Yomitan

👋 This project is a community fork of Yomichan (which was sunset by its owner on Feb 26 2023). We have made a number of foundational changes to ensure the project stays alive, works on latest browser versions, and is easy to contribute to:

• Completed the Manifest V2 → V3 transition, read why here!.
• Switched to using ECMAScript modules and npm-sourced dependencies.
• Implemented an end-to-end CI/CD pipeline.
• Switched to standard testing frameworks, vitest and playwrights.

In addition, we are beginning to make important bug fixes and minor enhancements:

• Improve dictionary import speeds by 2x~10x.
• Add functionality to import/export multiple dictionaries, enabling portability across devices.
• And more.

Since the owner requested forks be uniquely named, we have chosen a new name, yomitan. (-tan is an honorific used for anthropomorphic moe characters.) While we've made some substantial changes, the majority of the extension's functionality is thanks to hard work of foosoft and numerous other open source contributors from 2016-2023.

Contributing

Since this is a distributed effort, we highly welcome new contributors! Feel free to browse the issue tracker, and read our contributing guidelines. You can also find us on TheMoeWay Discord at #yomitan-development.

What's Yomitan?

Yomitan turns your web browser into a tool for building Japanese language literacy by helping you to decipher texts which would be otherwise too difficult tackle. This extension is similar to 10ten Japanese Reader (formerly Rikaichamp) for Firefox and Rikaikun for Chrome, but it stands apart in its goal of being an all-encompassing learning tool as opposed to a mere browser-based dictionary.

Yomitan provides advanced features not available in other browser-based dictionaries:

• Interactive popup definition window for displaying search results.
• On-demand audio playback for select dictionary definitions.
• Kanji stroke order diagrams are just a click away for most characters.
• Custom search page for easily executing custom search queries.
• Support for multiple dictionary formats including EPWING via the Yomitan Import tool.
• Automatic note creation for the Anki flashcard program via the AnkiConnect plugin.
• Clean, modern code makes it easy for developers to contribute new features.

Helpful information

• Migrating from Yomichan (legacy)
• Importing standardised and custom dictionaries
• Anki integration and flashcards creation
• Advanced options, including MeCab
• Frequently asked questions
• Keyboard shortcuts

Installation

Yomitan comes in two flavors: stable and testing. New changes are initially introduced into the testing version, and after some time spent ensuring that they are relatively bug free, they will be promoted to the stable version. If you are technically savvy and don't mind submitting issues on GitHub, try the testing version; otherwise, the stable version will be your best bet.

• Google Chrome

  • stable
  • testing

• Mozilla Firefox

  • stable
  • testing ※

※ Unlike Chrome, Firefox does not allow extensions meant for testing to be hosted in the marketplace. You will have to download a desired version and side-load it yourself. You only need to do this once and will get updates automatically.

Basic Usage

1. Click the Yomitan button in the browser bar to open the quick-actions popup.

   
   • The cog button will open the Settings page.
   • The magnifying glass button will open the Search page.
   • The question mark button will open the Information page.
   • The profile button will appear when multiple profiles exist, allowing the current profile to be quickly changed.

2. Import the dictionaries you wish to use for term and kanji searches, head over to the the dictionary docs to get set up! If you do not have any dictionaries installed or enabled, Yomitan will warn you that it is not ready for use by displaying an orange exclamation mark over its icon. This exclamation mark will disappear once you have installed and enabled at least one dictionary.

   

3. Webpage text can be scanned by moving the cursor while holding a modifier key, which is Shift by default. If definitions are found for the text at the cursor position, a popup window containing term definitions will open. This window can be dismissed by clicking anywhere outside of it.

   

4. Click on the speaker button to hear the term pronounced by a native speaker. If an audio sample is not available, you will hear a short click instead. You can configure the sources used to retrieve audio samples in the options page.

5. Click on individual kanji in the term definition results to view additional information about those characters, including stroke order diagrams, readings, meanings, as well as other useful data.

   

To further enhance your Yomitan experience, it's worth integrating with Anki, a spaced-repetition flashcard program to help solidify the words you encounter.

Licenses

Required licensing notices for this project follow below:

• EDRDG License
  This package uses the EDICT and KANJIDIC dictionary files. These files are the property of the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, and are used in conformance with the Group's license.

• Kanjium License
  The pitch accent notation, verb particle data, phonetics, homonyms and other additions or modifications to EDICT, KANJIDIC or KRADFILE were provided by Uros Ozvatic through his free database.

Third-Party Libraries

Yomitan uses several third-party libraries to function.

Name	Installed version	License type	Link
@zip.js/zip.js	2.7.32	BSD-3-Clause	git+https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/zip.js.git
dexie	3.2.4	Apache-2.0	git+https://github.com/dfahlander/Dexie.js.git
dexie-export-import	4.0.7	Apache-2.0	git+https://github.com/dexie/Dexie.js.git
yomitan-handlebars	1.0.0	MIT	n/a
parse5	7.1.2	MIT	git://github.com/inikulin/parse5.git
wanakana	5.3.1	MIT	git+ssh://git@github.com/WaniKani/WanaKana.git