Tsurukame - For WaniKani 4+

Has changed the way I do my studying.

First off, this app is amazing in comparison to trying to use the mobile site. I am continually impressed with the updates that also continue to come to the application, my recent favorites being darkmode, the hiding of examples English translations during lessons, and probably more than I can’t even remember. I am a huge iPad Pro 12.9” user, and this has full featured split screen and side app support!!! AAAAA, literally amazing. This means I can easily have Tsurukame off to the side to reference while I use a note taking app like Goodnotes in the primary, larger section of the screen. I lunge for my iPad Pro now everytime I get a WaniKani notification, because this app has truly made studying fun and more relaxing. No more looking up and down from monitor to notebook while I try to practice writing, it’s all right there. On one.

BUT... could we maybe see some Jisho integration where stroke order is shown on the lesson pages and maybe review screens when you get an item wrong? Or a drop down to show it in those screens? That would literally make this app 100% feature complete for me. Take my money. (Like actually though, can I donate somehow?)

Spectacular app with hiragana/katakana confustion

Amazing app. I absolutely recommend this for anyone using WakiKani.

That said, this app creates some confusion between hiragana and katakana. When typing words by the kana, I expect to see the hiragana for most of these words. Instead, the corresponding katakana is displayed when I type using an English iPad Magic Keyboard. It doesn’t affect whether my answer is correct or not, but it’s an annoyance. Also, it seems to do this for Kanji but not vocabulary. I can remove my iPad from the Magic Keyboard and switch to a Japanese keyboard, but this isn’t how I intend to use the app and my iPad. Likewise, in places where I’m reading the furigana it also displays the katakana rather than the hiragana. These two related issues seem like an error of the app (as opposed to user error.)

*Update - The devs have informed me there is a setting for this. Now I just feel silly. Thank you for the response!

Developer Response ,

Hi! Thanks for the review!
This is actually a setting in the app: “Use Katakana for Onyomi” in the “Radicals, Kanji & Vocabulary” section in the settings screen.

Best Companion App for Wanikani

Very convenient and easy to use, with no excessive flairs. My only suggestion for improvement is regarding the layout for Anki mode. Current design requires three presses to process a review. First press, easy enough, can work anywhere on the screen and proceeds to bring up the answer for you to check against. However, the second press requires pressing the TOP of the screen to bring up the option menu to indicate whether your provided the right answer or not at the BOTTOM of the screen. This requires a great deal of finger traversal across the screen, which makes one handed handing rather cumbersome on large phones (at least from personal experience). An alternative view option requiring less screen traversal would be greatly appreciated, further complementing the convenient nature of Anki mode. Despite this, still an easy 5-star experience :)