N2 Content Drop #27

I hope everyone has been thoroughly enjoying their egg hunting, and that you haven't been disappointed (like some people) regarding the fact that there is not, in fact, any chocolate involved. If you were though, not to worry, I’ve come up with a workaround that only involves a quick trip to the store and some minimal spending, since everything is now on sale. After that, it’s simply up to you, and how many chocolate eggs you’re able to fit in your mouth at once.

Speaking of shoveling things into mouths, are you ready to devour a new batch of grammar, vocab, and reading??? This week’s drop features delectable points such as 以上に for “more X than (you thought!)”, やがて, for… all sorts of things, and the very first installment in our dialects series!

For vocab, we’ve got winning words like 自棄 (“desperation”), 奮発 (“strenuous exertion”), and 丹念 (“painstaking”), which were all words that were used to describe me during this year’s Easter egg hunt.

Then, practice recent grammar and vocab in this week’s reading, which seamlessly melds together the smash hit anime Attack on Ducks, an up-and-coming track athlete, and Thomas Edison.

All of this and more, awaits you, now… in the Sands of Mastery. So hop to it! (That’s a bunny joke.)

Happy studies!

Let the 2026 Easter Egg Hunt Commence!

Hi everyone! We’re eggcited to announce the start of our 4th annual easter egg hunt! Maru has been hard at work painting and hiding eggs as fast as her little paws will let her and you can now find easter eggs sprinkled throughout all the currently available regions. That means if you haven’t explored them all yet, now is your chance!

Don’t forget this is a limited-time event, so make sure you find all the eggs before it’s over. Those who manage to collect them all will earn themselves a shiny new achievement (and Maru’s endless adoration). To help you along the way, each region includes a counter at the bottom so you can track how many eggs you have left to find.

Now get out there and make Maru proud. Happy hunting!

New Mobile Apps Update - v1.1.0 - Getting Ready for General Launch! All missing features, pages and a big revamp!

Hello again!

Big news today, we've released a new mobile app version with pretty much ALL missing features and pages! And along with it we've refined and revamped quite a bunch of other mobile app things as well.

This also means that we are almost ready for general launch on the app stores! Our plan is to check this version through TestFlight/Google Open Testing for about a week or so, and if it goes well, we'll submit it as the real deal to the app stores.

We have a lot to talk about, so let's get into it!

Onboarding

We've added the new user onboarding pages to the app, and gave it a little bit more special app sauce while at it.

Register & Login & Limitations

From this version onwards you can also register and login without having a paid subscription (or active trial). We've imposed the same restrictions as the website has in terms of what a trial account can/can't do and what a free (expired trial) account can do and so on.

Also new: registering and logging in through Google and Discord directly on the app.

Navigation Rework

We've reworked how navigation works in the app. You can now switch to another "tab" (from the navbar) without losing track of where you were in the other tab. For example, if you are reading a grammar lesson on the Adventure tab, you can easily check in on your study lists, or search through the grammar library in the other tabs and go back to your lesson with just one tap (Adventure).

Tapping twice on a "tab" in the navbar will make you go back to the initial page of the tab.

Another thing we added is the support for swiping back to the previous page (on iOS), as well as a global navigation history for Android users. No more returning to the Study Lists page when you press the back button!

Premade Study Lists Section

That's right! You can now get premade study lists on the go! We've added the whole premade study lists section and details pages accordingly. Just like on web.

Choose & Edit Stories Modal

You can now create, edit, like and favourite stories straight from the app as well.

Manual SRS Lesson Sessions

You can now choose to start a lesson session with only the items you have selected. Ideal for Premade Study Lists like the Game lists etc.

Now you might be wondering, how would I start a manual session? Wellll....

Study List Item Management Page

Yupp! The whole Item Management Page is now in the app! Just like on web you can now view items, suspend them, mark them as known, filter them, start a manual lesson session, unlock them, start a quick study session and so on! All the management actions you've come to know from web are there. No more switching to web if you need to do some management.

