Japanese Dictionary Jibiki

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  Detail screen for a Japanese Kanji character

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  Dictionary Search

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  Stroke Order animation for a Kanji character

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  Apple Watch complication with daily Kanji character for studying

Inspiration

I've been studying Japanese for many years and this app is scratching my itch to provide the functionality I was searching for in other dictionary apps in the Apple eco system. Which was mainly to be able to quickly search Japanese words and to have a randomly selected Japanese character quickly glanceable on my Apple Watch as a complication or Lock Screen as a widget.

What it does

• Search dictionaries completely offline
• Search conveniences like paste-from-clipboard
• Quickly add entries as bookmarks and organize them
• Kanji-of-the-Day widget (and watchOS complication) for your specified skill level
• 200k expressions and 13k characters (Kanji)
• Stroke-Order-Diagrams (SODs) for Kanji writing guidance

How we built it

The app is completely written in native Swift and SwiftUI. Aside from initial asset downloads and user data synchronization (bookmarks, search history, ...), everything happens on device.

What we learned

• converting massive XML dictionary data to SQLite database
• advanced SwiftUI
• SwiftData
• WidgetKit
• AppIntents and shortcuts

What's next for Japanese Dictionary Jibiki

• Native macOS app
• improved search
• improved watchOS app
• flashcard widget with Space-Repetition-System (SRS)

Built With

• ios
• revenuecat
• swift
• swiftui