What is Quiet Mode?
WaniKani has a way of planting itself firmly within your daily routine. If it’s become part of yours, that’s great! It’s a wonderful way to keep your learning going. It can, however, be a bit of a problem when you find yourself doing your reviews at inopportune times – for example, at work, or during school, or simply when a lot of inquisitive people are around. Not because you should be doing something else okay well maybe that too, but because of another property WaniKani has: it catches people’s attention.
WaniKani is extremely colorful, which naturally draws people’s eyes toward it, and stands out from other, more “serious” sites even in people’s peripheral vision. Depending on the context, this could lead to feeling uncomfortable, it could result in annoying interruptions, or even land you in trouble!
At times like these, Quiet Mode comes to the rescue. It converts your lessons and reviews into subdued, serious-looking grayscale, and thereby allows you to WaniKani in peace without unwanted attention. Here, have a look:
Quiet Mode also allows you to do your reviews in a very small window – you can go as low as 280×200 pixels without losing usability or style. In most cases the small window isn’t needed, as the quieter color scheme does wonders to avoid attention. The tiny size might also end up making you feel on edge; as if you’re doing your reviews “in secret”. If you find yourself feeling uncomfortable, try making your window a more normal size and that should ease right up. If you’d like to use it, however, it looks like this:
Not too bad, eh? It’s not as snazzy as WaniKani normally is, but I’d say that’s a success! Snazz sparks attention. I suppose you could also use Quiet Mode if you find all that snazz irritating to your eyes – whatever you like, really.
I’d like to install it!
Nice, I’m glad to hear it! Quiet Mode is a user style (not a userscript!), which means it’s installed using a user style manager. User style managers, like userscript managers, come in the form of a browser extensions. If you don’t already have a user style manager, you’ll have to install one. I’d recommend Stylus (Firefox, Chrome), but you can also use Stylish (Firefox, Chrome). If you don’t know which one to pick, I’d say go for Stylus.
Get Quiet Mode! (Version: 1.1)
To install, click the big “Install Style” button!
Once you’ve installed it, you can turn Quiet Mode on or off at any time in your user style manager’s menu. To access it, click the manager’s icon in your browser’s status bar, and check/uncheck the “Quiet Mode for WaniKani” box.
Easy as that! Using this, you can even toggle Quiet Mode in the middle of a lesson or review.
Userscripts Quiet Mode plays nice with
Quiet Mode is deliberately compatible with these other userscripts:
- Jitai (that’s a top-notch userscript written by a great guy, by the way)
- WaniKani Override
- WaniKani Reorder Ultimate
It’ll be compatible with most other userscripts by default, too, however. If you’re using a userscript that breaks with Quiet Mode, or one that contains color that Quiet Mode doesn’t quiet down, let me know! I’ll update Quiet Mode accordingly.
And there you go!
That’s Quiet Mode! Let me know what you think. If you’ve got any questions, suggestions, or anything at all, reply to this thread, why don’t you? Heck, I’d be happy to discuss anything between the pronunciation of the word “市立” and the best way to make tomato sauce with you, why not.
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