Verba

Verba is a Rust GTK desktop translation utility for Ubuntu and Fedora. It runs as a systemd --user daemon, shows a tray icon, stores your API key in Secret Service, and sends translation requests to an OpenAI-compatible /v1/chat/completions API.

Features

• Translation via any OpenAI-compatible API
• verba toggle — show/hide the window, ideal for binding a global hotkey
• Presets and a built-in preset editor

Hotkeys

• Ctrl+Enter - translate.
• Ctrl+Shift+C - copy result.
• Ctrl+L - focus language selector
• Ctrl+P - focus preset selector
• Esc - hide Verba window

Installation

Download the latest .deb or .rpm from the releases section and install.

Run to make Verba start with system:

systemctl --user enable --now verba.service

API configuration

Open Settings and enter:

• Base URL: the provider API root.
• Model: the provider's exact model ID.
• API key: stored in Secret Service.

Examples:

• OpenRouter base URL: https://openrouter.ai/api

Verba appends /v1/chat/completions automatically.

Commands

verba daemon
verba toggle
verba show
verba hide
verba settings
verba quit

verba daemon runs the user service. The other commands control the running daemon through the D-Bus session bus.

Manual installation

Requires Rust toolchain (cargo), GTK 4 development libraries, pkg-config, and D-Bus development headers.

Ubuntu:

sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config libgtk-4-dev libdbus-1-dev

Fedora:

sudo dnf install gcc pkg-config gtk4-devel dbus-devel

From the repository root:

packaging/scripts/install.sh

The installer builds the release binary, installs the desktop integration files under /usr, reloads the user systemd manager, and starts the service:

systemctl --user enable --now verba.service

Don't run the whole installer with sudo. The script uses sudo when it needs to install files, but systemctl --user must run as your graphical user. To install into a temporary prefix for testing, pass PREFIX and disable sudo:

PREFIX=/tmp/verba-install SUDO= packaging/scripts/install.sh