Hi, there’s a bug I’ve been having for a while now with WaniKani when doing my reviews on my phone (Samsung S22, Android 14, Firefox Nightly 140). When writing in rōmaji, the input box often duplicates the previous kana when I try to type the next one (for instance writing “shukudai” would show “しゅしゅくだい” instead of “しゅくだい”).
It happens more often with custom keyboards such as HeliBoard than with the default Samsung keyboard, but it happens with both. I can reproduce it very consistently on the wanakana.com website too.
It’s very inconvenient, if I don’t double check my input every single time and remove the duplicate kanas, my input is marked as incorrect. I’ve resorted to using an undo script to work around this, but it’s frustrating to see correct input being marked red.
I’ve seen this has been reported several times on the forum, in 2021, 2023… It seems you are aware of this issue, is there anything that can be done to prevent it? I can help with debugging if needed. A user also shared their findings here: Kanas repeating themselves - #5 by BIsTheAnswer
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I also contacted the WaniKani support directly, here’s their answer:
This is a common issue with Samsung devices especially when using external keyboards. Luckily, there is a fix: you have to go into settings and turn off “predictive text”.
Here is an article describing how you can do this:
How can I personalise and turn predictive text on and off on my Samsung Galaxy device? | Samsung NZ
Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do on our end to fix this. This is a Samsung-specific problem, meaning this will also happen when you type using Japanese IME in other places besides WaniKani. Hopefully Samsung will come out with a patch or fix this sometime in the future, but right now their help docs only suggest turning of predictive text. So for now, you will have to turn it off when you do WaniKani, and turn it back on when you’re done.
Turning off predictive text worked on both the Samsung and HeliBoard keyboards. The solution is not satisfactory for me, but it may help others. I use the predictive text feature and having to dis/enable it constantly is too inconvenient.