[iOS] Tsurukame - native app with offline lessons and reviews

[cyberoctopus]

Hi! How did you manage to allow asynchronously updating the reviews from your app? I thought the API did not support that function!

[_Marcus]

It looks wonderful!
I’m still using an iphone 4S with ios6 (can you believe?!) but one day, when I upgrade, this is the first app I’ll install! Thank you so much!

[Schriller]

This looks like a great app!
I‘m doing reviews on an ipad with a keyboard, and what I noticed is that after a wrong answer, I can‘t advance with the enter key but I have to touch the screen. It would be handy, if I just could advance by pressing a key. I like how it shows the information after having entered a wrong answer!
Something else I noticed was that the „n“ doesn‘t change to ん when continuing typing. That would be nice if it could be adapted.
Thanks for your work!

[irrelephant]

This looks really promising!

Since it doesn’t seem to have either a wrap up button or a reorder feature (so that I can always do reading & meaning together) I don’t think I will be using it for now because that would mean that I would have to go through my entire review to make sure all my answers are recorded and that’s not something I can always do.

But one day, if it had a configurable reorder functionality and an Anki mode (I hate typing on mobile so much…) it might be very nice to use. Right now I’ll stick to my custom AlliCrab build but offline mode would be nice to have.

By the way: the pie/sunburst charts look cute but to be honest, I find them a bit hard to interpret. For me, the progress info on the main website or the modified version here Wanikani Dashboard Progress Plus is more helpful.

[Tyger]

„Custom AlliCrab build“? How does that work?

[irrelephant]

@Tyger I have an apple developer account and the author of that app was so nice and put his code in github. So I added some userscripts and built it myself. I was thinking about making this available to others but pull requests for the original app seem like the only good idea. If you want to know more details we should probably discuss it in the other thread so that we don’t spam this one.

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What I forgot to say before with all the other feedback was a big thank you to you, @davidsansome. I imagine this must have been quite a lot of work and it already looks great. Looking forward to see what this app will look like in the future.

[Sezme]

So, is anyone able to tell me how to advance past a “wrong answer” screen? I hate clicking buttons blindly.

[Sezme]

One more question: if you do a review offline at 4pm but can’t (or forget to) connect to the Internet until 7pm, will the session be recorded as completed at 4 or at 7?

[Kumichan]

I downloaded the App on my Ipad but have nothing to review yet. I have a question about the screen with the blue ‘things’ ( I don’t know what you call them in English☺️) showing me when reviews are expected. But what does the purple line going up mean? I haven’t done the reviews yet so why is it there?

[yatyisam]

So I’ve played around with this app a bit, and I really like it. It’s obvious a lot of work has gone into it. Thank you @davidsansome!

I just have a few comments/suggestions:

• I recommend making the timeline look like @rfindley’s Ultimate Timeline script. Specifically, I’d love to see the first bar showing how many items are due NOW. It would also be nice to see how many radicals/kanji/vocab are in each bar. I also think including the total line is confusing because the y-axis scale is different. I’d recommend moving that to its own graph.

• I agree with @irrelephant that the “This Level” pie charts are a little bit confusing. I like how @rfindley’s Dashboard Progress Plus script shows this kind of information.

• What are “Queued Updates”?

• And please, please, please implement a “Reorder Reviews” feature. A 1X1 feature would be great too so that meaning always comes first and reading second (or the other way around). I love @rfindley’s Reorder Ultimate 2 script for this on the website.

(Is it obvious now that I think @rfindley does amazing work?! )

But anyway, this app is really great so far… I hope you are able to keep working on it!

[davidsansome]

Thanks again for all the comments! I’ll definitely keep working on this and implement some of these features over the next couple of weeks!

@Sezme

I’m not crazy about the correct answer appearing immediately after getting something wrong. I’d usually rather make a second guess without being told the answer. Also, when you are shown the correct answer, it’s not obvious what you are supposed to do next. There’s a + button and a check mark button, but no explanation of what those do.

Thanks for the feedback! I’ve filed bugs for not showing the incorrect answer straight away and adding hints to explain the + and check buttons.

@cyberoctopus

Hi! How did you manage to allow asynchronously updating the reviews from your app? I thought the API did not support that function!

It doesn’t The app is pretending to be a web browser for that bit and sending them the same way the website does.

@Schriller

I‘m doing reviews on an ipad with a keyboard, and what I noticed is that after a wrong answer, I can‘t advance with the enter key but I have to touch the screen. It would be handy, if I just could advance by pressing a key.

Good idea, that should be easy for me to fix! I filed a bug

@Schriller

Something else I noticed was that the „n“ doesn‘t change to ん when continuing typing. That would be nice if it could be adapted.

I actually fixed that yesterday! It should be in the next release!

@irrelephant

Since it doesn’t seem to have either a wrap up button or a reorder feature

There is a wrap up button hidden in the “Back” menu in the top-right. It only appears if you’ve completed at least 1 review. I created a bug for the reorder button.

@Sezme

So, is anyone able to tell me how to advance past a “wrong answer” screen? I hate clicking buttons blindly.

