The New Dashboard is Here

You may have noticed that your dashboard looks a little different.

Here’s what’s new:

  • The Dashboard is now just a bunch of “widgets” (you can call them “widgies” if you want).
  • Widgets may be added.
  • Widgets may be removed.
  • Widgets may be moved around.
  • Widgets may be loved and cared for.
  • Many widgets come in multiple variants.
  • Most even let you choose the widget’s color palette.
  • There are some new features added too—in widget form, of course. Take a look, go find them. Nothing’s more exciting than foraging for widgies.

You can make the dashboard of your dreams so long as those dreams are reasonably small and include only the widgets currently available to you and nothing else. Should you dream of widgets yet to be, please share those dreams with us. I’ll have my ink and quill ready.

Customize Your Dashboard

Current WaniKani learners shouldn’t see too much change. We made your dashboard look as much like the old one as we could. If you like the old dashboard, you can leave it as is. It will stay similar (ish) to what you’re used to.

But should you want to defy the gods, then take my hand. Let us stare into the durtle hole together and unleash powers humanity was never meant to wield. Are you ready?

Click your avatar in the top-right corner of your WaniKani Dashboard.

Now select “Customize Dashboard.”

From here, you can add, remove, and move dashboard widgets. (Changes will save automatically.)

It’s a bit wonky, but I think you’ll be able to figure it out. We kind of thought, “Should we create the greatest UI of all time—or assume people won’t spend much time in the customization screen and just make something that works well enough?” I think you can guess which direction we went.

Stumbling around the Customize Dashboard screen will be kind of fun, right? We don’t get that many opportunities to explore new places or things these days. The internet is spoilers. I’m going to let you take a leap. Think of using the new dashboard and dashboard customizer like picking up a hitchhiker. Oh, what are all those reddish stains?

But if you’re the type who reads the instruction manual before using something new, then by all means, we’ve written up the new widget features, including how to customize widgets, in the knowledge guide.

Here are a few general things to know before you dive in:

  • Widgets live in rows.
  • You can add, remove, and reorder both rows and widgets.
  • On mobile, rows will probably stack vertically.
  • Use the “Layout” option to add rows or change widget ratios.
  • During customization, widgets use dummy data. Your real data will appear when you return to your dashboard. Sorry, you don’t have a “best streak” of 1,024 days. Or maybe you do. I don’t know you.
  • Changes save automatically.
  • Select the WaniKani logo to go back to your dashboard.
  • “Restore to Default” will (I’m like 90% sure) revert your dashboard to the new user default. Not the dashboard we gave everyone that’s trying to copy the old dashboard. So, be careful I guess.

I won’t spoil all the new features, new widgets, and the other fun bits and bobs. It’s more fun to discover them for yourself.

That’s all I’ve got. Now go and make that dashboard consisting of thirty Community Banners—the dashboard you’ve always wanted!

Can I See Your Dashboard?

After you go in there and customize your dashboard, can you post a screenshot for me? I’m curious, and I think others would like to see, too.

Also, if you think “I wish I had this widget,” please let me know here, too. We’ve got a list going.

(You don’t have to write that you want dark mode. I know you want dark mode)

UPDATES

158 Likes
Mischief

first :clap:
(huge success)
(I liked it btw thank you!)

THATS SOOOOO GOOOOOOD

Selfie with koichi

Selfie
hehehe

32 Likes

Refreshed and I blurted out “whoa, what the hell?” - but I absolutely love it, this is a HUGE improvement! Awesome job

17 Likes

I was suprised to see a different UI after finishing my review lo. Thank you for the ffort!

10 Likes

As someone who burned all the items before new ones were added, this is very satisfying.

Looks noice! :durtle_noice: :sparkles:

41 Likes

Broke modded dark mode and still no official dark mode :frowning:

46 Likes

Oooh! Something changed! Looks fresh!

4 Likes

Any way to go back to the default showing a breakdown of the upcoming day of reviews instead of the entire week? I realize its only one extra click to see the hourly breakdown, but I check that a lot.

52 Likes

Oh jesus. I need lots of updates

6 Likes

It didn’t make it into the launch, but we do plan to do a “next 24 hours” forecast widget, that is (only) hourly. Sorry it’s not in there now, but I think that’s what you’re looking for?

33 Likes

Good job to the team!

I think there is a bug here:

Hovering the kanjis do not show anymore when next the item will appear in review
This was SO USEFUL it was part of 95% of my workflow on wanikani, to be able to go “fast pace”
Is it possible to get it back ? I dont think it’s on purpose to remove information / useful tools so probably it got lost in the update

Also the grey on grey of the empty bar is not legible at all (but this is a minor detail ofc :stuck_out_tongue: )

Thanks for your help!

52 Likes

Only thing that’s difficult to read for me on mines

5 Likes

Nice stuff !

(Edit: looking closer, item spread could maybe be a bit bigger when it’s a 1/3 widget like this one?)

6 Likes

noted and noted, thank you!

8 Likes

do you have a script that would change any colors? My end looks like this:

4 Likes

The illustrations are pretty nice!

6 Likes

That’s an interesting new announcement.

Since I’m new user to WaniKani, I will need time to give my judgment about the functionality and utility of this new dashboard while I learn the conjuring levels opening…

I look forward to seeing what everyone else thinks about it.

3 Likes

The new layouts waste a ton of screen space trying to fit everything into the same-height containers. I’d really like my “upcoming reviews” to be able to grow vertically again; clicking into a day is an ok solution if you’ve already decided to fix the height of the widget, but it’s making information harder (more clicks) to see. Conversely, the “Recent Mistakes” widget could be a third its height and lose nothing. (though again, I can no longer see all of them at a glance for some reason: a visible list has been swapped for having to click repeatedly) Reviews and lessons are also way too tall for what they actually contain.

Overall, I get the drive for making it customizable and I’m sure that there were a lot of people who wanted very different layouts that this is helping, but it doesn’t seem to do a good job at recreating the dashboard layout that was already there.

To try and close this with specific feature requests: I would love to change the heights and not force every widget to be cramped or oversprawled vertically just to match the others. And it would also be nice to have an option to change the mistakes and unlock/critical/burn lists to the colored rows again.

40 Likes

There’s an accessibility problem with the new dashboard. The new widgets do not respect prefer-reduced-motion. Also, the animations (such as the slide animation in the “Next 24 Hours” widget) can be quite sluggish when you just want to get to your information.

I also find it kind of sad that the Level Progress widget doesn’t show me the full list of radicals and kanji like it used to. It was really nice to see all the individual bits get unlocked!

Overall feels like a lot of UX work could still be done to streamline the experience.

19 Likes

There can be some funky stuff with the vertical heights of widgets, depending on what it’s next to. Noted this one, though, thank you!

5 Likes