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?)

Saved my life

I’ve been using it for a month and I’ve been caught up on reviews for pretty much every waking hour since I got the app. The main thing that helps is the unread badge on the app icon. I used to be scared to open WaniKani from fear of the amount of reviews that would build up every day. I tried to catch up once a day but lately I’d started procrastinating for days, building up about 300 reviews between each time I opened the website. Now, it’s all changed. All I have to do is put the app on the home screen to see how much I need to do. The red badge on the app icon is a soft reminder to do my reviews that I can always see. I’m constantly motivated to catch up, because I know right away when new reviews come in, without having to perform the small task of opening WaniKani (which becomes an excuse to avoid the whole thing). It ends up being only about 10 reviews per hour on average for me, so sometimes I even end up staring at the app waiting for new reviews at the turn of the hour.

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.