Yomitan Without Anki: The Gap Where immit Fits

Last Tuesday I hovered the same Japanese word for the third time in a week.

Each time Yomitan popped up, gave me the reading and the gloss, and each time I closed the popup and kept reading. No save, no card, no chance the word would be in my head on Friday.

I knew what I should have done. Drop it into Anki through AnkiConnect, let spaced repetition do its work. I also knew I was not going to. The AnkiConnect setup on this laptop was half-finished from six months ago.

TL;DR: Yomitan works beautifully as a popup dictionary, but retention is left to Anki through the AnkiConnect bridge. If you never finished that setup, or finished it and bounced off the review pile, you have been doing “Yomitan without Anki”: lookup with no memory layer. immit closes that gap by combining hover lookup with built-in 8-stage SRS in one Chrome extension and desktop app. No AnkiConnect, no manual dictionary import before your first lookup, no account required for the free tier. Pro is $9 a month for multi-device sync, cloud backup, dark mode, and priority support.

If you have been using Yomitan for hover lookup but the words have not been sticking, this post is for you. It is for intermediate-and-up immersion readers who never finished the Anki bridge, or finished it once and quietly stopped opening Anki.

The basic idea behind spaced repetition is simple: review a word after you are close to forgetting it, then stretch the interval as it gets easier. For language learners, that matters because a lookup is only a first exposure. It tells you what the word means now; it does not make sure you can recall it next week.

Spaced repetition systems are widely used in language learning applications because they help make review less random. Instead of hoping the same word appears again soon, an SRS brings it back at expanding intervals, which helps fight the forgetting curve and improve vocabulary retention over time.

Try immit free. No account, no setup. Hover any word in your browser and one-click save into the built-in SRS.

Why “Yomitan without Anki” is a workflow question, not a tool question

The phrase “Yomitan without Anki” is something readers type into Google when they realize their reading workflow has a hole in it.

Yomitan does the lookup part beautifully. Where does the memory part go?

Yomitan is a browser extension that serves as a pop-up dictionary for Japanese reading. Its basic usage is simple: hover over Japanese text, open the popup, check the reading, compare definitions, listen to audio when available, and keep reading without opening a separate search page.

Yomitan was built to help Japanese learners read Japanese text more effectively by putting definitions, readings, grammar information, audio, and Anki export close to the sentence they are already reading. It is a popup dictionary first, and a very good one.

It also supports flashcard creation through Anki integration. In that sense, Yomitan is not just a lookup tool. It is a bridge between reading and flashcards, as long as the reader is willing to connect Yomitan to Anki and maintain that bridge.

Retention sits outside Yomitan’s core scope. The usual answer is Anki, and the usual bridge is the AnkiConnect plugin. Yomitan can send a word, reading, sentence, audio, and definition into an Anki note once the bridge is configured.

That design is defensible. Anki is the most established general-purpose SRS in the language-learning world, and AnkiConnect is a powerful open-source bridge. The catch is that the bridge is where many readers bounce.

Installing Yomitan, adding dictionaries, installing Anki, installing AnkiConnect, opening the Yomitan settings page, choosing the deck, choosing the note type, mapping fields, testing export behavior, then keeping the whole chain working across machines. That is not impossible. It is just a different kind of work from reading Japanese.

So “Yomitan without Anki” is not really a question about whether Yomitan works. It does. It is a question about what fills the gap when the bridge to Anki was never built, or was built and abandoned.

What Yomitan does well, in its own scope

Before talking about the gap, it is worth being specific about what Yomitan is excellent at. The substitute exists because the gap exists, not because Yomitan is doing its job poorly.

Yomitan is a free, open-source browser extension designed for Japanese reading. Hover Japanese text, and the popup returns readings, definitions, grammar information, kanji details, frequency data, pitch accent information if your dictionaries support it, and audio when available.

Its dictionary ecosystem is one of the deepest available to Japanese immersion learners. Power users can import browser based dictionaries, enable or disable specific dictionaries, choose the desired version of a dictionary, and control the order in which definitions appear in the popup glossary. For many advanced learners, that is the point. They do not want one default dictionary experience. They want their own stack.

That stack can include recommended dictionaries, custom sources, frequency dictionaries, pitch accent dictionaries, and other browser based dictionaries built by the community. If the data is available, Yomitan can surface pitch accent categories, pitch accent positions, frequency information, and native pronunciation audio directly in the popup.

This is one reason Yomitan remains so beloved among people who read light novels, web novels, news, games, and long-form Japanese text. The popup can become a very dense reading layer: definitions, readings, pronunciation, grammar labels, frequency information, and dictionary-specific notes in one place.

Those are powerful features. They are also why Yomitan is hard to replace for learners who enjoy configuration. The same flexibility that makes Yomitan excellent for power users can feel like another settings page for readers who just wanted to look up a word and remember it.

