Yomitan alternative (2026): the integrated dictionary + SRS workflow that doesn't break
Yomitan alternative (2026): the integrated dictionary + SRS workflow that doesn't break
You found Yomitan the same way I did. A Reddit thread on r/LearnJapanese said it was the popup dictionary every immersion learner uses. You installed the browser extension from the Chrome Web Store, downloaded JMdict and KANJIDIC, set up AnkiConnect so saves would land in your Anki deck, and started reading. The lookup is fast, the dictionary definitions are deep, and the extension is free forever. For a while it works exactly the way the wiki promised.
Then a few months in, the friction shows up. Your AnkiConnect bridge stops authenticating after an Anki update. The card template you imported six months ago has been improved by the community and your old cards have the old fields. You are running three pieces of software, three update cycles, and three sets of permissions to handle two jobs: lookup and retention. None of this is Yomitan's fault. It is the cost of an unbundled stack.
I have run that setup for the past three years. I built immit with my wife because we wanted lookup and spaced repetition in one tool, with no bridge between them, and no setup tax to repay every few months. This post is not a Yomitan takedown. The yomidevs community has built something the immersion world relies on, and tinkerers who enjoy configuring tools as part of the hobby should keep using it. If you are looking for a Yomitan alternative because you want one integrated tool instead of a stack, this post is for you.
What changed between 2023 and 2026
Yomitan started as a community continuation of Yomichan, which the original developer foosoft sunset in February 2023. The yomidevs GitHub organization picked the project up and kept the Chrome and Firefox browser extension alive. Yomitan has since added features beyond what Yomichan shipped: better dictionary management, modernized internals, broader browser support, and a more active community wiki. Calling Yomitan "Yomichan with a new name" undersells the work; Yomitan has more features than its predecessor, and the yomidevs team has been careful and transparent about that work.
Two things shifted in the 2023-to-2026 window.
The first is Chrome's Manifest V3 transition. Chrome rolled out a new extension permissions model across 2024 and 2025, and every Japanese popup dictionary built on the old Manifest V2 spec had to migrate. Yomitan is now available as a stable release on the Chrome Web Store, Firefox Add-ons, and Microsoft Edge Add-ons, with a separate testing channel for users who want pre-release builds (the README explains the two-channel setup). The yomidevs team ships releases roughly every two to four weeks; the latest at the time of this writing is 26.5.19.0 from May 2026. First-time installers in 2026 sometimes land on legacy guides written before the transition completed, and the wiki at yomitan.wiki is the right reference for current install instructions.
The second shift is the arrival of integrated alternatives. In 2023 the realistic answer to "I want lookup and SRS in one tool" was "set up Yomitan plus Anki, run the bridge between them, and accept the maintenance." By 2026 there are commercial tools (Migaku, a comprehensive ecosystem designed for immersion tracking across platforms) and indie tools (immit, Lexirise) that package lookup and spaced repetition into a single browser extension or desktop app. The community has not finished updating its recommendation map. If you searched for "Yomitan alternative" five years ago you got a list of Rikaichamp forks. If you search in 2026 you should also see integrated options.
What Yomitan was designed to do (and what it leaves to other tools)
Before naming alternatives, I want to describe Yomitan clearly. The substitution case only works if I describe the thing being substituted with respect.
Yomitan is a popup dictionary browser extension. Hover or shift-hover a Japanese word in your browser and an instant popup shows the reading, the English definition, the part of speech, the pitch accent (if you have a pitch accent dictionary installed), example sentences, and native pronunciation audio you can click to hear. It supports custom sources in the Yomichan format, which is the deepest dictionary ecosystem in the category. JMdict for Japanese-English. KANJIDIC for kanji. Daijirin or 大辞泉 for monolingual Japanese-Japanese definitions. NHK pitch accent. Specialized 古語辞典 for classical Japanese, manga and anime-context glossaries, modern Japanese-Japanese references. Yomitan handles all of them as separate dictionary files you import yourself. It is also free, open source, runs on both Chrome and Firefox, and community estimates put it at over 100,000 active learners across forks.
Two design decisions about Yomitan are useful to name explicitly, because they shape what an alternative needs to do differently.
Yomitan is lookup-only by design. There is no built-in spaced repetition layer. The retention job is left to Anki, and Yomitan integrates with Anki through the AnkiConnect add-on. This is not a flaw. It is the scope of the tool. Yomitan was built as a popup dictionary, not a study app, and the yomidevs team has been explicit that adding an SRS is outside the project's scope.
