Say Hi translator alternative: what to install now it's gone

You went to open SayHi Translate — maybe on a new iPhone, maybe just before a trip — and it wasn’t there. Searching the App Store turns up lookalikes but not the app itself, and that’s not a glitch: Amazon discontinued SayHi Translate in August 2024. It was pulled from the App Store and Google Play, and the servers behind it were switched off. Because SayHi’s voice recognition and conversation engine ran in Amazon’s cloud, the shutdown didn’t just stop new downloads — it bricked the copies people still had installed. If you’re searching for a Say Hi translator alternative in 2026, you’re not comparison shopping. You’re replacing an app that no longer exists.

This post is the honest version of that replacement. What SayHi actually did well, the structural weakness its shutdown exposed, what a successor has to provide, and the short ranked list of apps that fill the role on iPhone in 2026.

What SayHi was — and why it’s gone

SayHi Translate was, for years, one of the cleanest conversation translators on iOS. The two-speaker interface was its standout: two languages, alternating bubbles, your English on top and the reply underneath, tap to hear any line spoken. The back-and-forth rhythm felt designed by people who had actually used a translator across a table, and the app was free. For hotel-lobby and café conversations on reliable Wi-Fi, it did exactly what it advertised.

The architecture behind that experience is also why nothing of it survives. SayHi’s speech recognition, translation, and voice output all ran on Amazon’s servers. That dependence had always been the app’s weak spot for travelers — in airplane mode, customs halls, and subways, the mic tap would hang waiting for a connection — and when Amazon ended the service in August 2024, it became total: no servers, no app. There was no offline mode to fall back on, no local pack that kept working. The shutdown was the cloud-dependence failure mode, made permanent.

That’s worth internalizing before you pick the replacement, because it’s the selection criterion: an app whose core features live on someone’s server can be taken away, and stops working every time the signal does. The replacement shouldn’t share the weakness that made SayHi fragile in the first place.

The five-checkpoint test for a SayHi replacement

A SayHi replacement isn’t just any translator with a conversation screen. The bar is concrete, and you should run it in airplane mode at home before you trust any app on a trip. This is the five-checkpoint offline test:

Text translation both directions offline on the languages your trip touches. Type a sentence in, get it back, and reverse it — with the phone in airplane mode.
Voice playback both directions offline — the speaker icon has to actually play audio without a connection, not show a “no network” toast.
Live conversation mode offline — two speakers, both directions, no cloud calls. This is the SayHi feature you’re replacing, so it matters most here.
Camera translation offline on real-world input — menus, labels, signs. SayHi never did this; the replacement can close two gaps at once.
A Watch surface that survives a dead iPhone, if you wear one — power the phone off and see what the wrist can still do.

SayHi, even in its prime, passed none of these without a connection. The point of choosing carefully now is an app that passes all of them — especially checkpoint three, the conversation mode — with the radios off.

The four serious Say Hi translator alternative apps on iOS

1. Flunqero — the offline-first successor

Flunqero is purpose-built for the case SayHi always left uncovered and now can’t cover at all. The offline contract is the design constraint, not a feature toggle bolted on later: it runs on Apple’s on-device translation engine — every supported language with speech recognition, translation, and speech output all local, both directions — so the conversation rhythm SayHi lost in airplane mode survives here. There is no server whose shutdown can take the app with it, and no asterisk where the voice quietly needs one.

What it does that SayHi didn’t:

Conversation mode that works offline. The direct replacement for SayHi’s standout feature: two speakers passing the phone across a counter, both directions, no cloud calls. In a customs hall or a dead-zone taxi, it keeps working where SayHi’s mic tap used to hang.
Voice both directions offline in every supported language, plus a Listen mode that live-captions the announcements and fast talkers around you.
Camera translation offline — live overlay on signs and labels, a price lens that converts printed prices to your home currency, and Menu Mode, which returns a photographed menu as structured dishes with prices intact. SayHi was a talk app; Flunqero also handles the menu, the sign, the prescription label. The camera menu translator guide covers that workflow.
An Apple Watch surface that survives a dead iPhone. A standalone offline phrasebook — travel essentials in 14 languages, shown full-screen and spoken from the Watch speaker — that works with the phone off entirely.
On-device-only translation. What you say stays on the device; SayHi routed every word through a server.

