New iOS app for Japanese reading with adjustable furigana – looking for testers

[igorkulman]

Hi everyone!

I’ve been learning Japanese for a few years now, and last Sunday I took the JLPT N4.

While preparing for it, I noticed a big problem in my reading practice: almost every learning resource shows all kanji with furigana. It’s convenient, but it made me rely on it way too much — my eyes would jump straight to the furigana instead of actually reading the kanji I should already know.

One day in class, the teacher covered the furigana with a piece of paper, and suddenly the reading was harder… but also much more engaging. It pushed me just enough, and I realized:

I need this for real reading, not just textbooks.

So I built something for myself, and ended up going much deeper into it.

Introducing Yomu

Yomu is an iOS reader where you can adjust furigana based on your JLPT level.

For example, if you’re around N4 like me, you can hide furigana for N5/N4 kanji (the ones you already know) and only show readings for harder kanji above your level.

It’s been extremely helpful while preparing for N4 and trying to push toward N3-ish material, so I’m opening it for testing to see if it helps others too.

Current features

• Adjustable furigana by JLPT level

• Instant offline dictionary (tap any word)

• Share Sheet import from Safari & other apps

• Camera OCR (scan books, manga, screens, anything Japanese)

• Personal vocabulary list + export

• Reading progress tracking and difficulty analysis

• Light & dark mode

• A clean, distraction-free reading view

There’s a small website with screenshots and videos + a Join Beta button:

Yomu - Read Japanese

Thinking about WaniKani integration

Since I use WaniKani myself, I’d love to explore integrating:

• Hide furigana based on WaniKani kanji level

• Highlight kanji you’ve “guru’d” vs not yet learned

• Possibly adjust difficulty based on your WK progress

• Maybe import WK kanji/vocab into the vocabulary section

If anyone has ideas here, I’d really appreciate input.

Looking for TestFlight testers

I would love some feedback — UI flow, reading experience, OCR accuracy, furigana behavior, anything.

Note: In-app purchases in TestFlight are simulated

You can test everything fully — you will not be charged anything.

You can join via the website:

Yomu - Read Japanese

I originally built Yomu just to make my own reading practice more effective while studying for N4, but if it helps other learners here too, that would make me really happy.

Thanks so much to anyone who gives it a try!

[igorkulman]

Small update in case anyone is following this thread:

I’ve released Yomu on the App Store

I originally built it for myself while preparing for JLPT N4, mainly to deal with furigana being everywhere and making it hard to actually read kanji. The app focuses on adaptive furigana and offline reading, rather than drills or gamification.

If anyone here is an intermediate learner and curious, the App Store link is ‎Yomu – Japanese Reader App - App Store. I’d especially appreciate feedback around furigana behavior or reading flow — positive or negative.

Either way, thanks for the earlier interest.

[Steven2673626]

Hi, I downloaded your app but I can’t test it out as the features are all behind the paywall. I’d be happy to do some beta testing. Reading websites with furigana based on level on iPhone would be very useful, like the Wanikani level based site for NHK news.

[servette]

I just installed it on my iPhone 12 - I plan to try it out on my iPad (which I need to find and then charge up first) - but my very preliminary thoughts are that it looks like it will be useful for me.

I’m at a sort-of N4 to N3 level, and I haven’t yet settled on a ‘reading strategy’. But just for starters, I occasionally get emails in Japanese, one source is from an amateur radio hobby related email list, and the other is from JME (paid subscription which streams NHK programming over the internet for US and Canadian viewers) containing upcoming programming notes.

I have been attempting to read both of those emails, with only limited success so far, through an awkward process of trying to read a sentence at a time, then copying the text and pasting into google translate.

I can see right away that this app is going to be a game-changer for me, even at the free level. I haven’t yet tried the furigana screening by JLPT level, and I have only briefly tried out the dictionary lookup. But even with the little that I’ve done so far (with copying and pasting the entire text of a single email that I had been struggling through on a line-at-a-time basis) I can see great potential, and will likely purchase the full license once I’ve had a bit more time to work with the app.

[servette]

@Steven2673626

I can’t test it out as the features are all behind the paywall.

You ought to be able to do what I did with the free version of the app, namely copying some Japanese text to the clipboard (in my case, from an email, but also it should work with text copied from a website), and then creating a new document, pasting the text into it, and saving it.

Then I can open it up and view the furigana, and tap on individual words to view the dictionary entry.

I need to get a lot more hands-on time, as I’m probably missing some of the app’s capabilities.