Yomitan is configuration-rich by design. Custom dictionaries, custom card templates, custom hotkeys, custom Anki field maps. For the tinkerer who enjoys configuring tools as part of the hobby, this is a feature. For learners who want to start reading Japanese in the next ten minutes, the same configurability is what most setup guides on TheMoeWay and Refold spend three pages explaining.
Neither of these is something Yomitan fails at. They are scope decisions. An alternative is only worth recommending if it makes a different set of scope decisions that match what you actually want.
Where the popup dictionary surface ends: images, video, and Japanese text in non-DOM contexts
One specific constraint applies to every browser-based popup dictionary, Yomitan included, and it is worth naming because it is a constant source of community questions.
A browser popup dictionary works by reading Japanese text that the page exposes to the browser as text. HTML, subtitle DOM text on YouTube, text inside <input> and <textarea> fields. When the Japanese text is rendered as an image rather than as selectable text, the dictionary has nothing to read. Subtitles rendered as images in video players can complicate text parsing with Yomitan, which is why most Netflix and Disney+ workflows in the immersion community route through tools that strip subtitles first or use a different surface entirely. Manga pages scanned as image files have the same issue.
The workaround is OCR. Optical Character Recognition enables extraction of text from images and videos, turning a screenshot or a manga panel into selectable text that a popup dictionary can then look up. Several mining workflows in the community pair Yomitan with an OCR step for image-based content. immit is in the same category here: also a popup dictionary, also a browser-and-desktop surface, also no native OCR layer. If your reading is heavily image-based (raw manga scans, image-subtitled video), neither tool reaches it natively, and you will be reaching for something like Textractor (for visual novels) or an OCR-plus-popup workflow.
What a Yomitan alternative needs to do in 2026
If you are searching for an alternative, you are usually asking for one or more of four things.
Built-in spaced repetition without AnkiConnect. You want to save a word and have it scheduled for review automatically, in the same tool you looked it up in. No bridge, no add-on, no Anki window in the background. Spaced repetition is the proven method for moving vocabulary into long-term memory. The forgetting curve is real, and a well-built SRS reduces the total study time needed to remember a given set of words by spacing reviews at the point where you are about to forget. The question is not whether to use spaced repetition, it is whether the SRS lives in the same tool as the lookup or in a separate app you have to bridge to.
Zero setup. You want to install the extension or app and start reading a Japanese page within a few minutes. No JMdict download, no card-template configuration, no AnkiConnect permission dance, no field-map paste, no dictionary files to keep up to date.
A workflow that does not break across updates. You want one project's release schedule to keep track of, not three. When Chrome updates or Anki updates, you do not want to spend an evening triaging which piece of your stack is now misaligned.
Offline support. You want lookups and reviews to work on a plane, in a cafe, on a phone tether. Cloud-only lookup tools fail this test the moment Wi-Fi drops.
Three of the four are gaps Yomitan does not address by scope (lookup-only, configuration-rich, three-update-cycle stack). The fourth, offline support, Yomitan handles well once installed. Any alternative worth a recommendation should match Yomitan on offline and beat it on the first three.
immit, Migaku, and other Yomitan alternatives worth knowing
Below are the alternatives I have personally used or evaluated, in the order I would consider them if I were starting again today.
immit (Chrome extension + desktop app). This is the tool my wife and I built. immit is a popup Japanese dictionary with a built-in 8-stage spaced repetition system. Hover a word, see the reading and definition in around 0.1 seconds, click the bookmark icon, and the word lands in immit's review queue. No AnkiConnect, no deck config, no card-template setup. It runs as a Chrome browser extension and as a desktop app for Mac, Windows, and Linux, and the two surfaces sync on Pro. The free tier covers lookup, save, SRS review, and full offline support, with no account required. Pro is $9 per month, $108 per year, or a $299 one-time purchase, and adds multi-device sync, cloud flashcard backup, and dark mode. immit's dictionary covers four directions, including Japanese-English, English-Japanese, monolingual Japanese-Japanese, and English-English, all surfaced inside the same popup with accurate, instant definitions. The trade-off versus Yomitan is honest: immit does not support custom dictionary imports, does not deinflect conjugated verbs the way Yomitan does out of the box, and does not currently show pitch accent information. If those are dealbreakers, immit is the wrong tool for you. If they are not, immit is the integrated workflow Yomitan was never designed to be.
