Readlang on Safari: no extension, a bookmarklet that sometimes works, and the iPhone route

Three things people mean by Readlang on Safari

The table sorts them; the sections below go through each.

Checked 14 September 2026 against readlang.com and the Readlang forum.

Safari on a Mac: the bookmarklet

A bookmarklet is a bookmark whose address is a short piece of JavaScript rather than a web page; clicking it runs that code on the page you are on. Readlang's bookmarklet hands the page to the Web Reader, roughly the way the extension would in Chrome, so the words become clickable and the translations come from your account.

Setting it up

1. Sign in at readlang.com in Safari, so the bookmarklet has an account to talk to.
2. Show the Favorites bar if it is hidden, from the View menu.
3. Get the bookmarklet from Readlang: the site offers it for Safari on macOS and the forum carries the same code. Save any page as a bookmark in the Favorites bar, then edit that bookmark and replace its address with the bookmarklet code. We do not reproduce the code here; copy it from Readlang so you have the current version.
4. Allow third-party cookies. Readlang says this itself: the bookmarklet cannot see that you are signed in while Safari blocks cookies from other sites. Where the setting lives varies by version; on recent Safari it is generally the privacy option that prevents cross-site tracking. Turn it off, reload, try again.
5. Open an article in the language you are learning and click the bookmarklet.

What it can and cannot do

Once it works, you have the Web Reader on the page: click a word for a translation in place, select a run of words for a phrase, and everything you translate is saved to your account and scheduled for flashcards. Plan limits apply: on the free plan single words are unlimited and phrases stop at ten a day, up to six words each; Premium, at $6 a month or $48 a year, removes the daily limit.

What it cannot do is behave like an extension. There is no icon in the toolbar; you click the bookmark on each page, and the cookie setting you loosened for Readlang applies to every other site as well. It does nothing offline either; Readlang has no offline mode on any platform, as the Readlang offline page covers.

Safari on iPhone and iPad: two things people conflate

On iOS the phrase Readlang on Safari covers two different jobs, and only one of them is easy.

Reading readlang.com

This one works. readlang.com opens in Safari on an iPhone or iPad like any website: your library, your uploaded texts, the shared library and your flashcards are there. Readlang's own advice for phones, in a forum guide from June 2024, is to add the site to the home screen through the share menu so that it opens like an app. There is no native Readlang app and no offline mode, so the icon still needs a connection. The Readlang on iPhone page goes through that route in detail, and the app download page explains why there is nothing to download.

Reading other websites through the Web Reader

This is the hard one. There is no extension for Safari on iOS, so reading a live page through Readlang means the same bookmarklet as on the Mac, set up by hand. The forum guide from June 2024, Install the Readlang Web Reader on iOS Safari, has the steps: save any page as a bookmark, open the bookmarks list, edit that bookmark, and replace its address with the bookmarklet code from the post. It is fiddly on a phone keyboard, and not reliable everywhere: a forum thread from December 2025 reports the bookmarklet failing on the BBC website in Safari on an iPad. We cannot say which sites it fails on or why, only that the report exists. If a page will not cooperate, the fallback Readlang suggests for phones is the home-screen shortcut and texts imported from a desktop.

Why there is no Safari extension

We do not know, and we would rather not guess at Readlang's reasons. What can be said is what is published: an extension for Chrome, the same one installed in Edge, and since November 2025 a separate extension for Firefox, which arrived after a community contribution on the forum. Nothing for Safari, as of September 2026. If a Safari extension matters to you, the Readlang forum is where the Firefox one was asked for and where the founder answers. The extension page lists what exists for every browser; the Readlang guide covers the rest.

Alternatives on Apple devices

On a Mac: a different browser

The simplest fix on a Mac is not to use Safari for Readlang. Chrome installs the Web Reader from the Chrome Web Store, Edge installs the same extension, and Firefox has had its own since November 2025. Keep Safari for everything else and open the articles you want to read with Readlang in the browser that has the extension; it removes the cookie question entirely, and the steps are on the extension page.

On an iPhone or iPad: a native reader

Disclosure first: we make Readlang Mobile, a native reader for iPhone and iPad, independent of Readlang and not affiliated with it. It has no Safari extension either; nobody has one. What it has is a paste-a-link reader: copy the address of an article in Safari, open the app, paste it, and the article opens as tappable text. Tap a word and the translation appears in place; tap the first and last word of a phrase for the whole phrase. By default, translation comes from Google Translate through the app's server; in Settings you can switch to Apple Translate, which runs on the device. There is also a library of public-domain books graded A1 to C1, some with audiobooks.

The limits, so that this reads as an alternative and not an advert: it does not touch the page you are looking at in Safari; it covers about twenty languages, whichever Apple Translation supports on your device, rather than Readlang's hundred-plus; it has no video and no vocabulary export; it is iOS only. The free plan is 30 translations a day with articles by link and the whole library; Premium at $8.99 a month or $59.99 a year removes the limit. On a Mac, Chrome or Firefox is the answer; on an iPhone, for an article without editing a bookmark, this is. Open-source software on your own machine is a different direction; the Readlang vs LUTE page covers it.

Questions people ask