I had a short look at Yomimaru and it looks quite cool! Here are some things I noticed, not meant to criticise but just so that it might be able to help you improve
When I first opened it there were so many notifications and pop-ups that kept moving when you clicked on things, which made it a little overwhelming
The placement test you do when you click āstart readingā on the website only does kanji. However the placement test found in settings afterwards also includes vocab and grammar, maybe the initial test could also already include vocab and grammar? In addition I find the placement test a little limiting, although I do understand that itās supposed to just be a starting point. My kanji knowledge is around 70% of N3, yet my grammar is N5. So in the placement test I chose the option āI donāt knowā for all the grammar points yet it still said my grammar level is N3, which it isnāt. Plus it assumes my vocab level is the same as my kanji level while it isnāt. Maybe it would be nice if you could have a setting where you can choose yourself what level kanji-vocab-grammar you are, instead of being fully dependant on a placement test
It overal took a long time to load, although thatās not something you can easily fix haha
A filter in the read-discover section for the length of story (for example filtering out 1-5 minute reads) could be nice
Overal it looks really cool, amazing concept and I might try it at some point when my level is better, as at the moment thereās so much vocab and grammar that I donāt know that it feels a little overwhelming haha
Thank you so much for writing all of this out. Honestly, this is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for, and Iām really happy you liked the learning method around Yomimaru!
The placement test is the part I most want to fix, and you put your finger right on the problem. Knowing 70% of N3 kanji while your grammar is still N5 is super common, and right now the test just assumes those go together, which they really donāt. We actually had separate kanji, vocab, and grammar settings in an earlier version of the onboarding, but we cut it because it was making the whole thing feel too long. Your comment is honestly pushing me to bring it back, probably as an optional ālet me set my own levelsā path for people who already know where they stand.
In the meantime, you can already get a bit closer to the right level by switching the learning path you follow, so if you come back, give the N5/N4 path a try. Thereās a lot of vocab review sitting in there that should feel way less overwhelming than what you ran into.
A length filter in read-discover is a really good idea too; that oneās easy and Iāll add it.
The loading times are the tricky one, and yeah, youāre right that itās not a quick fix. If you ever remember roughly where it dragged the most, that would genuinely help ! Weāre rolling out an update right now that makes the onboarding load much faster, so hopefully that part at least feels better soon.
A lot of you pushed back on real things in this thread, so I spent the past week rebuilding around that feedback. This is the biggest change Yomimaru has had since I started it, and a good chunk of it came straight out of this discussion. I wanted to come back and show what actually changed.
The big one: thereās now a Guided Path, and itās the main way to use Yomimaru.
In my original post I admitted that finding Japanese to read at your own level is its own headache. The honest truth is my answer back then was āhereās a 10,000-text library, good luck.ā Thatās great if you already know what you want. Itās paralyzing if you donāt. So we built the Guided Path. Instead of staring at a library, you walk a short trail of small, finishable stops, one at a time: read a story picked for your level, review the words youāve been collecting, quiz yourself on what you just read, roleplay a quick conversation. You finish one, you move to the next. You never have to decide what to study, and when you open the app the next step is already waiting for you. If youāre earlier on and just trying to read real Japanese at your level, this is the easiest that has ever been here.
The rest of what changed this week:
WaniKani sync is now free. It used to require a subscription. It doesnāt anymore. Connect your account on the free Ronin tier and your furigana follows your level, full stop. Charging WaniKani users for that always felt like the wrong call, so itās fixed.
The native library got rebuilt. When @Litehawk and a few others questioned learning from AI-generated text, the honest weak spot was the free native side. Aozora is wonderful, but a lot of it is a century old, in spelling that doesnāt match how Japanese is written now. So we curated it. Every JLPT level has a hand-scored set of genuinely engaging stories instead of a search bar over thousands of texts, the archaic spelling has been modernized so a 1920 story reads naturally today, and each text now carries a tone tag (casual, polite, archaic, modernized). If the AI side wasnāt for you, the native side is finally worth sitting down with.