Migaku (Chrome extension + web app + courses). Migaku is the closest commercial peer in the integrated category. It is a comprehensive ecosystem designed for immersion tracking across platforms: a Chrome browser extension, a web app, support for lookup on Netflix and YouTube subtitles, OCR-assisted handling of image-based content, and a structured course (Migaku Academy I) that takes learners from roughly JLPT N5 to N3 over about six months. Pricing as of mid-2026 is in the $9 to $15 per month range depending on tier and billing cadence; verify current pricing on migaku.com before relying on this. Premium subscription models like Migaku often provide deeper integration with streaming and video platforms than free alternatives, and the Migaku course is a real reason to pay them if you want a structured curriculum alongside immersion. immit does not have a course layer and has no plan to build one. For a learner who wants curriculum plus immersion in the same product, Migaku is the honest pick. For a learner who wants the lookup-plus-SRS loop without a course wrapper, immit is lighter and cheaper at the floor.
10ten Japanese Reader (Chrome + Firefox + Edge extension). 10ten Reader is a continuation of the Rikaichamp lineage. It is a clean, fast popup dictionary with a focus on individual kanji lookups and good pitch accent display. It does not include an SRS layer; like Yomitan, it leaves retention to Anki. If you want a lighter-weight Yomitan-shaped browser extension with less configuration, 10ten is a reasonable choice. If you want lookup plus retention in one tool, it has the same scope gap Yomitan does.
Language Reactor (browser extension). Language Reactor is not a direct Yomitan substitute, but it overlaps in the video-immersion category. It offers bilingual subtitles for Netflix and YouTube without setup, with click-to-define lookups inside the player. For learners whose primary input is video rather than written Japanese, Language Reactor handles a job Yomitan does less well, and the two are sometimes used side by side rather than as alternatives.
Mouse Dictionary (desktop app, open source). Mouse Dictionary is an open-source desktop popup dictionary. Its default dataset at install is lighter than Yomitan's (the ejdict-hand dictionary is less complete than JMdict), and it does not include an SRS. It is useful if you want a desktop popup tool outside the browser, but as a Yomitan alternative for in-browser immersion reading it covers less ground.
Lexirise. Lexirise is a newer entrant that handles media-side lookups and integrates with various video platforms. It is worth knowing about if your reading is primarily inside subtitled video. It is less of a Yomitan substitute for plain web reading and more of a platform-specific tool.
Poe: Language Lens (Android). Poe: Language Lens is an Android alternative to Yomitan worth naming for mobile-first learners. immit does not currently ship a mobile app, and Yomitan's mobile story relies on Kiwi Browser or similar Chromium-on-Android workarounds that are not always smooth. If your reading is primarily on an Android phone, Language Lens covers the mobile lookup case more cleanly.
Jidoujisho (Android). Jidoujisho is a community-built mobile app with integrated dictionary support and Anki card creation. If your reading happens on Android and you already use Anki, it is the closest Yomitan-shaped mobile workflow available.
Textractor (Windows + visual novels). If your immersion is happening inside visual novels rather than web pages, Textractor is the standard tool. Textractor and external popup tools help display translations from visual novels without using a browser at all, hooking into the game's text engine directly. None of the browser-based dictionaries (Yomitan, immit, 10ten, Migaku) reach inside a visual novel. Textractor reaches the cases they cannot.
The short summary: 10ten Reader and Mouse Dictionary share Yomitan's lookup-only scope. Migaku, Lexirise, and immit are integrated alternatives that combine lookup with retention or media handling. Language Reactor, Poe Language Lens, Jidoujisho, and Textractor cover surfaces (video, mobile, visual novels) that the desktop browser popup category does not. Which one fits depends on what you read and where.
Learning Japanese with a popup dictionary: monolingual definitions, audio, and lookup quality
A popup dictionary is the engine that makes web-based immersion work, but the depth of the lookup matters as much as the speed. Three pieces of context shape lookup quality for an intermediate-to-advanced learner of Japanese.
Monolingual Japanese-Japanese dictionary definitions
One reason Yomitan is beloved is its handling of monolingual Japanese-Japanese dictionaries. Monolingual dictionaries define words in the same language; for Japanese, that means defining a Japanese word in Japanese rather than translating it to English. The Kōjien is a well-known Japanese monolingual dictionary, the most-cited single reference in the category. Daijirin and 大辞泉 are common community picks. The NHK pitch accent dictionary is the standard pitch reference.
Monolingual definitions help intermediate-to-advanced learners avoid false associations with native-language meanings. Bilingual definitions are often vague and misleading because Japanese words frequently do not map cleanly to a single English word; the bilingual definition ends up as a list of English glosses, none of which is quite right. Monolingual dictionaries improve thinking in the target language by forcing the brain to engage with the Japanese word in Japanese, which is closer to how a native speaker actually uses it.
