[Web app] Wanikani Progress Screensaver

I know there are already countless wallpaper generators, so I wanted to take a stab at something a little bit different. A little bit more… animated and hopefully pretty :slight_smile:

Proudly presenting the first acceptable version of my screensaver!

It runs entirely in-browser (no backend, etc.) and is currently available at the following URL (replace “api_v1_key” with, shockingly, your API v1 key, found in Settings → Account, or in the API page accessible from the Wanikani footer):

https://castux.github.io/wanikani-screensaver/?key=api_v1_key

Current features:

  • displays all kanjis on WK, and your progress
  • scales and fit your current window size (usually drops a few dozens of the unseen kanjis to fill the rectangle perfectly)
  • also works fullscreen (usually F11 on Windows, possibly cmd-ctrl-F on macOS browsers?) for true screensaver use (you might have to disable your actual screensaver if you have one)
  • kanjis are sized according to SRS level (lower level → bigger to serve as a study reminder)
  • classic plasma-like effect on the background (not seen yet kanjis)
  • 20 second rotation and shuffling of the kanjis, with a fade-in fade-out animation
  • displays big emoticons in case of various errors (no API key, invalid key, invalid data, etc.)
  • (NEW) padding: add for instance &padding=100 at the end of the URL to add padding of 100px around the kanjis
  • (NEW) critical items/leeches (accuracy under 75%) are shaking!

Notice that it also doubles as “yet another wallpaper generator”, since you can easily take screen grabs :slight_smile:

Possible issues:

  • None of the code is particularly optimized yet, so it might be quite resource hungry. Might be slow on some older computers
  • Can anyone confirm that ロード中 means loading?

Planned features:

  • customizable to death (fonts, color palettes, sizing, ordering, animation speeds, level limit, etc.)
  • other animations

That’s it! I’m making this mostly for myself, but maybe someone else will find this useful. I’ll happily take feedback and feature requests, but of course, no promises there :slight_smile:

23 Likes

This is awesome since I can see how much I’ve really learned so far kanji wise. I wonder though if there was any way to incorporate it into something like wallpaper engine so that you could have updating kanji wallpapers or something like that but IDK how that would work. Anyways thanks, its super cool! :smiley:

EDIT: Oh yep you can, there is a place to use URLs as wallpapers I have mine set up now :smiley:

Ah, that seems interesting! Would you mind sharing?

Yeah here it is :smiley:

Its nothing special I just had to look it up on steam forums because I guess I’m blind and missed it the first time around. From there you can just enter the URL and it works just like the website! Only bad thing is wallpaper engine isn’t free but after searching a bit there seems to be a few ways to get a website to work as background with some other free software, but some of it seems a bit sketchy. Here what the background looks like with an absurd amount of icons on my desktop haha:


I’ve just decided to leave it on my second monitor as that one has no icons :laughing:

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Ooh alright, I didn’t know about Wallpaper Engine. Just got it, as it’s only 4€. Pretty fun! One more thing I didn’t know I needed :smiley: So much potential!

Yeah its pretty great. I was trying to figure out what I should put as a wallpaper for the last few weeks, and I just stumbled on this so now I got a dope wallpaper to show my progression

I’m glad you like it!

Oooh, neat! I like it. :+1:t2:
Here’s mine.

2 Likes

Yeah, I reckon so. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Yeah, I checked images as well :slight_smile: I also found 読み込み中 in the same way and through translators and dictionaries, but without context (and with only 2 months of learning kanjis and no grammar), it’s difficult to know if that’s a correct use.

I added a padding parameter (in pixels), so the screensaver doesn’t fill the whole screen/window:

https://castux.github.io/wanikani-screensaver/?key=your_key_here&padding=100

That can be useful with Wallpaper Engine, for instance (@aberiggs).
Also added that the kanjis under 75% accuracy now shake, as a reminder of your critical items.

Oh yeah I was wondering what that shake was on some of the new kanji I just couldnt get right :joy:. Thanks for the post, and also the padding feature is great :smiley:

This is very nice!! Is it still being developed? In particular, any chance we’ll be able to customise it?

Thanks for the great work :slight_smile:

Hi! I haven’t worked on it since that time no, but if you have specific requests, please list them here and I can consider them :slight_smile: I don’t have a huge amount of time but some things might be simple enough.

Gad you like it!

I’d really like to be able to change fonts and colours :blush:

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I would like to ask, how often does the wallpaper refresh to add the latest learned Kanji?

Every time you reload the page! If using a screensaver that visits the page, I guess it depends on the exact program you’re using, but I would imagine it’s every time the screensaver is activated.

Tragedy! I went to refresh my wallpaper for the new level and the site is down :cold_sweat:

That is strange indeed. I will investigate.

Ha. Fixed!

1 Like