.xml resource files. It features a clean, responsive, Weblate-inspired Single Page Application (SPA) designed to make translating Android applications fast, accurate, and resilient.

Core Usecases

  • Local Offline Workspace: Translate and edit local localization files on your machine. Avoid uploading sensitive resource files to third-party servers or setting up heavy server-side infrastructure.
  • Preserving XML Formatting & Comments: Standard XML parsers rewrite files, wiping out comments, custom spacing, ordering, and attributes. Droidlate's custom parsing engine performs in-place character index replacements to maintain exact XML styling, comments, structure, and formatting.
  • Plurals & String-Arrays Support: Seamlessly edit standard <string> elements, <plurals> (supporting quantity qualifiers like one, other, etc.), and ordered <string-array> lists within the same unified workspace.
  • Tracking Outdated Translations: When developers update a base string in values/strings.xml, translations can become outdated. Droidlate normalizes and hashes base strings into a lightweight local sidecar metadata file, highlighting which target translations need updates.
  • Placeholder Verification & QA: Mismatched Java-style placeholders (e.g., %s, %1$d in the source but % d or missing in the target) cause runtime crashes on Android. Droidlate validates alignment on every keystroke and flags warnings.
  • Orphaned String Pruning: Over time, strings are deleted from the main codebase but linger in translation files. Droidlate lists these "orphaned" strings and lets you prune them with a single click.

Key Features

  • Interactive Language Creation: Add and initialize new target locales (e.g., es, fr, zh-rCN) directly from the dashboard UI without manual directory setup.
  • Local Translation Memory (TM): Indexes your existing translations locally to suggest exact and partial completions offline, facilitating consistent phrasing across your codebase.
  • Translatable Flags & Read-Only View: Respects translatable="false" base flags. Non-translatable strings are isolated under a read-only filter tab and auto-pruned from target XML files.
  • Automatic Update Checker: Periodically checks PyPI in the background (cached for 24 hours) and alerts you in the web UI and CLI if a new release is available.
  • Sleek UI with Dark Mode: A modern HSL-tailored interface featuring layout toggles (especially optimized for mobile web layouts), status indicators, and translation statistics.
  • Keyboard Shortcuts: Built for productivity. Use Ctrl+S to instantly Save & Next, and Alt+1/Alt+2 to paste dynamic suggestions.
  • Auto-Translation Suggestions: Integrates with translation suggestion services (like Google Translate and MyMemory) to suggest translations on the fly.
  • Atomicity & Crash Resilience: Local updates are written to the target XML file first, then metadata sidecars second. If interrupted, the app automatically flags the key as Outdated on the next run, ensuring no state corruption.
  • Secure Server Binding: The local Flask server strictly binds to the loopback interface (127.0.0.1), ensuring your filesystem is safe from external network access.

Installation

The recommended way to install Droidlate is globally using pipx:

pipx install droidlate

Alternatively, you can install it using standard pip:

pip install droidlate

Local Development

If you want to run it from source or install in editable mode:

# Clone the repository and install dependencies
git clone https://github.com/estiaksoyeb/Droidlate.git
cd Droidlate
pip install -e .

Usage & CLI Commands

Once installed, you can launch the Droidlate workspace using the droidlate CLI command:

1. Auto-Scan Mode (Default)

Run the command in your Android project root (or near your resources). Droidlate will auto-detect typical folders like app/src/main/res/, src/main/res/, or res/:

droidlate

2. Specify Resource Directory

You can explicitly define where the Android resource directory is located:

droidlate --res-dir /path/to/android/app/src/main/res

3. Single-File Mode

To translate or edit a single pair of strings files directly:

droidlate --source app/src/main/res/values/strings.xml --target app/src/main/res/values-es/strings.xml

4. Custom Port

Run the local web server on a different port:

droidlate --port 8080

Repository Structure

├── droidlate/                     # Package root
│   ├── parser/
│   │   ├── xml_parser.py          # Expat character-level round-trip parser
│   │   └── diff_engine.py         # Hashing, validation, and status engines
│   ├── translator/
│   │   └── engine.py              # Translation Orchestrator
│   ├── web/
│   │   ├── server.py              # Flask server and local REST APIs
│   │   └── static/                # Single Page Web App (HTML, CSS, JS)
│   ├── cli_wizard.py              # CLI console loop wizard
│   └── main.py                    # Command entry point
├── pyproject.toml                 # Package configuration and script registration
├── requirements.txt               # App dependencies
└── README.md                      # This documentation

Credits

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0). See LICENSE for details.