Hello everyone 
Update: these changes are now live!
We have just launched some WaniKani updates and I’d like to tell you a bit about them!
You’ve probably already come across the shake animation that is triggered if, for example, you accidentally type the kun’yomi for a kanji and WaniKani is looking for the on’yomi.
With this update, we’ve extended that shake animation to a few other situations. They are:
- small hiragana typos
- ん typos
- entering a double vowel instead of ー
- forgetting the “to” on verbs
- entering kanji in a Meaning answer field
- entering the reading into a Meaning answer field
- entering the kanji reading or meaning for identical vocabulary
- a range of custom situations
All the nitty gritty details are below!
Where does this feature already exist?
You already get a shake animation if you enter a non-primary kanji reading. So if you enter ひと for the kanji 人, it will trigger a shake animation and a message prompting you to enter the on’yomi (にん or じん).
A few other actions also trigger a shake (but no message):
- entering kana in a Meaning answer field
- entering romaji or kanji in Reading answer field
- leaving any answer field blank
- entering a space (with or without kana) in the Reading answer field
What’s new?
With this update, all the following actions will also trigger the shake animation, in both lesson quizzes and reviews. That means that instead of marking these answers as incorrect, you’ll see a shake animation and have another chance to answer, with no consequences for SRS stages.
Small hiragana typos
If you accidentally type a large kana (や、ゆ、よ、ヤ、ユ、ヨ) instead of a small kana (ゃ、ゅ、ょ、ャ、ュ、ョ) you’ll see a message letting you know, and giving you the correct input. For example, if you enter じゆう instead of じゅう for 十 (the kanji or vocabulary), you’ll get a gentle reminder that you should try “juu” instead:
Update: Please note that つ does not receive a warning, because this is most likely to be a case of misremembering rather than mistyping.
ん typos
If you forget how many times you need to type “n” for ん, we’ll also give you a gentle reminder. For example, if you type “onna” (おんあ) instead of “onnna” (おんな) for 女, it will trigger a shake and a message:
Entering a double vowel instead of ー
If you don’t know (or you’ve forgotten) how to get that long ー in katakana, we’ll give you a nudge for that one too:
Forgetting the “to” on verbs
If you forget to write verb translations in the required to-infinitive format, you’ll also get a gentle reminder:
Entering kanji in a Meaning answer field
Typing kanji in a Reading answer field already triggers the shake animation (but no message). Now the same thing will happen if you enter kanji in a Meaning field:
Entering the reading into a Meaning answer field
Accidentally typing the reading when we are asking for the meaning also results in a shake and a message:
The reading is detected based on WaniKani’s IME wanakana, so all transliterated readings should produce a shake. For example, entering “chuushaku,” “tyuusyaku,” and even “tixyuusixyaku” or “tilyuusilyaku” for 注釈 (ちゅうしゃく) will produce a shake + message.
The exception is when the reading matches or is close enough to a meaning (visible, allow list, or user synonym) to be marked as correct. So for example, “futon,” “huton,” and “futonn” are all still accepted for 布団, with the standard “Your answer was a bit off” message for those last two. But “hutonn” will receive a shake, because it would previously have been marked as incorrect (and is almost definitely the reading, not a typo of the meaning).
Entering the kanji reading or meaning for identical vocabulary
In cases where vocabulary consists of a single kanji and nothing else, you’ll now get a shake and a message if you accidentally enter the kanji reading or meaning for the vocabulary. This only applies to single-kanji vocabulary:
A range of custom situations
We’ll also be able to add custom messages for specific situations, such as the longstanding issue over vocabulary like 開く, which can be read as both あく and ひらく, but with slightly different meanings in each case. With this update, ひらく will trigger the shake animation and a message, rather than being marked as incorrect.
The same goes for the meanings. For example, if you answer “to open something” for 開く, it will trigger the shake animation with a prompt that this is not the reading/meaning pair that we are looking for.
Some of these custom messages (including 開く) will go live with the update, and we’ll be adding others gradually over time.
Why extend this feature?
The idea behind this feature is that we don’t want to penalize you for answering something that is actually correct, or nearly correct, but not what we’re looking for, or a simple slip of the fingers.
Hopefully these updates will remove a lot of those 
moments from WaniKani lesson quizzes and reviews. This is especially true for beginners who are getting used to the WaniKani interface and IME, but we hope it will also be a nice safety net for seasoned users who are just having one of those days 
And just in case you’re wondering…
What about user synonyms?
User synonyms will override all of these shakes, so anything currently entered as a user synonym will continue to be marked as correct.
How does the shake mechanism affect SRS stages?
It has no effect on SRS stages. As long as you answer correctly after the shake animation is triggered, it will be counted as a correct answer and moved to the next SRS stage.
Do we have plans to extend the shake animation further?
We weren’t able to cover all potential scenarios in this update, but we hope to work on others in the near future. We’ll keep you posted!
If you have any feedback or questions, let us know below or send us an email at hello@wanikani.com.
