Akebi Japanese Dictionary
Akebi allows you to use character masks to filter out thousands of words from a large Japanese Dictionary. It allows you to specify what radicals appear in each character of the word, and set particular characters. Using this, you can find extremely specific words without a lot of Japanese knowledge.Akebi is designed to allow fast searching, and as such, the word can be specified by last letter, first letter or any letter in between.
NOTE ABOUT THE INTERNET PERMISSION:I hope this doesn't scare you off downloading Akebi: It is fully available offline, but the dictionary needs to be downloaded first. If you choose to allow it, Akebi will also send a small bit of analytical data back to me so I can find out which features are most used (It absolutely will not send anything if you disable it.).
Some of the features include:
- Word listsThese allow you to add any word you're searching for to a list with just one press. The next time this word fits a mask you're searching for, it appears in red at the top of all possible words, to make it easy to find in case you forget. It's also good for words that the dictionary doesn't have, like names specific to what you're doing. You can even test yourself on these words too using a flashcard test! If you want, you can export them to a text file for use elsewhere as well.
- Radical searchSpecify which characters of the word contain what radicals. Words that don't fit this will be filtered out.
- Inbuilt Japanese KeyboardYou don't even need to swap keyboards to use Akebi. You just jump in and start typing. But, if you prefer, you can turn this feature off if it causes issues with your keyboard, or if you just want to use your normal keyboard! You can even pick Akebi's keyboard/handwriting recognition as your input method!
- Kanji descriptionsFind out how common a character is, what grade level it is, what it means, how to read it, its Unicode number, how many strokes are in it, its reference numbers (Heisig, Nelson...), a stroke order diagram for it, a decomposition of it, all the words that contain it...
- English to Japanese searchingSearch with English as well!
- Handwriting recognitionAkebi has custom built handwriting recognition
- and stroke order doesn't matter! Find that complex kanji quickly thanks to the "Tomoe" handwriting database!
- Example sentencesAkebi has 320,000+ example sentences: search for any word and find out how to use it in a sentence! Tap the sentence for further information: including each word in the sentence's definition and reading.
- Kanji testTest yourself on any kanji you want! Create sets and test yourself!
- DeconjugationSearch for 言って and you'll get results for 言う. Works for other forms too, such as ます, ない, た, られる/Potential form.
- Animated stroke order diagramsSee exactly how to draw a kanji correctly!
- Asynchronous loadingAkebi opens instantly: you can start typing in the word you want to find while Akebi loads the dictionary in the background.
- Tiny memory footprintAkebi uses only 20mb of storage space for the entirety of its data. Compressions are handwritten by myself!
- Holo themedUsing ActionBarSherlock, I've totally rethemed the entire UI, adding tonnes more features and making the app much easier to use
- No DRMBecause it just makes everyone angry!
- No AdsBecause they kill battery life!
Akebi has to do an initial ~20mb download when it starts
- so make sure to have internet access on first use!
Category : Books & Reference
Reviews (27)
Excellent after customizing options. By default only very few words are shown as predicted, when you input just one or two characters, and I thought the app was flawed and not finding everything. Set it up to show a lot more, now it is perfect. Also customized the results display to be always popup, and rearranged the order. Thanks for this amazing apo. Still gonna start using the flashcards part!
I'd give this a 4.5, just because it feels slightly wonkier than I want it to sometimes, but it's honestly one of the best dictionaries out there, rivaling everything else and at times winding up being the best. I keep a few others for ease of use (while I love that Akebi has massive conjugation lists for any verb, I'm not kidding when I say these are massive, and finding what you're looking for can be a bit of a chore until you learn the layout), but Akebi is very complete and once you get used to its few quirks, is potentially the best Japanese dictionary available. Incredibly good kanji writing lookup is a huge plus (not perfect, but better than anything else I've tried), in addition to the color-coded entries that show usage frequencies. Oh, and can export words to Anki with a single tap, which you can then use to edit into another format (though what it defaults to is quite usable if you're just flashcarding individual vocab). And it does all this on a tiny footprint, offline, with no ads. Craxic is a legend. One thing I'd love to know, though: where do the example sentences come from? Tatoeba?
Dudeeeeee, Im telling you, this is like the best overall Japanese-English dictionary app you will ever have. Considering that they added up " pitch accents " to the new updates, makes it more so cool. But HEY, if I could recommend something for the next update, might as well be an app feature that says you have already added this to one of your lists or folders. Not just the folder that you activated on. I think it'll make it perfect.
I am extremely pleased with this app. Not only does it include a dictionary but also lists of actual phrases with the words you've been looking for. You can either type a word or draw a kanji when you are searching. You can create your own lists and shuffle the words during learning practice. A very practical and comprehensive app.
Great offline Japanese dictionary app! I have been using it since more than 4years, but didn't face any issue at all, ever. One of the features which I like a lot is that search history capacity seems to be unlimited. Which means that you can always take a look back at the words you searched even long, long ago. Thanks a ton for creating such a helpful learning app.
Best dictionary app I've ever found. It's simply the most complete. Not only can you search for words and get their meaning, it also decomposes the kanji into their radicals to help really understand their meaning. Moreover, when searching for a word, it gives you alternative writings and related words. All this to say that this dictionary app gives the most complete and detailed set of information about the searches we make. It also has an option to export to Anki, which is great.
