Read News in Your Language — On Any Device, Even Installed as an App

You can subscribe to RSS feeds in Bulgarian, German, Japanese, or any other language — but reading them comfortably is a different story. Most RSS readers ship in English only and leave translation to you. Installing an app version of the reader on your phone often strips the browser's translate menu, breaking even the workarounds.

This guide covers how Brief Digest handles multilingual reading across every device — and gives you a concrete recommendation for your exact setup. (If you're new to RSS, start with our beginner's guide to RSS feeds.)

Don't need translation? Install as a PWA. It's the best setup, period.

If English is fine for your interface, install Brief Digest as a PWA (Progressive Web App) on whatever device you use. It's the best experience available, regardless of which browser, OS, or screen size you're on:

• Home Screen icon — tap to launch, just like a native app
• Full-screen UI — no browser address bar, no tab clutter
• Offline reading — service worker caches recently viewed stories
• Push notifications — supported on iOS 16.4+, Android, and desktop Chromium browsers
• Faster perceived launch — the app shell is cached, so first paint is near-instant
• Cross-device — same Firebase sign-in syncs your feeds, bookmarks, and read status

To install: open Brief Digest in your browser, look for the install icon in the address bar (desktop) or the "Add to Home Screen" option in the share menu (mobile). On iOS this must be done from Safari (Apple's restriction); on every other platform, any modern browser works.

The complication only appears once you want your interface translated. That's where it gets interesting.

The three layers that need to work in your language

Reading non-English news in your native language requires three independent layers to cooperate:

1. Layer 1 — Feed content. The articles themselves. RSS supports any language out of the box; your reader either ingests them as-is, or it doesn't.
2. Layer 2 — App interface. The menus, buttons, labels, settings. Most readers hard-code this in English.
3. Layer 3 — Summaries and headlines. If the reader generates AI summaries (Brief Digest does, most RSS readers don't), are those summaries in your language, or the source's?

Most readers handle Layer 1 fine and leave Layers 2 and 3 to the user. That breaks the moment you install the reader as a PWA — which strips Layer 2 and 3 of the browser's translate menu on most platforms.

How Brief Digest covers all three

Brief Digest gives you three independent translation paths so the right combination works for your device:

• Layer 1 — Free. Subscribe to feeds in any language. Our catalog has 400+ curated feeds spanning 23 languages, plus you can paste any RSS URL.
• Layer 2 — Pro. App interface translated to your chosen language. Menus, buttons, categories, settings — all 350+ UI strings. Generated once per language and cached; works inside a PWA install just as well as in a browser tab.
• Layer 3 — Pro. Force-translate every story headline and summary to a single chosen language, regardless of the article's source language. Useful when most of your feeds are in a language you don't read fluently.

The Free tier also gets a fourth implicit layer: browser-native translation. When you open Brief Digest in a regular browser tab, the browser's translate menu handles the UI and summaries on demand. This is the simplest path and works for most people. The catch — it doesn't work in PWA standalone mode on most platforms.

The iOS PWA situation is genuinely unique

One platform deserves its own paragraph: iOS. Apple requires every browser on the iPhone and iPad to use the WebKit engine — Chrome on iOS is Chrome's UI wrapped around Safari. When you install a website as a PWA on iOS ("Add to Home Screen"), it runs in WebKit's standalone runtime, which exposes only Apple's translation service to selected text via long-press.

Apple's translation service covers 19 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Ukrainian, and Hindi.

Everything else — Bulgarian, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Swedish, Hungarian, Swahili, and roughly 200 more — has no in-PWA translation path on iOS. Browser-native translation engines (Google Translate in Chrome, Microsoft Translator in Edge) are unreachable from the standalone PWA runtime. You either keep the app in a browser tab (where those engines still work) or upgrade to Pro and load our pre-generated translation pack.

This is the one differentiator where Pro is genuinely the only solution rather than a convenience.

Your exact setup — by device and language need

Use this table to pick your setup. The rows are devices; the columns are whether you need a non-English interface.

Reading this table: if the second column applies to you, just install the PWA. Done. If the third column applies, the trade-off is whether browser tab + native translate is enough (Free) or you want the dedicated app experience with your language baked in (Pro).

Step-by-step setup for your device

Concrete clicks for each platform. Pick your device, follow the path that matches your needs.

Windows desktop

To install as PWA (Chrome or Edge):

1. Open briefdigest.news in Chrome or Edge
2. Look for the install icon in the address bar (a small monitor or "+" icon, right side near the bookmarks star)
3. Click it → click Install
4. The app opens in its own window with no browser chrome, and a shortcut is added to your Start Menu

To enable browser translation (Chrome/Edge browser tab — Free path):

1. Open Settings → Languages → make sure your target language is in Preferred languages
2. Right-click anywhere on briefdigest.news → Translate to {your language}
3. Chrome remembers the preference for the domain — auto-translates on future visits

Mac desktop

To install as PWA:

• Safari (macOS 14+): File menu → Add to Dock. The app appears in the Dock and Launchpad.
• Chrome or Edge: Click the install icon in the address bar → Install. App appears in Applications.

