Mobile Apps Release!

[Neicudi]

The long-awaited mobile apps are finally here!

Currently the apps are available for both iOS and Android as open beta releases.

For iOS the beta is available through testflight:

Join the Kitsun beta

For android it is available in the play store as “early access”:

play.google.com

Kitsun

The smartest way to power up your studies...

Free

I hope to release the official versions within 2-3 weeks from now after most of the bugs found during the beta have been fixed. So if you download these, do keep in mind that it is still rapidly being developed at the moment and some things can and will bug out.

As for features, I think most of the essential features are in there at the moment, but here is the list of features still coming up:

Coming soon:

• Quick Edit card during lessons/reviews
• Suggest feedback during lessons/reviews
• Edit personal notes/synonyms during lessons/reviews
• Push Notifications
• Ipad/Tablet versions
• Media (audio/picture) upload functionality for cards and deck cover editing

Later on:

• Quick study
• Cards Management
• Custom dictionary card popups
• Layout Filtering Settings

[ecsamar]

Hello, how can I receive an invite to the iOS beta? Thank you!

[Neicudi]

You can use the first link in the original post to join on iOS

For iOS the beta is available through testflight:

testflight.apple.com

Join the Kitsun beta

Available on iOS

It will ask you to first install TestFlight, an app by Apple for beta testing new apps. Once that is installed you will be able to install Kitsun through the link

[s1212z]

Hi! Is there a way to highlight a word in Safari and have it auto-generate in the Kitsun dictionary app? For example, I can have a highlighted text go to Midori’s dictionary (highlight -> share ->). I didn’t know if there was an iphone utility that was hidden or if needs to be a feature request. Would help save steps to prevent copy/launch/paste/etc.

Slightly unrelated, is there a way to clean the template for the dictionary deck selection? My list is pretty long; it was every template from every deck I ever used or anki import (even if deleted). If anything, would be nice to prioritize the list to not have to search the drop down list for new decks or to put my favorite deck on top.

[Neicudi]

Yeah that’d be nice!
On android we used to have an app which only purpose was to add a menu item when you highlight text and tapping it would send you to the dictionary on the kitsun website (with the definition searched), but it would definitely be nice to add this for both iOS and android now that we have an official app

Slightly unrelated, is there a way to clean the template for the dictionary deck selection? My list is pretty long; it was every template from every deck I ever used or anki import (even if deleted). If anything, would be nice to prioritize the list to not have to search the drop down list for new decks or to put my favorite deck on top.

That’s odd, if something is deleted it should be deleted forever and not be visible in there. I do remember fixing a bug regarding that a year+ ago so perhaps this is a leftover from that.

You mention both decks and templates, which dropdown did you mean exactly?

[s1212z]

Ok, I lied…I don’t see the Anki deck titles (that was a while ago ). But I do see ‘write’, ‘keyword’, ‘read’…which repeats several times over. If I had to guess, I think these are coming from repetitive Word Imports that I attempted and dumped for whatever reason and created a build up in deck lists.

[jlbeard84]

In general I love the app! I’m much looking forward to the push notifications as well.

I am having some trouble with the app on iOS (specifically a 9.7” iPad on iOS 15). Without a keyboard attached it works as expected, but if I’m using a Bluetooth keyboard I can’t seem to type my responses into the answer text box. I can manually switch to the on screen keyboard but either way text input from the keyboard doesn’t seem to want to work.

[Neicudi]

Hey! Glad to hear you enjoy using the app!

Yes, sadly that was a known issue in the version of the framework I used to develop the app (a package to be specific). However, they did fix the problem in a later version and I’ve updated the package accordingly. So if all goes well this should be fixed in the next app update

[jlbeard84]

The only other suggestion I’d have so far to go along with the keyboard support would be some keystroke shortcut to play audio type cards so I don’t have to leave the keyboard to tap the arrow.

[hinekidori]

You can set your hotkeys in settings under Lessons and Reviews. There is a option for Play Audio.

[Farami]

Awesome. Looking good so far.

Only two suggestions I have are:

• The keyboard closes between answers forcing me to press the input on every new question
• The app is quite stuttery on a 120hz iPhone (13 Pro Max)

Other than that this looks extremely promising.