Yomitan also has an edge on deinflection today. If your reading depends heavily on catching conjugated verbs and adjectives from messy text, that is a real reason to keep Yomitan in your workflow.

Yomitan’s Anki integration is also a real strength. Once AnkiConnect is installed and configured, Yomitan can create Anki flashcards directly from the browser while you read. For readers who enjoy maintaining their setup, this is a powerful workflow.

For the readers this post is for, the chain is exactly where the workflow has been falling apart.

What “Yomitan without Anki” looks like in practice today

Three profiles cover most readers who search this query.

The half-finished AnkiConnect setter. You installed Yomitan, added a dictionary, installed Anki, then hit the part where you needed AnkiConnect plus a card template plus a keyboard shortcut. You bookmarked the guide. You closed the tab. You kept using Yomitan as a lookup-only tool.

The burnout returner. You did finish the setup once, mined sentences into Anki for a while, and watched the review pile climb. You quit, came back, quit again. Yomitan is open in your browser. Anki has not loaded in a month.

The deliberate skipper. You read Refold or TheMoeWay, decided sentence mining was not for you, and use Yomitan as a hover dictionary while reading articles, visual novels, web novels, light novels, or subtitles. You know vocabulary is leaky. You decided that is the trade-off.

There is a real version of Yomitan without Anki that can work, but it depends on volume. If you read a lot inside one author, one genre, or one series, narrow reading gives you repeated exposure to the same vocabulary in related contexts. A word you miss on Monday may appear again on Wednesday, then again in the next chapter, and that contextual repetition can help it stick.

Frequency dictionaries can also make lookup-only reading more useful. When Yomitan shows that a word is common, you can pay more attention to it. When the word is rare, you can let it pass. This is the strongest case for using Yomitan without Anki: high-volume, context-heavy immersion where repeated lookups become a loose, natural review system.

There are ways to make lookup-only study more effective. High-volume reading, narrow reading, bilingual subtitles, repeated exposure to the same author or genre, and visual cues for words you are currently learning can all help vocabulary stick without traditional flashcards.

Bilingual subtitles can connect audio, kanji, and English meaning in the same moment. Visual cues can remind you that a word is already familiar, even if you have not fully learned it yet. Frequent lookups can become a loose form of natural spaced repetition when common words keep appearing in context.

But this version of “Yomitan without Anki” depends on the material doing the scheduling for you. A word returns only if the book, show, article, or game brings it back. Spaced repetition systems exist because memory does not always get that lucky. By reviewing words at expanding intervals, SRS tools help combat the forgetting curve and make vocabulary retention less dependent on chance exposure.

That is why creating flashcards from encountered vocabulary, often called mining, became so popular in immersion learning. Mining preserves the strength of reading-first learning while adding a review layer after the lookup.

The trade-off is control. Natural repetition works when the material keeps bringing the word back. Built-in SRS works when you want the word to come back even if the book, video, article, or game does not.

Where immit fits: a one-tool substitute for the Yomitan + Anki workflow

immit is a popup Japanese-English dictionary with built-in spaced repetition flashcards. It ships as a Chrome extension for browser reading and a desktop app for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

The popup hover, the one-click save, and the review queue all live in the same product. No AnkiConnect. No manual dictionary import before your first lookup. No account required for the free tier.

The thesis is simple: Yomitan-grade lookup + Anki-grade SRS, zero setup.

The first wedge is workflow continuity. Hover, save, and review all happen inside immit. No AnkiConnect bridge to keep running. No tab-switching from your reading to an Anki desktop window. No card-template configuration before your first saved word. Saving a mined word takes one click in the popup, and that word is in your immit review queue.

The second wedge is zero setup. immit includes built-in JP-EN, EN-JP, JP-JP, and EN-EN dictionaries. You install the Chrome extension and the desktop app, then start reading. The free tier covers lookup, saving, SRS review, and offline use with no account required.

The third wedge is price versus effort. Yomitan plus Anki is technically free, and for many power users that is the right answer. immit’s free tier covers the core lookup and review loop. Pro is $9 a month or $108 a year, adding multi-device sync, cloud backup, dark mode, and priority support. A $299 one-time purchase option is also available.

If you bounced off the AnkiConnect setup, add the Chrome extension and try it for a week. Tinkerer power-users who enjoy configuration as part of the hobby will rationally stay on Yomitan plus Anki, and we will come back to that.

