Contributing to Auto Translate Clipboard

July 10, 2026 · View on GitHub

Thank you for your interest in contributing! This document explains how to report issues, suggest features, and submit code changes.

Code of Conduct

This project follows the Code of Conduct. By participating, you are expected to uphold it.

Reporting bugs

  1. Search the existing issues first to avoid duplicates.
  2. Open a new issue using the Bug report template.
  3. Include your Windows version, the app version, clear steps to reproduce, what you expected, and what actually happened. Screenshots help a lot.

For security vulnerabilities, please do not open a public issue — see SECURITY.md instead.

Suggesting features

Open an issue using the Feature request template. Describe the problem you are trying to solve, not only the solution you have in mind — that makes it easier to find the best design together.

Development setup

Requirements:

  • Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
  • .NET 8 SDK or newer

The project is unpackaged WinUI 3 and builds with the dotnet CLI; no Visual Studio workload is required.

Build and run during development:

dotnet build AutoTranslateWinUI.csproj -p:Platform=x64 -r win-x64

Create a self-contained release build:

dotnet publish AutoTranslateWinUI.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 -p:Platform=x64 --self-contained true -o dist\AutoTranslate

Project structure

  • MainWindow — the translation window, tray icon, global hotkey, and clipboard workflow.
  • SettingsDialog — theme, hotkey capture, run at startup, and the language picker.
  • AboutDialog — app information and links.
  • Services/ — translation, language list, settings persistence, global hotkey, and startup registration.

Submitting changes (pull requests)

  1. Fork the repository and create a branch from main: git checkout -b feature/my-change
  2. Make your changes. Keep the code style consistent with the surrounding code (naming, formatting, XAML conventions).
  3. Build the project and test the affected workflow manually (hotkey, tray, translate, clipboard) before opening the PR.
  4. Keep pull requests focused — one feature or fix per PR is much easier to review than a large mixed change.
  5. Open the pull request against main and fill in the PR template.

By contributing, you agree that your contributions will be licensed under the MIT License that covers this project.

Questions

If you are unsure about anything, feel free to open an issue and ask, or reach out via the links in the README.