This is the part of Yomitan's design I respect most. The custom dictionary architecture lets a learner stack JMdict for entry-level lookups, then a Japanese-Japanese dictionary like Daijirin for the second-pass nuance check, then a pitch accent dictionary on top of both. It is a configuration tax, but the ceiling is high.
immit covers the monolingual case (Japanese-Japanese is one of the four built-in directions, alongside Japanese-English, English-Japanese, and English-English), but it does not let you choose between Daijirin and 大辞泉 or stack three dictionaries the way Yomitan does. If specific monolingual dictionary selection matters to you, Yomitan is the tool.
Native pronunciation audio
Yomitan allows audio playback for word pronunciation, sourced from the audio servers the community maintains. immit also surfaces native pronunciation audio inside the popup as a click-to-hear button. Both tools cover this well; it is not a wedge for either side.
Pitch accent
Pitch accent display is one of Yomitan's clearer wins. With a pitch accent dictionary installed (NHK or the community-maintained alternatives), every lookup shows the accent pattern. immit does not currently show pitch accent. It is on the considering list, not the shipped list. If pitch perception is part of your study, this is a real gap between the two tools.
Grammar and context
Both Yomitan and immit are word-and-phrase dictionaries, not grammar dictionaries. For grammar lookup ("what is this -tara form doing?"), neither tool is your reference; that job belongs to a grammar dictionary (the Dictionary of Basic / Intermediate / Advanced Japanese Grammar series, Bunpro, or a similar resource). Yomitan handles context better in one specific sense: with the right dictionary files installed, looking up an inflected form returns the dictionary form plus the inflection, which helps a learner connect a phrase like 食べさせられました back to 食べる. immit does not currently deinflect this way, and the gap is on the table above.
Spaced repetition and the case for built-in SRS
Spaced repetition improves long-term memory retention. The spacing effect is one of the best-replicated findings in cognitive psychology: reviewing material at expanding intervals leads to stronger retention than the same number of reviews packed close together. Using spaced repetition can reduce the total study time needed to learn a fixed vocabulary set by a meaningful margin, because reviews land at the point where the brain was about to forget rather than wastefully early. Spaced repetition helps learners remember vocabulary more effectively than re-reading or unscheduled flashcards.
Anki integration via AnkiConnect
Yomitan's design choice is to leave the SRS to Anki. The Anki integration goes through the AnkiConnect add-on, a local server inside Anki that exposes an API the Yomitan extension calls when you press the save hotkey. AnkiConnect is the connective tissue that makes mining work. Configured properly, it is excellent; AnkiConnect plus Yomitan is the workflow most of the modern immersion community is built on, and Anki runs the FSRS algorithm option that Anki added in late 2023. There is nothing wrong with that choice for tinkerers who already maintain an Anki deck.
The friction is operational. Three pieces of software constantly need to stay aligned: the browser extension, the Anki desktop application, and the AnkiConnect bridge. Each piece updates on its own schedule. Most of the "Yomitan not working" threads on r/LearnJapanese are actually AnkiConnect authentication threads in disguise.
What built-in SRS changes
The case for built-in SRS is sustainability. Reading more novels improves vocabulary retention in Japanese, but only if the words you meet while reading get scheduled into a review system that actually fits the volume. Mining one or two new words per page through a Yomitan-plus-AnkiConnect bridge works for a while. At the 2,500-word and 5,000-word marks, the system that worked at 500 words is also the system most likely to be the place where motivation breaks. The "bridge that doesn't break" is the integrated shape: a tool where saving a word from the popup and reviewing it are the same project on the same release schedule, with no third tool in the middle.
immit's wedge here is not "better algorithm than Anki." Anki is excellent and immit does not claim algorithmic superiority. The wedge is that the review queue is built into the same tool you used to look the word up. That single design decision is what changes when you stop running a stack.
immit vs Yomitan, side by side
| | Yomitan | immit |
| ----------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Popup dictionary lookup | Yes, fast | Yes, around 0.1 seconds |
| Built-in spaced repetition | No (uses Anki via AnkiConnect) | Yes, built-in 8-stage SRS |
| Custom dictionary import (JMdict, EPWING, monolingual JJ) | Yes | No |
| Native pronunciation audio in popup | Yes | Yes |
| Platforms | Chrome and Firefox browser extensions | Chrome extension, plus Mac, Windows, Linux desktop apps |
| Offline lookup and review | Yes | Yes |
| Price | Free, open source | Free tier; Pro $9/mo, $108/yr, or $299 one-time |
Yomitan wins on dictionary depth, deinflection, and pitch accent. immit wins on integrated SRS, setup time, and a single-project release cycle. The comparison is real and the choice depends on which side of that trade you value. I deliberately did not put a millisecond figure on Yomitan's lookup speed; in normal use it feels instant, and any specific number I quoted without a benchmark I could publish would be made up.