SRS Settings & Sorting

The sorting options for SRS are now the same as on web:

We've also introduced a new global setting (on the Settings page) for disabling automatic kana-conversion. This will let you use Japanese flick keyboards without issue. Especially handy for those on Android.

Speaking of Android, if the above setting is enabled, the app will now automatically attempt to switch your keyboard language to Japanese and English, depending on the SRS layout. So no more manual switching of your keyboard language!

Settings Page

Yup! The app now also has the full-fledged settings page, along with some additions. You can now set the theme for your current device in particular. So if you want dark theme on mobile, but light theme on website, now's your time!

It also brings with it all the fun stuff like the WaniKani Sync and Social Links, and the essentials like being able to log out of your account on the app.

In-App Notifications

The app now also shows you if you have a new in-app/on-site notification through a pulsing red dot on the "more" tab of the navbar.

In the same trend, we've also added the notifications hub to the top of the more page, where you can see all your recent notifications and filter by notification type.

Changelog Page

You can now read announcements and changelogs directly from the app. Hi to everyone reading this on the go!

Easter Egg Mode

Since its the season, we've also added the annual easter egg hunt to the app! Go ahead and hunt those eggs so you can get this year's achievement.

Grammar Lesson Comments

Just like on web, we've added the reworked comment section to the app. This means it has all the new styling and functionality (reply threads), as well as the usual functionality, like being able to place comments straight from the app itself.

Profile Share Images

Generate and update your profile share image directly through the app! You can adjust all settings, same as on web, and if you tap on the "share" button, it will prompt you to "natively" save or share the generated image directly.

Edit Profile Modal

Likewise, editing your personal profile has never been this easy. We've added the edit profile modal, letting you set your avatar, banner, badges and everything else straight from the app.

Create/Edit Study List Modal

We've revamped the Study List modal to have a better feel on mobile as well as providing an easy way to update the banner and card images for each study list.

Reading Exercises

There were a lot of issues with the reading exercises in the app. Luckily, we've managed to fix all of them! Now that the app is up to par, we'll be focusing on our complete rework of the reading exercises 👀 More info on that later though!

Mini Games - Crosswords

Play your favourite mini game on the go!

Mini Games - Wordle

Or perhaps this is your favourite mini game? No matter, you can now play it on the go as well!

Other Improvements and Bug Fixes:

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  Adventure - Added loading screens

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  SRS - Improved Performance. It should now feel a bit snappier!

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  SRS & Dictionary - Kanji - Fixed an issue where the main meaning would sometimes be different from the corresponding main meaning on the website.

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  SRS - Fixed an issue where the personal synonym modal would sometimes not close.

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  SRS Lessons - Fixed an issue where marking an item as known or suspending during the quiz section would prematurely end the session.

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  Grammar Lessons - Tapping on an image will now bring up the image in a modal that you can zoom in and zoom out.

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  Home - Upcoming Reviews Timeline - Now correctly handles Daylight Saving Time changes (just releases a bit too late now haha).

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  Study List Details - Upcoming Reviews Timeline - Now has the correct colors for grammar study lists.

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  SRS - Vocabulary - Contained Kanji now uses the updated styling and has been put at the top of the corresponding tab.

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  Dictionary - Add item to Study List Modal - "Select an item" placeholder text is no longer difficult to read in dark theme.

PFEW! That was a lot to talk about. But we're so, so hyped to finally get the app up to par with the website!

The only feature it is still missing are the Mock Exams, but we plan on bringing those in a new update in the near future as well, along with some completely new features for both web and app!

Hopefully we don't run into too many issues and we can finally launch the app onto the app stores in the coming week(s)!

New Website Update & MaruDex Sneak Peek (OCR Lookup Tool for Windows/Mac/Linux (& Steam Deck)/Android)

Hey all!

We've got some really exciting news today about a new app/tool that we will be releasing in the coming weeks (and about the mobile app!). But before we get into that, let's first talk about some new changes that we've made to the website lately:

Comment Section Rework

As you might've already noticed, we've reworked the comment section of the grammar lesson page. As MaruMori was getting older, we noticed that the previous comment structure was getting a bit messy and difficult to navigate through, especially when it came to replies and the reply chains that resulted from that.