SayHi’s edge was that it was free — and so is the part of Flunqero that replaces it: unlimited translation, voice, conversation, camera, and the Watch phrasebook are all on the free tier, with menu scans and practice uncapped. Pro ($24.99/year after a 7-day free trial) adds the travel toolkit — Ask anything and Know before you go (both need Apple Intelligence), allergy cards in all 16 languages (your first is free), and an unlimited phrasebook — and a $3.99 Trip Pass covers a single 30-day trip. Requires iOS 26.

Best for: travelers who liked SayHi’s conversation flow and want the same back-and-forth rebuilt on an architecture that can’t be switched off. Install Flunqero, pre-download your languages, and run the five-checkpoint test on your own kitchen counter before you fly.

2. Apple Translate — the free baseline replacement

Apple Translate in iOS 26 covers roughly twenty languages fully offline on its on-device engine. On those languages, most checkpoints pass: text, voice both directions, conversation mode, and Live Text camera translation all work without a connection.

What it does that SayHi didn’t:

Conversation mode that works offline. The direct SayHi feature, free and built in.
Voice both directions offline on downloaded languages.
Live Text camera translation offline, integrated with the system.
Free, built-in, no subscription — and no third-party service to shut down.

Where it loses to dedicated alternatives:

It’s a general-purpose translator, not a travel tool. No menu structure, no allergy communication, no price conversion, no phrasebook — the moments around the conversation are yours to handle.
The Watch app is a translator, not a phrasebook. It’s standalone on watchOS — since watchOS 11 it translates on the wrist and can download languages for offline use on supported models — but there’s no show-first card deck of ready essentials for the three-second counter moment.

Best for: travelers who want a free SayHi replacement for the conversation case and whose needs stop at bare translation. The Apple Translate alternative comparison walks through where the built-in app stops.

3. Google Translate — broadest packs, voice asterisks

Google Translate has the largest claimed offline pack list — around 60 languages with downloadable packs. That dwarfs Apple’s list and includes pairs SayHi never handled well at all.

What it does that SayHi didn’t:

Sixty-ish offline packs versus SayHi’s zero-offline architecture.
Mature Latin-script camera OCR offline — the menu-and-sign case SayHi skipped.
Conversation mode that handles two speakers — the SayHi feature — though offline reliability varies by pair.

Where it loses:

Voice TTS is online-only on some “offline” pairs. The speaker icon shows a “no connection” toast in airplane mode despite the pack being downloaded. The conversation mode is the most network-sensitive part.
Camera OCR offline is weaker on Cyrillic, Arabic, and Devanagari than its cloud quality suggests.
No Apple Watch app. The wrist surface is structurally absent.
Privacy is conditional. Translations can sync to your Google account when the iPhone reconnects.

Best for: former SayHi users who want the broadest pack list and mostly type, accepting that the voice and conversation modes carry asterisks offline. The Google Translate alternative for iPhone post covers the inverse case.

4. Microsoft Translator — the diminished cousin

Microsoft Translator’s two-speaker conversation flow was always the closest cousin to SayHi’s model, and its offline pair list sits between Apple’s and Google’s. It has also been shrinking in the same direction SayHi went: Microsoft retired the multi-device Converse mode in June 2026, so the translated-meeting feature that once distinguished it is gone.

What it still does that SayHi didn’t:

Functional offline mode on a broader-than-Apple pair list.
Voice both directions offline on its offline list.

Where it loses:

Its former standout is retired. The multi-device meeting mode was the reason to pick it; single-device conversation remains, but so does everyone else’s.
Camera OCR offline is moderate — workable on major scripts, not specialized for menus and labels.
The Watch presence has historically been thin — verify on your own device before relying on it.
The UX is enterprise-flavored, tuned for meeting rooms, not the pharmacy counter.

Best for: business travelers already inside the Microsoft ecosystem who want a familiar single-device conversation flow.

