7. Scripts: enhance your performance
In short, userscripts for Wanikani are tools developed by a third-party (usually by WK users) which goal is to improve Wanikani. This community offers quite a big amount of these scripts which in my opinion, are a game changer in allowing you do have a better experience with this program and learn its content more efficiently.
Scripts that make up the cake (★★★★★) :
These are scripts that I believe completely change the game in terms of using Wanikani. They will make your whole experience with this lovely tool much more smooth and efficient. These are the big guns, the scripts everyone wants.
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Ultimate Timeline: This script is like having your own WK personal secretary. It will show you a detailed view of your reviews from the “now” to the following 7 days of reviews. Do you want to know when the items you just learned a few hours ago will show up for reviewing? Do you want to know what will be your last review of the day? You can easily check this and much more.
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Lesson Filter: This script lets you specify the number of lessons of each type (radicals, kanji or vocab) you want to do in a given lesson session. As I explained before, this is essential for managing your WK routine: do you want to do your radical lessons right after leveling up? You can. You just feel like doing 7 lessons? You can
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Double-Check: If you know about the famous override script, this is a much improved version of it. It allows you to retype an answer to your review in case you made a typo (and got the review wrong) or due to the WK’s typo tolerance, you actually answered something completely wrong, but got it right. Both ways aren’t fair to your learning, and now you can fix them immediately! It also has many other cool features worth checking out!
Scripts that make up the cream (★★★★☆):
The above category was about scripts that will completely change the way you do things on Wanikani. However, don’t let yourself get fooled by the ranking of this next category. These scripts might not affect Wanikani as significantly, but they are in no way inferior in terms of improving your efficiency in learning.
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Prioritize Overdue Reviews (reorder script): this script prioritizes your most urgent reviews that need reviewing and shows them to you first. This is a good thing, as you’ll be able to focus on the reviews needing more of your attention first.
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Wanikani Heatmap: this script adds a chart that shows in which days and how many lessons and reviews you’ve done. It also shows you some interesting stats such as how many days you have reviewed, how many reviews you do per day on average, and what your current streak is. It’s perfect to keep that motivation up
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Wanikani Leaderboard: gives you a leaderboard where you can add your favorite WK users and follow their progress. You’ll can be notified every time someone levels up, see how many burns they have, etc! Make it fun, make some buddies, and level up together
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ConfusionGuesser: Do you ever feel that most of your difficult reviews are just because you’re mixing items up due to how similar they are? This script helps you fix that. Every time you get an item wrong in your reviews, this script will display the possible items that you’re mixing up with, so that you can see all the visual differences without leaving the tab at all. It’s great to bring those difficult kanji and vocab down
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Self-Study Quiz: Have you ever wished to review a certain type of items from a specific level? This is it. This script allows you do an extra and personalized reviewing of any items you learn on WK. Do not worry, as this script will not influence the SRS level of items.
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WaniKani Open Framework Additional Filters: This script serves as an upgrade to the Self-Study one I mentioned above. Basically, it will add filters such as “most recent items learned” and “leeches” (most difficult items for you) to your Self-Study script. For the distance of just a couple clicks, you can get all the extra reinforcement on the items you need the most
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Pitch Info: This one shows you a small graph with the right pronunciation/tone of every vocab on WK. Not sure what your native language is, but the further your native language’s phonology is from Japanese, the more you’ll need this. Getting used to Japanese tones is important and this script, together with the audio that Wanikani offers, gives you a great opportunity to work on this. Plus, this extra reinforcement will also help you with the memorization of the vocabulary.
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Jitai (字体): The font randomizer that fits: If you’ve ever been in Japan or if you’ve ever seen pictures of streets in Japan, you’ll notice how they use these weird fonts and how it seems so much harder to read them (even if you know the kanji). Yes, Japanese fonts can be a little messy, but this is why I recommend this script. With it, you’ll be able to install extra fonts to your WK reviews, which will allow you to get used to see kanji looking slightly different.
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Visually Similar Kanji: We all know how messy it is to try to distinguish very similar kanji. What this script does is adding a section with a list of kanji to the kanji’s page that are similar to the one you’re looking at in that moment. Whether if it’s during lessons, reviews or even on the actual item’s page, you’ll have quick access to this list, allowing you to compare similar kanji and idenitfy their small differences.
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Progress Percentages: this script displays what percentage you have learned of the kanji on each JLPT level, Joyo grade, frequency bracket, and various other sources, on your dashboard. Nothing like some nice stats to keep you motivated
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Dashboard SRS and Leech Breakdown: This script allows you to know how many leeches (items you have trouble with) you have on each SRS category (Apprentice, Guru, Master…). It also allows you to have access to the number of items on each subdivision of both the Apprentice and the Guru categories. For example, instead of just seeing 110 items on Apprentice, you’ll also see “10/0/37/63”. [Explanation: 10 in App 1, 0 in App 2, 37 in App 3 and 63 in App 4].
