Safari extension not working on Mac

The floating button doesn't show, the page won't translate, or the Mate button is missing from Safari's toolbar. Work through this list.

1. Is the extension on?

Open Mate's Settings › Safari. The card should say Extension is on. If not, click Manage… and tick Mate in Safari's Extensions list. See How to use Mate's Safari extension on Mac.

2. Does it have website access?

In Safari › Settings › Extensions › Mate, the website access should be Always Allow on Every Website, or at least allow the site you're on. With "Ask", Safari shows a prompt on each new site; with "Deny", nothing happens.

3. Reload the page

Pages opened before you enabled Mate don't have its script yet.

4. Check the switches

Mate's Settings › Safari › In web pages: Translate selected text for the floating button, Double-click translation for double-click. The toolbar popover has the same switches.

5. Is the Mac app running?

The extension talks to the Mac app for translations. Open Mate once; with Launch at Login on (Settings › General), it's always there.

6. Where it can't work

• PDFs opened in Safari. Use Preview instead; see Translate PDFs on your Mac.
• Safari's own pages (Start Page, Settings).
• Text inside images.
• Some sites block injected scripts. Google Docs, for example, uses its own canvas renderer; copy the text and use Option+Shift+T.

7. Two copies of Mate

If you've installed Mate both from the App Store and from our site, Safari lists two extensions and only one is connected to the running app. Keep one copy of the app and delete the other.

8. Reset the extension

Untick Mate in Safari's Extensions, quit Safari, open Mate, then tick it again.

Still stuck? Email [email protected] with your macOS and Safari versions, the site, and what you tried.