My brief initial impression of the word-lookup dictionary was that it was useful, but that I prefer the richness of the Shirabe Jisho dictionary app, and so I will be looking to see whether there may be an easy way to link from a lookup word in this app and do a quick lookup with Shirabe Jisho. I should probably spend more time figuring out the capabilities of the app, as I’ve only just barely touched it so far.

[servette]

Some other quick impressions:

On the iPhone screen (at least) it’s often hard to hit the intended lookup word with my finger - and the app apparently doesn’t support a pinch-out gesture to zoom in (thinking that might make it easier for me to tap the intended lookup word).

Also, sometimes the word that I tap to get the definition includes an extraneous character such as a particle ahead of the word, which then causes the dictionary lookup to fail.

When I am looking up a definition, I found that I could tap the copy button to copy the word into the clipboard so that I could then jump over to Shirabe Jisho and paste the word to look it up there, which was useful, but I did not see any clear visual feedback that when I tapped the copy word button it actually did perform the copy operation, which left me unsure of whether or not it was actually going to work once I switched to Shirabe Jisho. It did in fact perform the copy, but without a clear confirmation that the word had been copied, the UX was unsatisfying.

Another thing that I noticed related to the dictionary lookup - it does not highlight the word (in the original source text) that you are looking up, and so when you dismiss the popup definition it’s not at all clear where that word that you just looked up was located in that text, and so I can’t easily switch my context from the text to the word lookup and then directly back to my previous position within the text, which makes usage of the dictionary feature a bit unsatisfactory.

I experimented a little bit with the furigana hiding by JLPT level - while I see the advantage of doing it that way, there are also potential pitfalls in that it’s a very coarse screening method, because the number of words included within a JLPT level is fairly large. So maybe a finer approach to turning off furigana (such as by WK level, or maybe by KKLC level or similar) may be a more practical and useful way to handle filtering. The UX for choosing the filter-furigana-by-level JLPT level was a bit confusing at first, but now I get it that a check mark next to a JLPT level means that furigana for that level and below is suppressed (that is, clicking on N4 puts a checkmark next to N4, which means that N4 and N5 furigana are suppressed). It might be more intuitive if selecting N4 as the furigana filter setting also put a checkmark next to N5.

I will continue working with the app, hope to try it on my iPad soon.

[igorkulman]

Thanks for trying the app and for the feedback — this helps.

To clarify the paywall, because this is on me and currently not explained well enough:

Free

• Reading added texts with furigana (including level-based furigana)
• Tapping words to see dictionary entries

Premium (one-time purchase, no subscription)

• Saving vocabulary
• Camera / scanning
• Statistics

So yes — if your goal is testing vocabulary saving, scanning, or stats, those are currently behind the paywall. Reading itself is free, but I understand that without saved vocabulary the app can feel limited, especially if you’re evaluating it seriously.

This is something I’m actively rethinking, including better onboarding and possibly making beta testing easier without hitting the paywall immediately.

The NHK / WaniKani-level furigana use case you mentioned is exactly what I’m aiming for. Full website reading on iOS is tricky because of how Safari exposes text, but copy-pasting articles works reliably today and is the main path I recommend for now.

Thanks again for taking the time to write — the feedback is fair.

[igorkulman]

Thanks a lot for taking the time to write this up — this is exactly the kind of feedback that’s useful.

On the tapping accuracy / zoom:

You’re right. On smaller iPhone screens it can be hard to reliably tap the intended token, especially with dense text. There’s currently no pinch-to-zoom support, which would likely help here. Improving tap precision and/or adding zoom is something I need to revisit.

On extraneous characters in dictionary lookup:

Yes, this happens in some cases. Tokenization is a compromise right now — I use different approaches for tap detection vs furigana generation, and occasionally particles or adjacent characters slip into the lookup token and cause a failed match. This is a known weakness and one of the harder parts of Japanese text handling on iOS.

On copy feedback:

That’s a very fair point. The copy action does work, but without any visual confirmation it’s unsatisfying and unclear. Adding explicit feedback (toast, subtle animation, etc.) is an easy UX improvement and something I should fix.

On highlighting the looked-up word:

I agree completely. Losing context after dismissing the dictionary popup makes the lookup feel disconnected from the reading flow. Highlighting the word in the source text (even briefly) would make it much easier to resume reading and is a good suggestion.