News reading counts now. A few of you asked for this. Reading real Japanese news feeds your stats and streaks like anything else, and thereās a daily task nudging you toward one article.
Plan changes and checkout got fixed. Changing or downgrading your plan happens right in account settings now instead of a cancellation dance (thanks @DidiBluebell for flagging it), and checkout takes Apple Pay and Google Pay.
All of the above sits on the free tier. If you tried Yomimaru early and bounced off it, itās a genuinely different app now, and Iād love to know whether the Path makes it land better this time. ććć°ćć¾ććć
Loading the read page and opening stories took a while I think, and the translate feature (only tried it once btw) took a long time to load and then said it couldnāt do it or something like that. As for where else is was slowā¦ I forgot haha
I see, maybe Iāll give it another try at a lower level and see if thats better, thanks!
Thanks for the extra detail! Weāll definitely look into that translate error you hit, the sentence translate feature shouldnāt be failing or hanging like that.
And yeah, give it a try at a lower level when you get the chance. Curious to hear if it feels smoother. Thanks again for taking the time.
This looks great and I definitely plan to give it a try, but thereās something weird happening when I view the site in Safari 26.4 on macOS 26.4. Every 12 seconds the entire page glitches with a jerk. Doesnāt seem to happen on the Library/Get Started page, so Iām hopeful that it wouldnāt glitch when Iām trying to read, but I havenāt signed up yet so canāt tell.
Thanks for your comment ! Really appreciate you flagging this.
I just tested on Safari and couldnāt reproduce the glitch on any of the app screens (reading interface, library, dashboard), so fingers crossed youāll be fine once youāre inside. Quick question though: was the 12-second jerk happening on the landing page specifically, or somewhere else? That would help me narrow down where to look.
Either way, our team will investigate the issue further and make sure this doesnāt happen again.
Seems like it was just the landing page? But the way that page is structured with the menu at top just pointing to different areas on the same page make is difficult to tell what is a separate page or still on the landing page. Are any links on the landing page taking you to new pages other than Open Your Library and Start Reading?
Yup thatās right (sorry itās a bit confusing), the whole top menu (Features, Maru-Sensei, Demo, Library, Pricing) just scrolls you to sections on the same landing page, so none of those open a new page. The only links that genuinely take you somewhere else are the account ones: āStart Readingā drops you into the onboarding and āLog Inā goes to the login page. So those two are basically it.
The bit that probably tripped you up is āLibraryā. In the top menu it just scrolls to a little preview section, while the āOpen Your Libraryā button is the one that actually takes you inside. Same word, two different behaviors, which isnāt ideal, so Iāll make that clearer.
Thanks again for the thorough feedback, it really helps me hunt this down.
As someone said earlier, the starting test put me in N3 whileā¦ ahem.. letās say iāve set my path so a more begginner friendly one.
Iām stuck on my path with a dialogue interaction! I guess i have to wait for the IA tokens? Plus i had a bug (if it one) where everything was in Japanese after i asked something in the sensei tchat.
Ahh thank you so much for actually giving it a go !
For the dialogue where you got stuck, I think what happened is you used up the AI credits that come with a free account, did you use the AI features a lot ? Those cover the interactive stuff like the sensei chat and dialogues, and once they run out youād need to top up by moving to a paid tier to keep going. That part is totally normal, but honestly the app does a bad job of telling you thatās whatās happening, it should be way clearer instead of just leaving you stuck. Thatās on me to fix.
The all-Japanese thing after the sensei chat was indeed a bug, and good news, we shipped a fix for it earlier. So if you go back in it should stay in a language you can actually follow now. If it happens again please yell at me here, that kind of report is really useful.
And Iām really glad you found the manual settings and set your own path difficulty, thatās exactly what theyāre there for. Appreciate you taking the time, seriously.
If it happens again please yell at me here, that kind of report is really useful.