Click the check-in-a-circle button again. I agree I need to make this more obvious.

@Sezme

One more question: if you do a review offline at 4pm but can’t (or forget to) connect to the Internet until 7pm, will the session be recorded as completed at 4 or at 7?

The session will be recorded as completed at 7. It’s not perfect but there’s no other way at the moment.

@Kumichan

I have a question about the screen with the blue ‘things’ ( I don’t know what you call them in English☺️) showing me when reviews are expected. But what does the purple line going up mean?

The blue bars show you how many reviews will get unlocked at which time. So if there’s a bar at 6pm that says “10” above it, it means you’ll get 10 more reviews to do at 6pm. The purple line shows the total number of reviews you’ll have over time - you read the values from the left axis. I filed a bug to add some explanation.

@sgtowns

What are “Queued Updates”?

If you do any reviews while you’re offline, those will be queued and sent later. That section just shows how many are pending in that queue. I should maybe make that less confusing

[deadpadre]

I’m not sure if it was already mentioned before, but I encountered a pretty weird UI bug. When I’m on the main screen, after scrolling all the way down and letting it bounce back, it gets these extra layers of blue on top. After a few repeats it starts to look like this:

I’m on the latest ios though, the device is iphone 6s.

[Kumichan]

Yes, happens to me too. i am on I pad with Ios latest version.

[eltercero]

Wow, this app is amazing! It’s way faster and more responsive than the other available options. Congratulations!

As others have mentioned, a reorder script for the reviews would be amazing (I can’t honestly do Wanikani reviews without that anymore). Apart from that, the app is perfect. Thanks a lot for your hard work!

[nahtjona]

Looks great! I was thinking in doing an app for Android, since like you said, most apps are just browser wrappers. But I was wondering, how did you managed the review / lessons? Did you rewrite it all by yourself from scratch (getting the items, its meanings and readings, comparing the user input to the correct answer and considering possible typos)? , or did you run a browser on background filling up the answer and retrieving the result (wrong, correct or typo)?

[Eekone]

Nice.
But reorder script is essential for me. Please?

[Sezme]

Another question: Since you’re storing all the items with their readings/definitions offline, how often are you updating for user-inputted synonyms or notes, and how often do you sync in general with the WK database?

I ask because I noticed that on the screenshot I posted above for 希望する, it was marked wrong even though my answer “to hope” is listed among the “official” alternative meanings on wanikani.com (to wish, to hope, to want, to expect), whereas tsurukame only shows to request, to wish as possible meanings.

[davidsansome]

@deadpadre

I’m not sure if it was already mentioned before, but I encountered a pretty weird UI bug. When I’m on the main screen, after scrolling all the way down and letting it bounce back, it gets these extra layers of blue on top. After a few repeats it starts to look like this:

Weird. I’d seen that before but then I couldn’t make it happen again. I’ve filed a bug with your screenshot and I’ll look into it again.

@jonanaht

Did you rewrite it all by yourself from scratch (getting the items, its meanings and readings, comparing the user input to the correct answer and considering possible typos)? , or did you run a browser on background filling up the answer and retrieving the result (wrong, correct or typo)?

Yeah I rewrote it all from scratch using the actual javascript on www.wanikani.com as a reference. It wasn’t too hard. At the end of the day submitting an answer is just an HTTPS request!

@Sezme

Since you’re storing all the items with their readings/definitions offline, how often are you updating for user-inputted synonyms or notes, and how often do you sync in general with the WK database?

I ask because I noticed that on the screenshot I posted above for 希望する, it was marked wrong even though my answer “to hope” is listed among the “official” alternative meanings on wanikani.com (to wish, to hope, to want, to expect), whereas tsurukame only shows to request, to wish as possible meanings.

Good question! I actually got caught out by the updates on April 18th which added a bunch of items that I didn’t have in the database - so I re-fetched the data for just those items listed in the announcement and quickly pushed a new version to the App Store.

You’re right though - 希望する seems to have had new meanings added since I last updated it. I’ll be sure to re-fetch everything for the next release.

[davidsansome]

Thanks everyone for all the comments! I’m really happy people seem to like this

The most requested features seem to be re-ordering reviews and optionally not showing the answer straight away. I’ll get working on those and hopefully have another update in a week or so!

[sirati97]

Very interesting app, the webui app however also adds support for some userscript and i would like to see the features these userscripts implement also in the app.
Mainly:

• Lesson reordering as done by “Wanikani Reorder Ultimate 2 Embe Mod”
• Jitai support. possibly with lots of fonts ios doesn’t have, i can help you compile a list of fonts (as fonts a big (2-5MB) I would suggest allowing the user to select them 1 by 1 and the app would then download the missing ones)
• adding synonyms on the lesson screen
• leech trainer “WaniKani Leech Trainer”
• have onyomi readings for kanji in katakana (as a option)

and please make it very clear what items are yet to be synced as it would be really annoying if it didnt sync yet and you lose time because of that.
also: when doing lessons/reviews and you are online insta sync and not only at the end of the lesson