LLearn Japanese

DaKanji 3 the first cross-platform, fully offline Japanese dictionary

At the beginning of 2021, I first published DaKanji as an offline stroke order independent Kanji lookup tool for Linux, Mac, and Windows written in Python. Because of the positive Feedback I got here I was motivated to continue working on DaKanji. Fast forward a bit, I rewrote DaKanji in Dart and published it first for Android, slowly extending it to iOS, MacOS, Linux, and Windows.

After taking a break from DaKanji (and randomly starting to learn Spanish), I decided to apply for a scholarship to study in Japan. For this, I wanted to have something stand out in my application and I decided to add an offline dictionary to DaKanji.
And finally, after a long, long development time, DaKanji 3 is finally out. I am super excited that this new version has finally shipped! DaKanji is a passion project of mine, and I have worked really hard the last year to build the best fully offline, responsive, and cross-platform (Android, iOS, MacOS, Linux, Windows) Japanese <-> English, German, French, Russian, … dictionary I could. Therefore, I would greatly appreciate you checking it out and letting me know what you think, what to improve, giving a positive review, or maybe even recommending it to your friends

Here are the new Features:

* Inbuilt dictionary
* Search with kanji, kana or romaji
* Search Kanji by radical or draw them
* Multi-language support: English, German, French, Spanish, …
* Conjugation of verbs, adjectives, copula
* Detailed information about Kanjis
* 6000+ audios
* Pitch accent
* Example sentences
* Text processing screen
* Add furigana to any text
* Look up unknown words using the inbuilt dictionary
* Colorize words based on their Part of Speech
* Translate using DeepL

You can get the release from: [PlayStore](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.DaAppLab.DaKanjiRecognizer), [AppStore](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dakanji/id1593741764), [SnapStore](https://snapcraft.io/dakanji), [Microsoft Store](https://www.microsoft.com/p/dakanji/9n08051t2xtv), [Github](https://github.com/CaptainDario/DaKanji/releases/tag/v3.0.2)

Lastly, I would like to give you a rough idea of in which direction this project is heading, the next 3.x versions will add more features to make DaKanji not only a word lookup dictionary but a tool to understand Japanese texts and effectively learn from them. This includes features such as word lists, Anki integration, grammar lookup, chat GPT integration, a discussion section to ask questions, and likely, yomichan dictionary support.After that, DaKanji will receive support for directly using the dictionary on different sources such as videos, pdfs, ebooks, …

Thank you a lot for reading till the (and maybe using DaKanji). If you have any problems with it, let me know.

28 comments

  3. No luck for me, don’t have the Snap Subsystem on my Linux. But it looks nice.

  4. Google play image in GitHub’s readme leads to image instead of application page 🙂

  5. (Hi, I’m just curious – did the mods help you with posting this? I never get a response from them after weeks. Thanks)

  6. WOW, the app is way more than I thought! Thank you for such a useful tool!

    Edit: Missing space.

  7. Love that you also Support other languages besides english. As a German there isnt that much Stuff jpn-ger. So I mostly Need to translate to english then to German. It works but I Just Love having Something jpn-ger directly.

    Edit: would be great If you could Turn of english via the settings. I can activate Another language and deactivate them, but Not the english one.

  8. I will use it from now on and later point any issues i have had, but my first impression is very good, it looks epic

  10. Downloaded and wow it’s great, I also left a 5 star review on the play store. ありがとうございます

  11. Downloaded and wow it’s great, I also left a 5 star review on the play store. ありがとうございます。

  12. Wow, a Japanese dictionary built with Flutter? My professional and hobby lives collide lol Definitely gonna check it out, nice work!

  14. Since you asked for feedback, I noticed an issue with the way your app displays a word’s pitch accent. Take the word 誕生日 たんじょうび. It’s pitch accent pattern is 3, meaning the accent should occur on the mora じょ but your app displays it right after the character じ. Same with for example 上機嫌 じょうきげん. It’s also a 3, so the accent should be on the き but it’s is displayed on the う. Generally, I’ve noticed this pattern in every word that has a mora consisting of more than one character before or during an up- or down-step.

    My guess is that you didn’t factor in that some morae are made up of more than one character like じょ, きょ, ちゅ etc and are displaying the accent by taking the pitch accent number, for example 3, and then having the app show a down-step after 3 characters when it should be after 3 morae which is why the accent can sometimes occur too early. You can also look at any 平板 or 頭高 word starting with a two-character-mora and you’ll find that the change in pitch is always displayed in between the two characters.

    If you need more examples of this, just ask.

  15. >the first cross-platform, fully offline Japanese dictionary

    That’s oddly specific. What’s the biggest selling point over other offline dictionaries like imiwa? So far I can see that you’re lacking the skip method to search for kanji.

  16. Just downloaded! I do have a small request though. Could you possibly add a larger font option for those of us who are visually impaired? I would really appreciate it. Thank you!

  17. Sounds nice and looks good.

    Bug for me on Windows 11: open search by radical, change from smaller window to maximized -> can’t close the radical window anymore, although the button animation on the close button still plays when pressing on it.

  21. I’ll try it out. Sounds better than using a browser dictionary. Very cool project

  22. OP this is incredibly generous of you to make and offer here for free.

    I just happen to be used to a different dictionary, but I had to pay for it (Midori if you’re curious). And yours is beautiful. The stroke order chart is gorgeous.

    Thank you for spending so much time and offering this for free.

    Do you offer a way for people to financially support you or this app to thank you for your work?

  23. Just downloaded – liking it so far. For the example sentences it would be nice if the key word was highlighted in each. Also, I have yet to find an app that does “visually similar kanji” well so that would be another feature I’d appreciate, personally. Often, I know how to read a very similar kanji so would be nice to just go to that kanji’s page and then have a “visually similar” kanji section so I could quickly find the visually similar one I’m trying to look up.

  24. Dang—I just tried it out and thought it was pretty nice, especially the handwriting search function. The only thing I’d really want to see added is the ability to create lists within the app itself, which is a feature that my current dictionary app has. While I do have Anki, I kind of like having everything accessible in one single app—not a dealbreaker, though!

  26. Great app!
    but I encounterd a bug on windows 10.
    In the text section, the inserted text doesn’t get processed and only stayes in the left field. [Screenshot](https://imgur.com/a/1bQbwmD)
    I tried both the MS Store and the portable Github versions.
    Would be really glad if it could be fixed.

  27. Probably my favorite Android dictionary I’ve seen so far. Looks really clean, and the UI is super intuitive. Really enjoy the ability to draw several kanji one after the other into the search bar. Looking forward to exploring more. Thank you for your hard work!

  28. Hi, just want to open with this app is amazing, and I’ll be using it a lot in the future.

    But, if I can make a request, is it possible for there to be some way to re-view a tutorial after it has been viewed? for example, in the post you said that in the text processing screen, you can translate text with DeepL. but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to actually do that, as I missed a bit of the tutorial. I’m also not sure how to use a few of the other things, because it was a lot of information at once. Thank you!

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