Senra - Listening Flashcards
Learn Japanese, kana to JLPT
Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
Decks can now carry audio. Listening cards play in the app's own player, and with autoplay on, each card waits for its audio to finish before moving on.
Senra is an app for learning Japanese with the Senra Method.
From kana to JLPT N5 and N3, to real signs photographed in Tokyo — define a scope, split it into cards, drill it, hide what you already know, and spend your time only on what is left, until nothing remains.
The Senra Method
Define the scope. Split it into cards. Drill it. Hide what you have mastered. Concentrate on what is left. After every round, less remains unlearned.
Official decks, all free
· Japanese kana: 46 hiragana, 46 katakana, 25 voiced and plosive kana, 33 contracted sounds
· JLPT N3 grammar: time, cause and judgment / hearsay, state and scope / contrast, means and keigo / honorific, humble and polite — 201 points across four decks
· JLPT N5 core vocabulary and high-frequency sentence patterns
· Real Tokyo signs: 33 from inside stations, 16 from the streets, redrawn as vector plates true to the measured colours and layout
· 9 Tokyo Metro lines and 185 stations, with kanji, readings, station numbers and transfers
· The names and readings of Tokyo's 23 wards, plus the 14 kanji that keep coming back in place names
· Japanese dates: weekdays, months and days, 53 cards
Online decks are searchable by name and tag, and work offline once downloaded.
Main features
· Rich cards: furigana, grammar notes, images, audio and video
· Autoplay for continuous drilling, on both rich cards and media cards
· Hide mastered cards so the remaining range shrinks round by round
· Jump from one card to a specific card in another deck, with a preview before switching
· Import your own local decks
· Eight interface languages
Senra is not about seeing more cards. It is about managing a whole scope until nothing is left unlearned.
Terms of Use (EULA):
https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
more Three fixes
・Cover images in the online deck list no longer stay on the placeholder. A cover that finished loading for the first time was not applied to its cell, so it only appeared after that cell scrolled off screen and back. It looked like the covers were downloading again every time; in fact they were cached all along, and the list screen simply was not listening for "cover finished loading".
・Pressing play after a track has finished no longer does nothing — it now restarts from the beginning. The playhead was left at the end of the file, so pressing play asked it to continue from the end point: no sound and no message. Pressing play after pausing still resumes from where you paused.
・With autoplay on and a repeat mode such as "Repeat Card", audio on some cards stopped after finishing instead of replaying. This is fixed.
1.9.5 3d ago
Fixes sticky elements inside web cards
While scrolling a card's content, a toolbar meant to stay pinned at the top would scroll away with the content — the play bar on listening cards, for example. The cause: a style the app injected to stop web pages from scrolling sideways created an extra scrolling area inside the card, so sticky elements resolved against the wrong one. Sideways scrolling is now blocked only at the outermost layer, and sticky elements behave correctly.
Swiping between cards is unaffected, and web pages still cannot scroll sideways.
1.9.4 Oct 9
Listening deck support
・Decks can now carry audio. The audio is played by the app's own player rather than inside the web page, so it can be controlled from the Lock Screen and Control Center and keeps playing when you switch away.
・With autoplay on, a card that has audio starts playing by itself and only advances once the audio ends, instead of turning after a fixed number of seconds. A full listening test plays straight through.
・Cards without audio in the same deck still advance on the dwell timer as before. The two kinds can be mixed.
・Swiping to another card while audio is playing stops the sound immediately; it never carries over to the next card.
・Read-aloud and audio never play at once: starting the audio stops read-aloud.
Note
Decks with audio are distributed through the online deck catalog, and the sound requires 1.9.3 or later. Earlier versions show no play button.
1.9.3 Oct 9
Video decks now support Picture in Picture
· Leave the app and the video keeps playing in a small window, moving on to the next video card along with autoplay. Text-only decks have no small window and stop when the app goes to the background.
· A new "When you leave the app" setting: Picture in Picture, audio only, or stop. Picture in Picture is the default.
· Skip forward and back 10 seconds from the lock screen and Control Centre. With autoplay on, skipping past the end of the current video moves to the next card; with autoplay off, skipping stays inside the current video.
· Closing the small window stops autoplay. Tapping the small window to return to the app keeps playback going — the same behaviour as common video apps.
