Quiet Mode: Don't want to draw attention to yourself?

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:

Screenshot

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:

Tiny window

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.
Quiet Mode checkbox
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:

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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Nice looking! Reminds me of @alucardeck 's script. (I think it still works… not sure. :blush: )

Oh right, that exists! I remember seeing that around the time when it was released. I remember a couple of things I found with that one was that a tiny window was surprisingly eye-catching, and 100% gray background and everything as well (since most “serious” web pages are mainly white). It probably still works, though!

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Yours is pretty cool. I messed with it a bit. Thanks for the hard work. :blush:

The nice thing is I can edit CSS. I can’t edit JS.

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Now if only I could get scripts installed on my work computer. I wasn’t even supposed to be able to install Chrome and it let me somehow, but Tampermonkey seems to be out of the question.

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I wonder if portable chrome works with TP.

Google Chrome Portable (web browser) | PortableApps.com

and/or if you can use Portable apps at work.

Hm, I could use that one, but I don’t suppose there is a way to make it work on iPad?

Portable Chrome is a great idea to try at least, I think. Depending on your workplace, they might not be too happy about USB sticks, though… :sweat_smile:

I think Chrome has built-in userscript (not user style) support, though! No extension required. I recall that being the case a while ago, at least - try installing a userscript without an extension, see how it goes. User styles from userstyles.org (like Quiet Mode) have a little “install as userscript” button too.

That depends - I’ve read that it’s possible (with some work) to use bookmarklets in iOS browsers. In that case, I could write up some instructions on how to “install” it that way. That’d only work for browser apps like Safari or (perhaps) Chrome, though.

If you’d like to use Quiet Mode in a dedicated WaniKani app (like Mobile Allicrab), however, that’s a bit tougher. That requires the app’s developer to implement it into the app. It’s not really a difficult task for the developer, but it needs to be done nonetheless. The best course of action would be to ask them (@cplaverty in the case of Mobile Allicrab), I think!

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Random suggestion: an option, on by default, to kill the little speaker thing for those times you leave your Media volume high and hit it by accident :stuck_out_tongue:

I speak from total ignorance about userscripts, but if it’s an applied extra CSS sheet you could probably display: none !important; some div or span or whatever.

This is a very nice user style. Good job!

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Using it in Allicrab would be perfect for me. Anyway, it’s a great script!

Excellent !
I always have some comments on WakiKani at work, so I decided to try your userscript. It’s not forbidden to learn something at work, almost encouraged in fact, but… my screen is visible from the hallway, so I have always at least a question/comment. It’s alright and all, but it’s no good for my concentration.
And it worked ! Congrats to you ! Not one question ! Thank you so much ! You made my accuracy jump :wink:

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@Mempo Thank you so much! You know your userscripts/styles well, so coming from you I feel like that means a lot. :heart:

@Melode Whoa, I’m glad I could help! I originally wrote the style because I found myself in a very similar situation, so it’s great to hear it’s worked for someone else as it did for me.

Wow this is awesome for me! I do WK multiple times a day at work and although I’m allowed to, it’s still nice to not have to worry as much about prying eyes. Thank you!

Edit : It’d be pretty sweet to have a darker version available too. Not like black or anything, but just slightly less bright white - bit more gray, I guess. The white can get a bit blinding.

If you go in to the userstyle it’s pretty easy to add 1 line to change the background color. Are you familiar with css at all?

Yes. I thought about doing that. I probably will. I still decided to mention it simply because I’m sure I’m not the only one.

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thank you very much for this! this way wanikani is not fancy enough anymore to draw as much attention at work. :slight_smile:

The only thing that bothers me is that I can’t tell apart kanji and vocab reviews by their colors anymore (this also applies to lessons). Could this be changed easily? For example vocabs could be slightly darker hue of grey or something like that.

Thanks - I LOVE this. I’ve been wanting this exact thing for a while

Love the idea, but seems like my brain is way too wired to the color scheme. The lack of colors indicating what kind of item and what answer the system is expecting is messing me up a little bit >.<