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Stroke Order: This script shows you the stroke order of kanji during reviews, lessons and on the kanji pages. Awesome for those wanting to get some handwriting practice.
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Self-Study Hide Info: This script is the reason why I was able to learn 30 kanji in a row for 60 levels and never get them wrong while they were in apprentice for the first time. Basically, this script is a companion to the above mentioned Self-Study Quiz script and what it does is hiding the meanings/readings from the radical/kanji/vocabulary pages. Why did I need this? Because right after doing all the kanji lessons, I’d go to the list of kanji in that level and say out loud all the meanings/readings to myself a couple of times. This helped me with actually make sure that I knew all the kanji. Believe me, without this, I’d have gotten less than 50% accuracy 4h after the first review session.
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Hide review accuracy: This is the most underrated script on Wanikani, at least in my opinion. Have you ever noticed that you’re too distracted by your accuracy during reviews? Mainly when you’re doing not so well? Notice how it can change your mood. To me, it did. It disturbed my focus, which then would even lead me to do even worse. What this script does is removing the accuracy % during reviews. No more feeling pressured about keeping that % high. Now, you’re able to stay entirely focused on what you’re doing. No distractions.
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WaniKani Context: this script adds the context sentences to the front of the cards while you’re doing vocabulary reviews. So now, you have the opportunity to practice reading the example sentences in an easier way while you’re doing reviews
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Lesson User Synonyms 2: During your Wanikani journey, you might find yourself wanting to add synonyms during lessons, whether because this new meaning that you wish to add makes more sense to you or because you’re not a native English speaker and you want to add the equivalent word in your native language. Unfortunately, WK only allows you to do this after the Quiz. This script fixes the problem.
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External Definition: This script basically adds a definition in Japanese to the vocabulary you’re learning on Wanikani. This one might feel a little more extreme, but if you’re ready to challenge yourself and get some sweet reading practice along the way, go for it.
Scripts that make up the cherry on top of the cake (★★★☆☆):
This category is made of scripts that are not necessarily game-changers, but that together will make your experience much more intuitive and natural. In my opinion, every script on this list should be native to Wanikani. There are very simple things on this lovely website that are not perfected and that end up hurting the user in terms of fully experiencing the product. This list fixes it.
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Show Specific SRS Level in Reviews: This one is very simple. Instead of getting “Apprentice”/“Guru” every time you review an item, you get the specific level that it leveled to. For example, “Guru 2” and “Apprentice 3”.
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Level Duration: This script will add the time you’re at your current level in your dashboard page. In my opinion, this information is more useful that it seems at first. Why? Well, I’ve wrote on this Guide before that building a routine on Wanikani is essential for success. So if you’re leveling up every 11 days and this script tells you you’re on day 9, it means that you’re almost leveling up. This helps you manage your lessons and see if your progress is going as you wished to.
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Fast Abridged Wrong/Multiple Answer: Having to click on “More info” every time you want to see the correct answer to a review or check other meanings/readings can be frustrating. With this script, WK will automatically display the info under the input box after you answer to the review. Much more convenient for your study flow
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Progress Plus: This script adds a progress ring around the radical and kanji progression section on the main page, so you can see how far you are to guru them and therefore, leveling up.
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Lesson Hover Details: This script lets you see the lesson breakdown by type (radicals, kanji, vocab) when you hover over the lessons circle in the menu bar. No need to go into the review page anymore.
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DotDotDot Expander: If you ever searched for items on Wanikani, you have probably noticed already that sometimes meanings will display incomplete and with three dots during the search. This can get a little annoying, since you might have to check which item is actually the one you were looking for, between other things. This script removes the three dots and shows the entire main meaning of the item.
Scripts for the forums:
If you’re here, the chance of getting stuck in an infinite cycle of lurking on the forums is quite high. Maybe you’ve found yourself neglecting your reviews due to the latest @MissMisc’s award or simply because everyone in here has a beautiful story to tell. Don’t worry, you’re not alone.
On a more serious note, this community is awesome. I’ve made some great friends in here and I believe the same will happen to you. So while you’re here, why not make your experience better?
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Wanikani Forums: Lesson/Review Status: This script allows you to know how many lessons/reviews you have available to do and when the next review session is. If you’re on the forums, you won’t need to open a new tab to check for this information out. This script is also a very passive way of telling you to go do your reviews…
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WaniKani Forums: Like Counter: Do you want to check if you’re running out of likes? Do you want to know how many likes you’ve got on the forums for the last 24h? Well, this script allows you to do just that
Scripts on the phone:
Scripts are to be used on the computer and they’re not supposed to work on smartphones. For Android however, there’s a way to do it. Take into consideration that this method wasn’t tested on all the scripts released, so you might find some not working. For more information about this, check the link I just shared above.
There are also non-official apps for both iOS and Android that come with some of the most wanted scripts integrated