When Yomitan is still the right answer
Three reader profiles where Yomitan stays the better pick.
You enjoy configuration as part of the hobby. If pasting a card template into Anki on a Saturday morning feels like part of the fun, the standard stack is the right shape for you. immit's "no setup" promise is a non-feature for the tinkerer psychographic. It removes a thing you actually like. The Reddit community calls this out explicitly and it is a real psychographic split. Keep Yomitan.
You depend on a specialized custom dictionary. Yomitan's custom dictionary import is the deepest in the category. If you read pre-modern Japanese, classical Chinese-style passages, technical legal Japanese, or a niche genre that requires a specialized dictionary like 古語辞典 or a legal terminology dictionary, Yomitan supports it and immit does not. The integrated alternatives have not closed this gap and probably will not.
You need pitch accent rendering on every word. Pitch accent is on immit's "considering" list but not currently shipped. If you are working on pitch perception and need every lookup to display the accent pattern, Yomitan with a pitch accent dictionary installed is the tool. 10ten Reader also handles this well.
If none of those describe you, the integrated shape is probably the better fit, and an alternative is worth a try.
FAQ
What is the best Yomitan alternative for Japanese in 2026?
immit is the closest integrated alternative for learners who want popup lookup plus built-in spaced repetition in one tool. It is a Chrome extension and a desktop app for Mac, Windows, and Linux, free on the base tier with no account required, works offline, and replaces the Yomitan-plus-Anki workflow with a single project. For learners who want a structured course alongside lookup and SRS, Migaku is the honest pick. For learners who want a lighter Yomitan-shaped popup dictionary without an SRS layer, 10ten Japanese Reader is the cleanest choice.
Why are people looking for a Yomitan alternative in 2026?
The most common reasons are the cumulative setup tax of running three update cycles for two jobs (Yomitan plus Anki plus AnkiConnect), the lack of a built-in SRS layer inside Yomitan itself, and the desire for an integrated workflow that did not exist in the immersion-learning toolkit in 2023. None of these are Yomitan flaws. They are scope decisions that no longer match what every learner wants.
Is Yomitan still being maintained?
Yes. Yomitan is actively maintained by the yomidevs GitHub organization as a community continuation of Yomichan, which the original developer foosoft sunset in February 2023. The yomidevs team ships frequent pre-release updates and is finishing the Manifest V3 transition required by Chrome's new extension platform. The team has been transparent about that work, including being conservative about declaring a stable release until the transition is complete. The extension works for most readers in normal use; the yomitan.wiki getting-started page is the right place to check which version to install.
Does Yomitan work with manga or anime subtitles?
Yomitan works on any Japanese text the browser sees as text. Web-based manga readers that render text in HTML are supported. YouTube subtitles for anime clips render as DOM text and work. Manga scanned as image files, or anime with subtitles burned into the video as images, do not work with Yomitan directly because the popup dictionary has no text to read. The workaround is OCR (Optical Character Recognition), which extracts text from images and videos and turns it into selectable text the popup can then look up. immit shares the same constraint here; both tools are popup dictionaries, not OCR engines.
Does immit work with my existing Anki decks?
immit has its own built-in 8-stage SRS and does not require Anki to function. Existing Anki users can keep Anki running alongside immit; the two do not interfere. immit does not currently import Anki decks. If you have a large Anki deck you have spent years building, you can continue reviewing it in Anki while using immit for new words you mine going forward. Anki export from immit is under consideration but not yet shipped.
How is immit different from Migaku?
Migaku is the closest integrated peer. The main differences are scope and price. Migaku includes Migaku Academy I, a structured roughly-six-month course from JLPT N5 to N3, and supports lookup inside Netflix, YouTube, and other streaming platforms. immit does not have a course layer and does not have streaming-platform subtitle integration. immit's wedge is a tighter lookup-plus-SRS loop at a lower floor price ($9 per month versus Migaku's $9 to $15 per month range depending on tier as of mid-2026; verify current pricing on migaku.com). If a structured course matters to you, Migaku is the honest pick. If you want lookup and retention in one tool without the course wrapper, immit is lighter.
Is immit free?
Yes, immit has a free tier with no account required. The free tier covers popup lookup, one-click save, the built-in 8-stage SRS review system, and offline support across the Chrome extension and the desktop app. Pro is $9 per month, $108 per year, or a $299 one-time purchase, and adds multi-device sync between computers, cloud flashcard backup, and dark mode.