Other Yomitan alternatives try to solve the lookup-to-flashcard problem in different ways. Migaku combines dictionary lookup, subtitle workflows, card creation, and structured learning content such as Migaku Course Academy 1. Lexirise also focuses on streamlining vocabulary capture from media and reading. These tools are worth considering if you want a broader language learning environment around the reading process.

immit is narrower by design. It is not trying to become a full course platform or a media-learning suite. It exists for the specific gap this post is about: you want the pop-up dictionary feel of Yomitan and the memory layer of Anki, but you do not want to maintain the Yomitan + AnkiConnect stack.

This is the substitution thesis: not immit alongside Yomitan, and not immit as another layer on top of Anki. immit replaces that workflow for the reader who wants lookup, save, and SRS review in one place.

AnkiConnect and the bridge friction

AnkiConnect is an Anki add-on that exposes Anki over a local API. Yomitan uses that API when you press the export shortcut, and Anki adds the card to the deck and note type you configured.

When this works, it is good engineering. Free, open source, maintained for years. The friction is not that AnkiConnect is poorly built. It is that the chain has many links for an intermediate reader who just wants to remember a word.

In the standard Yomitan Anki integration, the reader installs the AnkiConnect plugin inside Anki, keeps Anki running in the background, then configures Yomitan so it knows which deck, note type, and fields to use. After that, the basic card-creation flow is simple on paper: hover over a word, select the definition you want, click the export to Anki button, and let AnkiConnect create the card.

That flow is powerful because it lets readers create flashcards from encountered vocabulary while reading Japanese content. This is the sentence-mining workflow many immersion learners use: the word comes from real reading, not from a prebuilt deck, and the card is tied to something the learner actually wanted to understand.

The friction is not the idea. The idea is excellent. The friction is that a reader has to finish the setup before the first useful card exists. Anki has to be installed. AnkiConnect has to be installed and allowed to communicate with local URLs. Yomitan’s settings page has to be configured. The Anki card format has to match the fields Yomitan sends. Anki has to be open in the background at the moment of export.

Migration checklist: switching from Yomitan + Anki to immit

If you have decided to try the substitute, here is the 7-step path.

1. Install the immit Chrome extension and the desktop app

Install both, not either-or. The Chrome extension handles in-browser reading; the desktop app gives you a standalone place to search, manage saved words, and review.

You can start with the free tier. No account is required for lookup, saving, SRS review, or offline use.

2. Decide what to do with your existing Anki deck

The cleanest path is to keep your existing Anki deck where it is and use immit for new words going forward.

That way you do not have to rebuild your old study history before fixing the workflow that broke in the first place. Keep Anki as an archive, finish old reviews if you want, and let immit become the source of truth for new vocabulary you encounter while reading.

3. Run one reading session with immit only

Open Japanese on the web: a news article, a blog post, a web novel, YouTube captions, or any page with selectable Japanese text.

Hover a word. Read the definition. Click save. Ten or twenty minutes is enough to feel whether the loop is lighter than your old Yomitan + Anki workflow.

4. Confirm audio, furigana, and your pitch-accent needs

immit includes audio pronunciation through TTS and furigana on the headword inside the popup. Click the speaker icon on a lookup to verify that audio is working.

Pitch accent display is not currently part of immit. If pitch accent is central to your workflow, Yomitan plus a pitch-accent dictionary may still be the better fit.

5. Run your first review session

The next day, open the immit review queue. Cards from yesterday surface through immit’s built-in 8-stage SRS.

Reviews come in two modes. Type mode asks you to type the answer. Flip mode lets you flip the card, then choose easy or difficult. The point is not to recreate Anki’s full review surface. The point is to make the lookup-to-review loop simple enough that you keep using it.

6. Turn on Pro sync only if you read on more than one machine

One laptop? The free tier covers the core workflow.

Switching between work and personal laptops? Pro adds multi-device sync, cloud backup, dark mode, and priority support. See /pricing for the comparison.

7. Let the review queue follow your reading

New cards enter the queue as you save them from the popup. That means your daily review load is shaped by your reading volume, not by a separate new-cards-per-day setting you have to tune.

If reviews start feeling heavy, save fewer words for a week and let the queue settle. The SRS will keep surfacing the cards that need attention.

When Yomitan + Anki is still the right answer

Substitution framing has limits, and being honest about them is the point of writing this post instead of a sales page.

Yomitan plus Anki is still the right answer if you are a deep tinkerer. Custom card templates, frequency fields, side-loaded EPWING dictionaries, keyboard shortcut chains, and years of personal setup work are real advantages. Yomitan was built for that level of control. immit deliberately does not offer that surface area.

It is still the right answer if you have a custom dictionary library. EPWING imports, niche J-J reference works, personal collections built up over years of immersion learning. Yomitan’s dictionary ecosystem remains one of the deepest available to Japanese learners. immit’s built-in dictionaries cover the standard cases well; they do not cover every edge case Yomitan can.