So in order to make it easier for everyone, we've added threads, similar in style to how facebook or reddit works. Meaning that by default we show you a single indented reply, but let you expand any further replies (or replies to that reply and so on) if you wish by clicking a button. I think it's easier to just show you what that means, so take a look at the screenshot below:

Before expanding the comments

And after! Visually it's much clearer right?

Other improvements:

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  We've added more background image options to the profile share images that you can generate!

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  Mini Games - Crosswords - We've finally tracked down a bug that sometimes caused a column to have two vertical word starting points. No more!

MaruDex - OCR Tool for mining anything on your screen

Nope, this isn't an early april's fools joke! We've been working on something very special in the background, and are almost ready to release it to the public... A tool which lets you look up literally anything on your screen with the press of a button. That means any Japanese text in manga, games, anime, series and movie subs or even just any text in your browser or whatever else might be happening on your screen! And the best part: You can add vocabulary and kanji from the corresponding lookup tooltip to a study list in one click (or tap)!

Here are a few screenshots to give you a little sneak peek of how it works and what it looks like:

For Windows/Mac/Linux (X11-only) we have two modes:

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  Quick Lookups: Hover over text -> Hotkey -> Shows information about the exact word you are hovering over.

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  Scan Mode: Hotkey -> Scans whole screen for text -> Shows red boxes around all found (Japanese) text -> hover to directly see the definition of any word inside the box.

For Android and Linux (Wayland, including Steam Deck) we only support scan mode, but its likely also the easiest way to look things up, as all of your screen will immediately get OCRed.

Here's what that looks like on Android (including a dual-screen mode setting for Android gaming devices like the Ayn Thor):

I think you can probably see why we're so hyped about this new tool, as it will make studying through immersion so much easier when you can look up any word on screen immediately and also add it to your study lists for studying on MaruMori.

We've already been letting a handful of users beta test it, and have a few tasks left on our todo for further refinement and for adding some additional features. But you can likely expect this to come out for all those platforms in the coming few weeks! So expect a "real" announcement to hit very soon!

Mobile App General Release 👀

Speaking of what's coming soon.. I'm also very happy to announce that we have implemented pretty much ALL missing functionality and features from the website into the mobile apps, and gave it a pretty big revamp while at it! I'm currently submitting the new builds to the app stores, and if testing goes well we'll be graduating the apps from TestFlight and Google Testing onto the app stores for real! Meaning that anyone can access it, even if you aren't subscribed (yet?). So expect more information on that in the coming few days as well!

N2 Content Drop #26

You know what the best part about spring is? More than any bunny-themed chocolates, chirping birds, warm weather, or blooming flowers, the best part of spring is that my allergies finally stop playing hard to get and just come out and say it: “Screw you man.”

Like, they’re there all-year-round, sneaking about, causing the occasional sneezing fit, tickling my throat and running away with a giggle. But come spring, they finally own their maliciousness, and I’m free to fight them full force with the power of the modern antihistamine.

And speaking of allergies, I hope you’re not allergic to awesome grammar lessons, because we’ve got a fresh batch ready, just for you!

In this week’s drop, we’ve got five new paramount grammar points for you, not limited to the likes of ～(より)ほかない, for when we have no choice to blow our nose, even if it hurts; ～でしかない, for when allergies have made an actual cold feel like “nothing more than a mild annoyance”; and その上・上に for “on top of X”, which you can use to stack various allergens on top of one another and maybe exclaim in frustration that “these things are all literally everywhere”.

For vocab, we’ve got words worth mulling over such as 嘆き for “grief”, 猛烈 for “fierce”, and 縁起 for “omen”. Very topical, as always.

And in this week’s reading, we’ll discuss Japan’s other Valentine’s Day, give a cautionary tale about plagiarism, and learn a bit about Japanese surnames.

All of this and more awaits you now, in The Sands of Mastery!

Happy studies!