chrisvasselli

Author here.

Even though I wasn’t thrilled from a user perspective about Apple adding a second ad slot to App Store search, I was generally optimistic it would help my indie app business, since Search Ads convert well for me.

What surprised me was that total downloads stayed roughly the same while paid installs increased and organic installs fell by a similar amount. In the end I paid more without increasing downloads.

Happy to answer questions about the data, Search Ads setup, or the Japanese dictionary app market.

I'm going to add some ability to display things in romaji in the future, so users can start on some of the actual sentences before completing hiragana/katakana. Agree that getting through all the characters before starting anything else is not motivating.

Planning on at least adding "this is approximately JLPT N4" kind of tags on the levels in the future.

Awesome! Let me know if you have any feedback after playing around with it.

Thanks for that feedback. The drawing system was originally developed for writing kanji, used in my other app Nihongo. Kanji doesn't have the same kind of long strokes that change direction as hiragana, so I could see it not behaving as well for those. I'll see if I can improve it, thanks!

You should check out my other app, Nihongo (https://nihongo-app.com), it has functionality like this, and is one of the reasons I developed it in the first place.

I take DRM free ebooks and copy them into the app one chapter at a time. It automatically creates flashcards for all the words that appeared that I don't already know, and I can filter down to only words that appear at least twice.

Thanks, this is really useful. I've got some of those in my app, but this gives me a good set of features to aim for as well.

This is really really interesting. I wonder if the data from FrameNet would be enough to reliably generate this kind of information in a Japanese dictionary, and if the license supports is usage. I'm going to explore this more, thanks.

You can check out my other app Nihongo for this too (https://nihongo-app.com). :)

Individual courses are $120, unlocking all seven is $300 (USD).

Whoops! Japanese-learning app then.

Kanji lessons coming soon. :)

This is great feedback, thanks. I’ll definitely be putting pricing information on the website.

Been thinking about adding EPWING dictionary support to Nihongo for a long time, maybe it’s time to make that happen. It seems to be the only way to get good J-J definitions in particular.

I'm also a fan of learning kanji only in the context of words, and not on their own in a vacuum.

I made the kanji decks in my other app Nihongo (https://nihongo-app.com) based on this philosophy. Basically, they teach you (1) the kun-yomi word(s) for each character, (2) the 1-3 most common words for each on-yomi, and (3) to write the kanji.

Don't try to learn the readings in isolation, learn them in the context of the words where they appear. And by learning a small set of the most common words using the character (especially if it has a standalone kun-yomi word), you'll internalize the meaning of the kanji itself.

Also if you're into videogames there's an amazing resource here if you haven't seen it before: https://sites.google.com/view/jo-mako/home?pli=1

Among many other things, it has a huge catalog of Japanese game transcripts. I will copy-paste those into my other app Nihongo (https://nihongo-app.com) which will automatically create flashcards that I can use to pre-study before going through each section, so I can get more out of it.

For me, a big breakthrough around that level was using books (or videogames) that I've already read in English so I know the story and don't get lost when there are chunks I don't understand. If I know the story already, I can enjoy going through it again even if I'm not getting everything.

If you haven't checked it out, my other app Nihongo (https://nihongo-app.com) is good for native content reading and making flashcards automatically from words you don't know. :)

Would love to hear more about what makes Pleco stand out for you. I make a dictionary app as well (https://nihongo-app.com) and am always trying to improve it.

Glad to hear you've had such a good experience! And you've actually given me some good ideas about how I can improve my marketing too!

Thank you so much, I'm so glad you like it!

Reading is one of the things I developed my other app, Nihongo, to help with.

I take DRM free ebooks and copy them into the app one chapter at a time. It automatically creates flashcards for all the words that appeared that I don't already know, and I can filter down to only words that appear at least twice.

I pre-study those "essential" vocab, then usually just read without looking anything up. But the app also makes it so you can tap on words to get a quick definition.

Under the hood, it's actually using Google's Cloud OCR API. Not sure how well it handles 草書 or 隷書, but it does a pretty remarkable job with 行書. Also does surprisingly well with super pixelated text. I can look up words in 16-bit games trying to squeeze kanji into 16x16 sprites or something, and it holds up incredibly well.

You can also swap out the OCR API it uses. Right now I support Google and ocr.space.

Yotsuba-to is a great one to start with, it's actually one of the ones that there are vocab decks for in the app. :)

Haha yes! I would LOVE to make the app for Android someday. But as a solo dev, it’s just too much to take on on my own. If Nihongo ever blows up and I make enough to hire someone to help me out, an Android app is top of my list.

If you haven't checked it out my other app Nihongo has a good OCR + dictionary setup. You can see a demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffRxPyc9K8A

iOS-only though.

Yeah, I'm trying to fill that gap a bit here.

My app Nihongo was the app I built for myself when I was getting to the advanced level, and wanted to focus on learning from native content. It helps automatically create flashcards from words you look up, OCR, etc.

Nihongo Lessons is a companion app for people that want something more guided to help them learn vocab/grammar. It covers everything from beginner-advanced, but is probably most suited for intermediate folks who want to make a push towards advanced.

Oh thanks! I swear I must've read that typo 100 times and never noticed it. Good point about the pricing and 見ましょう examples, I'll consider changing it to something else.

Great, let me know if you have any feedback!

Thanks! Phone-only for now just because I wanted to get it out the door and focus on polishing a single user experience, but I definitely plan on adding iPad support soon. That's good feedback that you like studying on your Mac, I'll consider putting together a Mac version as well (although the iPad version will at least run decently well on any Apple-Silicon Mac).