Yomitan is also still the better fit if your reading environment is unusual. If you rely on PDF files, local files, custom sources, niche dictionary formats, or a carefully tuned setup for light novels and long-form reading, Yomitan gives you more room to adapt the tool around the material.

The same is true if pitch accent is central to your study. immit does not currently show pitch accent in the popup, while Yomitan can support pitch accent dictionaries and expose detailed pitch information when your dictionary stack provides it. If that is load-bearing for you, Yomitan + Anki is still the more flexible answer.

It is also still the right answer if you are on Firefox only. immit ships on Chrome and as a desktop app today; a Firefox build is under consideration, but not currently available. Yomitan supports Firefox, including Android workflows that immit does not currently cover.

These are scope decisions, and Yomitan’s scope is well-served by what Yomitan does. The substitute is for the other audience: the one searching “Yomitan without Anki” because their workflow has a hole and they would rather close it than rebuild the bridge.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use Yomitan without Anki?

Yes. Yomitan works well as a lookup-only tool, returning readings, definitions, pitch accent information if your dictionaries support it, audio when available, and frequency data on Japanese text you hover.

What Yomitan does not do without Anki or another review layer is retain those words in your study system. The popup closes, the word disappears from the workflow, and the next time you encounter it you may look it up again. That is the gap “Yomitan without Anki” describes.

What does AnkiConnect actually do, and why is it the friction point?

AnkiConnect is an Anki add-on that exposes Anki over a local API so tools like Yomitan can add cards programmatically.

The friction is not the plugin itself. It is the chain around it. Anki has to be running, the plugin installed and granted permissions, the card template configured to match the fields Yomitan sends, the keyboard shortcut set in Yomitan, and mobile capture handled separately because AnkiConnect is desktop-based.

How do you create flashcards with Yomitan and Anki?

In the standard Yomitan Anki integration, you install AnkiConnect, keep Anki running in the background, hover over a word in the browser, select the definition you want, and click the export to Anki button.

That can create a flashcard directly from encountered vocabulary while you read. The trade-off is that the deck, note type, field mapping, and card format have to be configured before the flow feels automatic.

Does immit work offline like Yomitan does?

Yes. The immit free tier includes offline lookup, offline save, and offline flashcard review with no account required.

The dictionary data is stored locally on your device, so you can keep looking up Japanese words and reviewing cards without Wi-Fi. The popup also includes example sentences, part of speech, furigana on the headword, and audio pronunciation through TTS.

Does audio matter if I am already reading?

Yes. Audio gives the word another hook. When you see the kanji, read the definition, hear the pronunciation, and then meet the word again later, the word has more ways to come back to memory.

Yomitan can play native pronunciation audio when the installed dictionaries or audio sources support it. immit includes audio pronunciation through TTS in the popup, so the lookup is not only visual. For learners who read a lot, that extra sound cue can make a saved word easier to recognize later.

Can I keep my existing Anki deck if I switch to immit?

Yes. The cleanest path is to keep your existing Anki deck where it is and use immit for new words going forward.

That way you do not have to migrate old review history before fixing your current workflow. Keep Anki as an archive, continue old reviews if you want, and use immit for the words you encounter from now on.

Is immit a fork of Yomitan?

No. immit is built from scratch by a husband-and-wife team. immit has its own built-in dictionaries, popup experience, save flow, and built-in 8-stage SRS. It is not based on Yomitan’s codebase, and it is not an AnkiConnect wrapper.

What does immit cost, and what is in the free tier?

The free tier requires no account and covers the popup dictionary, offline lookup, one-click save, built-in SRS review, and JP-EN, EN-JP, JP-JP, and EN-EN dictionaries.

Pro is $9 a month, $108 a year, or $299 as a one-time purchase. Pro adds multi-device sync, cloud backup, dark mode, and priority support. There are no ads and no card limit.

When is Yomitan + Anki still the better choice?

Yomitan + Anki is still the better choice when you enjoy configuration work as part of the hobby, when you have a custom dictionary library, when pitch accent or deinflection is central to your lookup workflow, when you read on Firefox only, or when you want maximum control over every field on every card.

Those are real cases, not edge cases. immit is for the reader who wants the lookup-to-review loop without maintaining the bridge.

The bridge that does not break

If you are still hovering 拗ねる on Tuesday and looking it up again on Friday, the workflow has a hole.

Not Yomitan’s fault. Not Anki’s fault. The bridge between them is where many readers fall through.

immit is the one-tool version of that workflow for readers who are not going to rebuild the bridge. Lookup, save, review, same product. Free tier with no account. Pro at $9 a month for sync, backup, dark mode, and priority support.

Try it for one week with the Japanese you already read. Start at immit.co or install the Chrome extension. If the words start showing up in review instead of disappearing after lookup, the bridge is doing its job.