Autoplay interruption rules rebuilt
Until now, lifting your finger during autoplay stopped it no matter what, so starring a card, toggling full screen or tapping the card face all stopped playback by accident. Now only actions that clearly mean "stop" switch autoplay off.
· Stops autoplay: the autoplay button, swiping between cards, picking a page from the bottom bar, switching decks, hiding a card, opening settings, leaving the home screen, viewing an image full screen, and jumps inside a web card.
· Does not stop autoplay: starring, the full-screen toggle, collapsing the control bar, tapping the card face, replaying audio or video, and buttons or quizzes inside a web card.
· A new "suspended" state: phone calls, Siri, pausing the media yourself, unplugging headphones, and while a web card is being read aloud. In these cases autoplay is no longer switched off — it simply stops advancing, and resumes on its own once the reason is gone. Previously, after a call or after unplugging headphones, it would sit there showing as playing but never advancing.
· Pages no longer turn while a web card is being read aloud, and a card you swipe away stops reading immediately — no more hearing the previous card after the deck has moved on.
Also
· The repeat-mode description in autoplay settings only explained "repeat one card" and said nothing at all about the other three. All four are now explained.
· The four repeat-mode options are now a vertical list. They used to share a single row four ways, which cut off the option names in Indonesian and Vietnamese.
1.9.2 Oct 1
Fixes
· Updating an online deck no longer wipes your viewing history. Until now, updating a deck you had added also cleared that deck's view counts and last-viewed times, with no warning at all. Those two are now carried over just like hidden cards, stars and pinning.
· In landscape full screen, the edges of the neighbouring cards no longer show through, and the next video card plays properly after you swipe to it. Both symptoms came from the same cause: the page width was computed wrongly.
· Card rows on the deck edit screen no longer wrap early — titles and subtitles can use the full row width. Row height now follows the content instead of being squeezed flat.
Improvements
· The star button on the home screen can be dragged, and its position is remembered. After you rotate the device it returns to the equivalent spot, using its distance from the top as a ratio.
· A "Deck details" entry has been added to the top right of the local deck edit screen. Until now the detail page could only be opened from the online deck list, so once a deck was downloaded there was no way back to its description, tags and release notes.
· Opening deck details now shows the page first and fetches afterwards, so you no longer wait out a network round trip on the previous screen. If the fetch fails, the reason is explained on the page instead of in a message that flashes past.
1.9.1 Sep 27
Both pillars are now in place
· 201 JLPT N3 grammar points across four decks: time, cause and judgment / hearsay, state and scope / contrast, means and keigo / honorific, humble and polite. Every point gives the connection rules, meaning, nuance, two to four fixed examples with kana, comparisons with look-alike forms, and the one mistake people actually make. Furigana throughout, toggled with a single tap.
· 49 real Tokyo signs in two decks: inside stations (33) and out on the streets (16). Signs photographed on location in Tokyo and redrawn as vector plates true to the measured colours and layout. Each card gives the sign itself, word-level furigana you can hear read aloud, the words on the plate, the sentence pattern behind it, the trap learners fall into, and where you will see it.
· Adds "地名の漢字:よく出る14字", the 14 kanji that keep coming back in Tokyo place names and have more than one reading.
From the sign to the grammar
· Web cards can now jump to a specific card in another deck. On a real-sign card, tap "Full entry in the grammar deck" and a read-only preview opens first; the deck only switches once you confirm — most of the time you just want to see what it is, and that should not cost you your whole study context.
· When the target deck is not on the device, the message carries a "Get" action that opens that deck's online detail page.
· When the target card has been deleted or hidden by you, you now get a message instead of nothing at all.
Also
· Station cards on each Tokyo Metro line now link straight to the kanji deck, instead of carrying a copy inside every line.
1.9.0 Sep 24
Online decks can now be updated
· Update prompts: when a deck you've added has a new version, the list and detail pages show an "Update" button — one tap swaps in the latest content.
· Nothing gets lost: your hidden cards, starred favorites, and custom ordering all carry over.
· See what changed: read the release notes for that version before you update.
Other improvements
· Restore all hidden cards at once: from the deck edit screen, put every hidden card in that deck back into the study list in one step.
· Repeat-one mode for autoplay: when you want to see the same card again and again, autoplay stays on that card instead of moving on.
· Jump from chart to card: tap a cell in the kana chart or calendar table to go straight to that card.