More than a dictionary, this is a top tier Japanese assistant. The UI is intuitive and concise whilst still looking really good. It also has a handwriting section, list builders and JLPT levels for words (great for having a goal to work towards). And it gets even more versatile if your using it along side Anki. Amazing work 🙌
Best japanese-english dictionary app I've ever used. A lot of different advanced ways to search for specific kanji and words which makes finiding monster kanji so easy. The only dictionary I've found(on android) with handwriting input in the app. A huge list of conjugations for each word with mini explainations attached. And best of all, NO ADS!! This is just a first impressions so if the app is as useful as it seems to be I will consider supporting the developer by donating.
This app is surprisingly great! The UI is very simple and I love how the definitions show up as blocks and not as lists. That makes finding alot easier OwO (the tutorial part really got me i felt dumb for some good minutes lol) And oh, I accidentally added two similar terms in a list, but I can't remove the duplicate (not that of a big deal tho XD) The 'tag' feature is also great, that means I can look up words in the same category tho it will be really cool to have it a seperate tab XD
Love this app, probably the best dictionary app around. Only thing I'd like to see it the text-to-speech be a button on the initial UI, not in the three dots menu, I use it quite often. Maybe even a connection with another database in case the user is online so you can actually hear another person speaking the word.
I love this dictionary!! And it only seems to get better with time :D used it for several years now. I use it for checking words but also to learn contexts with their sentence feature and I use the lists to create flashcards. Two other stand-out features are colour-coding by frequency of use, and guessing similar words to what you have typed.
Best dictionary app I've used. Beautiful & easy to use UI. I can save words into lists. I can create kanji sets. If I look up a phrase, I can search the individual character in the phrase and look at it's conjugations, sample sentences, other words with which this character used, kunyomi and onyomi readings... I'm currently learning Japanese and I can't live without this app. My only complaint is that the handwriting recognition is not v good and I struggle finding words I can't read.
Hands down the best Japanese-English dictionary app and has made reading in Japanese a pleasure with how quickly I can look up a word and save it into vocab lists. Improvements I'd like to see: (1) option to save word to list as hiragana for quizzes, (2) more anki transfer options (option to keep only kanji on front and hiragana/translation on back), (3) or even better, more functionality added to quizzes (limit # of words in quiz, more anki like features for remembering words you get right).
I love this app! It has a clear interface, lots of settings to customize the views and most importantly for me integration with Anki! The radicals input is also very well thought-through.
I love it. It looks good, you have flashcards, and a GREAT totorial. I'm personally very very new to japanese, and having such a great and easy to use app is a godsend. I rate 5/5, it has no ads and an awesome setup plus totorial. Good job dev, I salute you.
The color scheme is blinding, to put it delicately. I struggle to deal with the bright colors. Some features that I'm really missing are pitch accent markers and a dictionary for proper names. Both are free and readily available from open-source databases, so I'm hoping they'll be added.
Currently I'm learning Japanese since 2018. Recently, this app didn't work properly and I was so worried. But somehow it has stated to work properly as before. Even I shared this app to many of my friends because it's very easy to find words in English and Japanese. Moreover, this app has the feature of kanji drawing. In this period of time, I couldn't find any app better than this app. So I give 5 of 5 stars for "Akebi". Good job! Keep it up!
As of now this is the best dictionary app I have encountered. The Verb conjugations and examples given are great. The feature of linking to Anki Flashcards is the best though. Even the UI is pleasing to the eye and not very bland like other apps I have seen. ありがとうございます。
I love this app but haven't been able to reinstall it after changing to a new phone. Even though I'm connected to strong WiFi, the initial file download won't start so I can't actually use the dictionary. Tried to follow the instructions for manual download but I couldn't find the file on the website either. Is there a way around this?
This is by far the best japanese - english dictionary I know of. It even includes many conjugations and explains them fairly well too. The Anki integration is very useful for reviews. I just wished there was a dark mode but that's by no means necessary. I would definetly recommend this to japanese language learners.
A pretty good dictionary which also includes phrases and some example sentences for context. The flashcard mode has a number of options which make it easy to progress and the Kanji Set is sorted by JLPT level although you can also set the kanji anywhere you wish.
Akebi is easily my favorite Japanese dictionary app on Android. It has by far the best Anki integration I've seen on the platform, and now that it also supports pitch accents, it's probably the best implementation of JMdict you can find. The developer is also responsive to feedback and implementated a feature I requested very quickly.
Really clean and fast dictionary with a fantastic UI. Would be good to have an option to change the long categorisation of words, ie change "adjectival nouns or quasi-adjectives (keiyodoshi)" into "na-adj" to reduce the clutter.
This app has been my life saver in so many situations! It's the best Japanese dictionary I've tried because it works offline and has so many options, it's impressive. It's just the best companion I've had on my journey to learning Japanese.
I downloaded it to find an alternative to Shirabe Jisho for Android. It would be perfect if it included the option to customize what to be shown in the flashcards, for example, both kanji and meaning but not readings.
I've been using this dictionary since 2018 and I finally felt like I had to come back and rate this app. It's far and away better than the dozens of J-E dictionaries I've used because of: clean UI, speed (it's offline), and inclusion of recent Japanese slang terms (see: タピる). This dictionary has been so useful to me that I'm honestly just so grateful it exists.
Hi there! You've made the best Japanese dictionary apps! That helps me a lot. After a period of time in use, I've found the List were quite useful for learning. But can I suggest something... is it possible to add the the function of shift or copy amount of words from list to list? And maybe rearrange the list position? thank you very much! keep on good work!