[Neicudi]

Hey, thanks!

@Farami

• The keyboard closes between answers forcing me to press the input on every new question

Do you happen to have the “Always show flip buttons” setting enabled in the deck settings? This will prevent the input from being focused automatically because it expects you to either use the buttons or use gestures (swipes) to answer the question.

@Farami

• The app is quite stuttery on a 120hz iPhone (13 Pro Max)

I think this might mostly be on first startup / first show of the page(s)? Flutter has a known performance issue with newer iPhones, and they were working on fixing it, but it’s been a while since I last checked the progress on that. I’ll do some testing with the latest flutter version to see if there’s been any improvements

[Farami]

Oh wow, thank you for the fast answer.

@Neicudi

Do you happen to have the “Always show flip buttons” setting enabled in the deck settings? This will prevent the input from being focused automatically because it expects you to either use the buttons or use gestures (swipes) to answer the question.

Nope, turned off.
I just tried it out again and before this I was pretty sure it happened every time but now it only happened on the first card in a review.

However what does happen is that the keyboard closes after a correct or incorrect answer and reopens after pressing the arrow to go to the next question.
This makes sense on wrong answers to see what I did wrong but especially on correct answers I would love to have an easier way of going to the next question without having to reach up to the arrow, which is quite the reach on larger phones. Maybe a tiny button on the bottom to go to the next question?

@Neicudi

I think this might mostly be on first startup / first show of the page(s)? Flutter has a known performance issue with newer iPhones, and they were working on fixing it, but it’s been a while since I last checked the progress on that. I’ll do some testing with the latest flutter version to see if there’s been any improvements

It seems to be quite consistent even over multiple page loads. It feels like it’s locked to 60hz.

[Neicudi]

@Farami

I just tried it out again and before this I was pretty sure it happened every time but now it only happened on the first card in a review.

Hmm… Sadly this is really difficult to fix for iOS devices as Apple does their best to prevent the keyboard from popping up automatically (in order to protect the user), any workaround is hacky, relatively inconsistent and prone to breaking as they patch it up again.

That said, it should only happen for the first lesson or review, any others should pop up the keyboard for sure.

@Farami

However what does happen is that the keyboard closes after a correct or incorrect answer and reopens after pressing the arrow to go to the next question.
This makes sense on wrong answers to see what I did wrong but especially on correct answers I would love to have an easier way of going to the next question without having to reach up to the arrow, which is quite the reach on larger phones. Maybe a tiny button on the bottom to go to the next question?

If you are fine with not viewing the backside of cards you answered correctly, you could consider using lightning mode (tap the lightning bolt icon at the top right) so that it skips the backside. It will still show the backside if you answer incorrectly, so no worries there. This should also keep the keyboard open

@Farami

It seems to be quite consistent even over multiple page loads. It feels like it’s locked to 60hz.

Hmm, alright. I’m going to put it on the to-do list!

Thanks for the feedback!

[killhour]

I have a pretty large phone but the keyboard still covers part of the UI on Android and there’s no way to scroll it

[Neicudi]

Hmm, I’ll have to take a look but it is supposed to either scroll or at least put the input into view. This does depend on the layouts made by the author too though. Do you have the same issue in other decks with other layouts (so other styling of cards)?

[killhour]

The 10K Kitsun optimized deck is the only other one I have and it doesn’t do that. In general, I imagine it’s not feasible for deck authors to take different devices into account. There probably needs to be a way to override some deck-level formatting to ensure it works correctly on every device.

[Neicudi]

Cards in Kitsun take shape through their layout HTML and CSS. This means that there are a lot of different ways to create cards and it is very difficult to alter those layouts correctly. It can’t programmatically “check” or “assume” whether there is enough spacing between the div elements above or not in order to make the input get in view and remove space from above. Doing this programmatically will definitely introduce a lot of bugs where the intended layouts get scrambled.

I’d also argue that considering it is HTML and CSS, that this is very much feasible as it supports mediaqueries for different device categories. This is the same syntax that is used to style websites for mobile devices in general.

The 10k Kitsun optimized deck (and layouts) is/are made by the same person as the deck/layout you are having issues with.