New deck
· Added the free deck "Japanese Dates: Weekdays, Months, Days" with 53 cards, including the 4-7-9 reading pattern that ties months and days together.
1.8 Sep 17
Online decks can now be searched by name and tag, so you reach the deck you want faster.
The deck list now loads as you scroll, keeping the first screen fast as the catalogue grows.
Refined the deck list: the search bar is now just the input field, and cards extend to the top and bottom edges of the screen.
Fixed the card count and file size line being clipped in languages with longer descriptions, and at larger system text sizes.
Updated the in-app privacy policy to state what information is processed, covering subscriptions, diagnostics and search terms.
1.7.0 Sep 13
Added new free online decks: Japanese kana (hiragana, katakana, dakuon/handakuon, and yoon), 9 Tokyo Metro lines, and Tokyo's 23 wards.
Rich cards in online decks now support autoplay and show a countdown before turning to the next card.
Raised the maximum display time for cards without audio or video during autoplay from 8 seconds to 30 seconds.
Fixed an issue where switching decks did not return to the card you were last viewing.
Adjusted the highlight marker on the home screen so it covers less of the card.
1.6.3 Sep 8
Improved audio and video playback recovery after system interruptions or returning from other apps.
Fixed cases where quickly switching back to the previous deck could show a mismatched card position and progress.
Images in rich cards can now be tapped to view larger.
Updated in-app contact addresses to Senra official support email.
1.6.2 Sep 1
Improved the home study experience with lightweight starring for cards you want to revisit.
Refined full-screen study controls and star display to reduce visual distraction while learning.
Improved online deck download progress display and fixed theme color sync details.
1.6.1 Aug 16
・Added Online Decks, so you can get curated learning decks inside the app.
・Added richer card content support, including flexible layouts, audio, and video.
・Improved deck download and import stability for large files, with resume support.
・Improved deck lists, detail pages, cover image caching, and localized tag display.
・Improved full-screen study, rotation handling, and long-text card layout.
1.6 Aug 15
Added support for local web cards, allowing card content to be presented as HTML pages.
Improved deck package import stability and optimized the resource loading flow for web cards.
Improved web card rendering in dark mode, portrait and landscape orientations, and full-screen mode.
Fixed an issue where some long-text web cards could cause horizontal scrolling and interfere with card swiping.
Improved status messages for web card loading, load failures, and missing local resources.
1.5 Jul 25
Fixed several bugs
1.4 May 3
This update focuses on improving Auto Play and deck management:
- Auto Play upgrade: you can now choose what happens at the end of a deck (Stop / Loop / Auto switch to the next deck), with a clear summary shown in Settings
- More predictable Auto Play: Auto Play no longer overwrites your manual progress; when switching to the next deck, playback always starts from the first card
- Stable, controllable deck order: reorder decks by dragging in Deck Management, and the global order is saved so all screens show the same order
- More reliable imports: importing .senra decks no longer uses the package’s sort order; imported decks are appended to the end of your local order
- Maintenance: build number update and stability improvements
1.3 Apr 2
This update brings more powerful auto-play controls and a smoother learning flow:
- New “When reaching the last card” setting: choose Stop, switch to the next deck and continue, or loop the current deck (default: Loop).
- Remember your last viewed position for each deck and automatically resume where you left off.
- When auto-play switches to the next deck, it will jump to that deck’s remembered position and keep playing.
- Settings now shows a quick auto-play summary (e.g. “5s · Loop”) at a glance.
- Improved stability and rendering for the deck switcher list during fast scrolling.
1.2 Mar 30
Fixed an issue where continuous playback status was not updated promptly after being interrupted by other audio/video playback while on the lock screen.
1.1 Mar 27
Three fixes
・Cover images in the online deck list no longer stay on the placeholder. A cover that finished loading for the first time was not applied to its cell, so it only appeared after that cell scrolled off screen and back. It looked like the covers were downloading again every time; in fact they were cached all along, and the list screen simply was not listening for "cover finished loading".
・Pressing play after a track has finished no longer does nothing — it now restarts from the beginning. The playhead was left at the end of the file, so pressing play asked it to continue from the end point: no sound and no message. Pressing play after pausing still resumes from where you paused.
・With autoplay on and a repeat mode such as "Repeat Card", audio on some cards stopped after finishing instead of replaying. This is fixed.
more Version 1.9.5 3d ago
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