The replacement comparison table

How the candidates compare on the dimensions a SayHi user actually cared about — with SayHi’s final state as the baseline:

App	Offline languages	Conversation mode offline	Voice offline both ways	Camera offline	Watch with iPhone dead
SayHi Translate (discontinued 2024)	None — app no longer functions	No	No	No	No
Flunqero	Apple’s engine list (~20)	Yes	Yes	Yes, + Menu Mode + price lens	Yes — standalone phrasebook
Apple Translate	Same list	Yes	Yes	Live Text, clean print	Standalone translator — needs languages downloaded on the Watch
Google Translate	~60 packs (text-leaning)	Mixed (cloud on some)	Mixed (voice cloud on some)	Good on major scripts	No app
Microsoft Translator	Moderate	On its offline list	On its offline list	Moderate	Historically thin — verify

Reading the table: if the only question is “biggest pack count,” Google’s number is largest, with asterisks on the voice and conversation modes — the exact modes you’re replacing SayHi for. If the question is “the SayHi conversation experience, rebuilt so it can’t die with a server,” Flunqero and Apple Translate both pass on the same on-device engine — Flunqero adds the camera, menu, and Watch surfaces around it.

Migrating from SayHi: the practical steps

SayHi stored no meaningful account or history to export, so the migration is really about rebuilding habits:

Pick the conversation replacement first. The two-bubble back-and-forth was the whole reason you had SayHi; install the replacement and run checkpoint three — conversation mode in airplane mode — before anything else.
Rebuild your go-to phrases. If you leaned on SayHi for recurring lines — your address, your allergy, “how much is this?” — save them into the new app’s phrasebook once, at home, rather than re-typing them at a counter.
Add the surfaces SayHi never had. Camera translation for menus and signs, and — if you wear one — an Apple Watch surface. The Apple Watch translator guide covers the wrist case.
Run the airplane-mode test on everything. SayHi’s shutdown is the extreme version of a lesson its dead zones taught for years: verify at home what the app can do with the radios off, so you know exactly what you’re carrying.

The pre-trip checklist

Before the first trip on the replacement app:

Download the language pairs you’ll need. Confirm in airplane mode at home, not at the airport gate.
Run the old SayHi failure scenario on purpose: airplane mode on, open conversation mode, speak a phrase, confirm you get spoken audio back.
Confirm voice both directions on each pair. The most common partial-offline failure is reverse-direction voice missing.
Confirm camera translation offline on a real photo of each destination’s script — the gap SayHi never covered.
If you wear an Apple Watch, power the iPhone off and confirm the wrist can still show and speak a phrase.
Pre-translate a fallback phrase set into Notes as a last resort.

For the full picture of how the offline conversation and voice surfaces compare across apps, the voice translator offline app guide and the offline translator for iPhone overview both go deeper than this post has room for.

The bottom line

The honest Say Hi translator alternative verdict: SayHi was a genuinely good conversation translator on a connection, and it’s gone — discontinued by Amazon in August 2024, removed from the stores, servers off. There is nothing to keep and no two-app setup to preserve; the question is purely what replaces it, and the shutdown itself points at the answer. An app whose core features live on a server fails every time the signal drops and can be switched off for good. The replacement should run on-device.

If your needs stop at bare conversation in a covered language, Apple Translate is free and built in. If your trips include any of — airplane mode, foreign SIM gaps, customs halls, ferry cabins, subway platforms, Apple Watch glances, or camera translation on menus and signs — install Flunqero as the successor to the conversation case. Pre-download your languages and run the five-checkpoint test at home in airplane mode.

The app that replaced SayHi should never be able to fail the way SayHi did — twice.

FAQ

What happened to SayHi Translate?

Amazon discontinued SayHi Translate in August 2024 — it was pulled from the App Store and Google Play and its servers were switched off. Because the voice recognition and translation ran in Amazon’s cloud, even copies still installed on old phones stopped working. There is no official successor.

What’s the best SayHi replacement for conversations on iPhone?

Flunqero: conversation mode, voice both directions, and Listen mode all run on Apple’s on-device engine in every language it supports, so the two-way exchange keeps working with the radios off — the failure mode that always haunted SayHi is designed out. It also adds the camera and menu translation SayHi never had.

Can I still download SayHi Translate?

No. It was removed from the App Store and Google Play in 2024, and because the app depended on Amazon’s servers for its core features, a copy that survives on an old phone no longer translates. Whatever replaces it has to be a live, maintained app — ideally one that does not share SayHi’s dependence on a server.