On JLPT-based furigana filtering:

I agree with the limitation you’re pointing out. JLPT levels are a coarse proxy, and the word coverage within each level is large. They’re mainly used because they’re familiar and easy to reason about, but they’re not ideal. Finer-grained approaches (WaniKani level, KKLC, etc.) are something I’ve been thinking about, especially for users already following a specific system.

On the UX of the JLPT filter itself:

Good catch. The current behavior (checkmark meaning “this level and below are hidden”) is not obvious at first glance. Making the hierarchy more explicit — for example, also visually marking N5 when N4 is selected — would likely be clearer.

Thanks again for continuing to use the app and for planning to try it on iPad. Feedback like this is genuinely helpful, especially at this stage.

[igorkulman]

Quick update: I’ve just released version 1.1.0.

It includes a few small UX improvements based directly on the feedback here:

• clearer furigana level menu wording
• visual confirmation when copying a word
• highlighting the tapped word in the text so it’s easier to resume reading

Thanks again for the detailed comments — they were genuinely helpful. I’ll keep iterating, but wanted to close the loop.

[servette]

Thanks…

The visual feedback when copying a word is very helpful.

So is the highlighting of the tapped word in the text (although the highlighting disappears pretty quickly when the definition popup is dismissed, a bit longer would be nice, but it’s not a critical item).

I did notice something unexpected that I wanted to bring to your attention in case it may be a bug:

As you can see in the screen shot, I highlighted a word, which was recognized as a dictionary entry, but even though “All Furigana” was my selected level, no furigana is shown there.

Could it possibly be due to the word being split between two lines, or might there be some other reason why the furigana is not being displayed?

(Yes, I’m still using my iPhone, haven’t yet grabbed my iPad.)

Some other small items in my next post below.

[servette]

A couple other items that I noted, in case they may be of interest to you:

1 - This may just be an artifact of the dictionary lookup that you are using, but for this highlighted lookup word (ni yotte) I see three definitions which appear to be identical (although the first one has a yellow star next to it, whatever that means - and I’m not sure that the Aa icon adds any useful info, but maybe I’m missing something).

2 - Here it split up kanousei into two separate words, kanou and sei, and I suppose that all of those can be treated as words in their own right, but I’m wondering whether the tokenization may need additional logic to try and force the longest match first (as maybe that would also help with identifying those four-character kanji groupings whose name escapes me at the moment) rather than possibly splitting those up. I’m thinking that in this case, kanousei would almost certainly be the correct intended word, and not kanou followed by sei.

[servette]

FWIW, another small item - I find that the tapped word highlighting is easily visible in light mode but the highlighting is somewhat faint and less visible in dark mode.

Finally got my iPad going this evening, will try working with other types of sources.

[igorkulman]

I’ve just released v1.2, which addresses several of the points you mentioned:

• improved word lookup for compound / multi-word expressions

• better dictionary result handling (less duplication / confusion)

• clearer furigana level menu labels and behavior

• a number of crash and stability fixes

Thanks again for taking the time to write this up and test the app. I really appreciate it.

[servette]

@servette

post

The improvements in this latest update look pretty good, thanks…

[servette]

I may be missing something, but…

Is there a way to paste additional text (or edit the text) after saving it?

Is there a way to delete saved items?

[igorkulman]

Both are available via the swipe menu

[servette]

Maybe it’s due to my unfamiliarity with the iPad, but when I swipe down from the top center I get a Yomu menu, but don’t see how to edit the document (none of the menu choices seem to do anything). (FWIW, I have my iPad set up to show multiple windows)

[igorkulman]

That is some weird iOS 26 menu, only shown in certain windowing modes.It is not connected to the app at all now. Just do the swipe as on iPhone to get to edit and delete.

[servette]

Um, not sure how to do that - swipe from where to where?

[servette]

Excerpt from perplexity.ai - it seemed to think that the menu that I showed in my screen shot should work (FWIW, I also have a keyboard on my iPad)

If menus don’t function (common issues)

• Beta bugs or updates: Some apps glitch (e.g., blank screens, hangs); try updating iPadOS or the app. Toggle “Swipe to reveal Menu Bar” in Settings → Multitasking & Gestures if available.
• Wrong window active: Ensure the target window is focused before swiping.​
• External keyboard/trackpad: Can cause hangs in edit menus; hide Action Bar or disconnect temporarily.​
• Full restart: Hold volume + top button → slide to power off, then restart.​

This works in apps like Notes, Safari, Mail. If it’s still not responding, tell me the app and iPadOS build for more targeted fixes.