To enable browser translation:

• Safari: Click the translate icon in the address bar (looks like 文A) → Translate to {your language}. Apple Translate handles the 19 supported languages.
• Chrome/Edge: Right-click → Translate to {your language}. Google Translate (Chrome) or Microsoft Translator (Edge) supports 100+ languages.

iPhone / iPad

To install as PWA (Safari is the only option that fully installs):

1. Open briefdigest.news in Safari (not Chrome or Edge — those can install but it's the same WebKit standalone runtime)
2. Tap the Share button at the bottom of the screen (square with up-arrow)
3. Scroll down → tap Add to Home Screen
4. Confirm. The app icon now lives on your Home Screen and launches full-screen

To translate inside the PWA (only if your language is in Apple's 19):

• Long-press any text in a story → tap Translate in the popup
• This translates selected text only, not the whole page. For UI + story titles + summaries translated app-wide inside an iOS PWA, you'll need Pro.

If your language is NOT in Apple Translate's 19 (Bulgarian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, etc.): don't install as PWA. Use Chrome or Edge in a regular browser tab — the ⋯ menu → Translate activates Google Translate or Microsoft Translator, which support your language. Or upgrade to Pro to get UI + story titles + summaries translated inside the installed PWA. See our deep-dive on Apple Translate vs Google Translate language coverage for the full list.

Android

To install as PWA:

1. Open briefdigest.news in Chrome, Edge, or Samsung Internet
2. Tap the ⋮ menu (top right) → Install app (or "Add to Home Screen", depending on browser)
3. Confirm. Icon appears on your Home Screen, app launches full-screen

To enable browser translation (works in both PWA and browser tab on Android):

1. Tap the ⋮ menu → Translate
2. Pick your target language. Chrome remembers the preference per domain.

Android PWAs strip Chrome's full-page translate banner in standalone mode — verified May 2026 on Pixel 7 emulator. Long-press on text still opens Android's system Google Translate (100+ languages, more than iOS Apple Translate's 19), but only translates the selected text, not the whole page. For full UI translation in PWA install, Pro covers it server-side — UI, story titles, and summaries all in your language.

What stays in the source language

One honest caveat: full article bodies in reader mode stay in the source language. When you tap "Read in reader mode" on a story, Brief Digest renders the original article inside an iframe overlay. We do not translate the article body itself — only the title, the AI-generated summary, and the app interface around it.

If you're in a browser tab, your browser's translate menu can still translate the article body on demand. If you're in PWA standalone mode, you'd open the original article in your browser to translate it there, or stick with our translated title and summary.

Reader mode body translation is a feature we may add to Pro later, but at the current scale it would meaningfully change our cost structure, and we'd rather ship it deliberately than rush it.

Pricing — straight up

Brief Digest Free covers 25 feeds, 1 daily refresh, 3-day digest history, full-text search, reader mode, bookmarks (50), sentiment filtering, smart categorization, and browser-native translation in any browser tab. For roughly 70% of users this is enough.

Pro is $2.99/month — 200 feeds, 30 daily refreshes, 1-month history, unlimited bookmarks, parallel AI processing, custom categories, keyword blocklist and priority rules, email digest delivery, and the two translation features described above (app interface translation + force-output language). Cancel anytime.

To be transparent: as of writing, the paying-user base is small, and the project is funded by the maker's time rather than recurring revenue. The $2.99 covers compute (clustering, AI summarization, translation pack generation) and keeps the lights on so the product can keep improving. If translation works for you, supporting Pro is the most direct way to keep it improving.

Where to start

The fastest path: open Brief Digest, browse the feed catalog, and add a few sources. If you're on a device with browser-native translation available (everything except non-Apple-language users on iOS PWA installs), Free is enough to evaluate the product end-to-end. If you decide to install as a PWA and your interface language matters, Pro covers it.

Related reading: our step-by-step browser translation setup guide for browser tab users, and the 2026 RSS reader comparison if you're choosing between options.

Frequently Asked Questions

If I install Brief Digest as a PWA, do I lose browser translation?

Mostly yes on every platform. iOS WebKit standalone exposes only Apple Translate (19 langs) via long-press, no full-page translation. Android PWA standalone strips Chrome's full-page translate banner (verified May 2026 on Pixel emulator); long-press still gives Google Translate per word. Desktop Chrome/Edge PWAs typically lose the menu too. Pro sidesteps all of this by translating UI, story titles, and summaries server-side and rendering them inside the app — works in every PWA install regardless of platform.

Does the Pro UI translation pack cover categories and admin labels too?

It covers all user-facing UI: menus, buttons, settings, category names, modals, onboarding flows. Admin-only screens and debug labels stay in English (they're internal tooling). Story content (titles + summaries) is translated separately by Layer 3 if you enable the Force Output Language option.

I read feeds in five different languages. Can Pro translate them all to one language?

Yes — that's exactly the Force Output Language feature. Pick a target language in Settings, and every story title and summary in your feed will be generated in that language regardless of source. The original sources are preserved as links so you can still read the original any time.

How long does generating the UI translation pack take?

First time per language, roughly 30–60 seconds. After that it's cached and shared across all Pro users in that language, so subsequent loads are instant. The pack auto-regenerates in the background whenever the underlying UI strings change.

Will full article bodies (reader mode) ever be translated?

Possibly — but not committed. The current Pro tier translates UI and summaries; article body translation would add meaningful compute cost. We'd rather build it once the Pro base supports it than rush a feature that compromises quality.

Is the translation quality good?

Translation is done by a large language model with a per-language glossary that enforces consistent terminology (e.g. "RSS feed" → "емисия" in Bulgarian, not the generic "лента"). For UI text the quality is excellent — short labels, clear context. For story summaries the quality matches what you'd get from Google Translate or DeepL, sometimes better because the source text is already clean AI-generated prose.