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Metrolist can translate lyrics into your language — or romanize non-Latin scripts — using an AI backend you configure. Translation runs on demand and results are cached locally so the same song does not hit the API twice.
Lyrics translation requires an AI provider API key. Configure your provider and key in Settings → AI before using this feature. See AI settings for the full setup guide.

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How to enable translation

1

Configure an AI provider

Go to Settings → AI, select a provider, and enter your API key. Choose a model from the presets or type a custom model name.
2

Set your target language

In Settings → AI → Target language, pick the language you want lyrics translated into. Metrolist maps language codes to full names (e.g., ja → Japanese) for better AI comprehension.
3

Open the lyrics view

Start playing a song and open the lyrics panel by tapping the lyrics icon in the player.
4

Trigger translation

Tap the translate button in the lyrics panel. Translation begins immediately and lines populate progressively as the AI responds.

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Supported AI providers

Metrolist supports the following providers for translation:

OpenRouter

Routes requests to any model available on OpenRouter (e.g., Gemini, GPT, LLaMA). Default provider. Supports streaming for progressive line-by-line display.

OpenAI

Direct OpenAI API. Supports GPT-4o-mini, GPT-4o, and GPT-4 Turbo. Uses streaming.

Mistral

Mistral AI API, added in v13.3.0. Models include mistral-large-latest, mistral-medium-latest, mistral-small-latest, and mistral-tiny-latest. Non-streaming path.

Google Gemini

Google Generative Language API. Supports Gemini Flash, Gemini 2.5 Flash, and preview models. Uses streaming.

Anthropic Claude

Anthropic API. Supports Claude Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku families. Uses streaming.

Perplexity

Perplexity AI API. Sonar model family. Uses streaming.

xAI (Grok)

xAI API. Grok models. Uses streaming.

DeepL

Neural machine translation — not a chat model. Only supports Literal translation mode. Requires a separate DeepL API key and optionally a formality setting (default, more formal, or less formal).

Custom

Point Metrolist at any OpenAI-compatible endpoint by entering a base URL and model name. Non-streaming.

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Translation modes

For AI chat providers (all except DeepL), choose between two translation strategies in Settings → AI → Translation mode:

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Romanization

Romanization converts non-Latin scripts to their phonetic Latin equivalents so you can sing along without knowing the script. Supported scripts include:
  • Japanese — Hiragana/Katakana via Kuromoji tokenizer; Kanji read via furigana
  • Chinese — Hanzi to Pinyin via the PinyinHelper library
  • Korean — Hangul to Romaja using the Revised Romanization system
  • Cyrillic — Covers Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Belarusian, Kyrgyz, and Macedonian with language-aware rules
  • Devanagari — Hindi/Sanskrit phonetic mapping
  • Gurmukhi — Punjabi phonetic mapping
Romanization is available as a separate mode alongside translation. Tap the romanization button in the lyrics panel to toggle it on or off.

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Customizing the AI prompt

You can override the system prompt Metrolist sends to the AI. In Settings → AI → System prompt, enter your own instructions. This was added in v13.4.0. If you leave the field blank or tap Reset, Metrolist reverts to its built-in default prompt optimized for line-by-line lyric translation.
A custom prompt is useful when the default translation doesn’t match your preferred style — for example, instructing the AI to preserve rhyme schemes, use informal speech, or target a regional dialect.

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Reverting to original lyrics

To undo a translation, tap the untranslate button in the lyrics panel. This clears the translated text and restores the original lyrics. Untranslation support was introduced in v13.2.0.

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Caching and persistence

Translated lyrics are:
  1. Cached in memory during the session to avoid repeated API calls for the same song.
  2. Persisted to the local database so translations survive app restarts.
If you change the target language or translation mode, Metrolist treats it as a new translation and fetches fresh results, overwriting the stored version.
Translations are stored per song, per language, and per mode. Changing any of these three values triggers a new API call.