Sluka

Read a book ↗ Watch a video ↗

Where you stand.

Last 7 days

Every word you have met.

WordReadingMeaningLevelForget

How it is going.

Calendar

This month

Goals & streak

A day is coloured in once it meets a goal; the rule below decides the streak.

Reading goal
words a day
Listening goal
minutes a day
A day counts when
Reading or Listening: only that goal counts. Either: one goal is enough. Both: it takes the two.
Until then, everything you do counts toward the day before.

Reading is counted by what stayed on screen long enough to have been read, not by what you clicked. Listening is counted against the track's own clock, so a paused tab counts for nothing.

All time

Progress

Total

Per day

Today

0 min

Listening settings

How listening is counted

Counted only while a track judged Chinese was playing. Time held for an answer is not in this total.

Added up about once a minute, when Chrome next wakes the extension — so this can read a little behind the tab that is playing. The time in between is still being measured.

Today's total is added up about once a minute, so it can read a little behind the player. The time in between is still being measured — it just has not been written down yet.

History

Nothing heard yet.

    Kept for a year. Removing a track does not change the time counted — the totals above and the daily log are counted separately, and forgetting what you listened to must not rewrite how long you listened for. A show judged wrongly can be corrected here, and the answer is remembered for every episode of it from then on.

    Known words, every language

    LanguageYesterdayTodayLearned

    How Sluka behaves.

    Your computers share their settings when they sync, and a phone passes its own to a new phone in its backup. API keys go to every device.

    Sluka

    Settings

    Licence

    Sluka is free for the first 1,000 saved words in each language — counted per language, so a second language starts fresh. Words imported from other apps do not count. Reading, lookups, statistics and sync are never limited, and nothing you have already saved is ever taken away.

    How a licence works

    A licence lifts the limit once, for good, on every device you read on. One payment, no account, no subscription, and it keeps working offline and for as long as you have it.

    Buying sends you one long line of text that starts with SLUKA-1. — around 250 characters, all one piece. Copy the whole thing out of the email and paste it here. It does not matter if it arrives wrapped over several lines.

    You only do this once. Your other devices pick it up the next time they sync, whether that is through the phone or through a shared backup folder — there is nothing to type twice and no account to make.

    Settings

    Reading

    On web pages

    Never run on A site includes its subdomains: bbc.com covers news.bbc.com too.

      Looking up words

      PDF books
      Fit on phones: a narrow screen gets the text fitted, a wide one the printed page. Fitting recovers the page's text into paragraphs at a readable size and keeps its pictures, so a book scrolls down instead of being dragged sideways. The button in the reader's toolbar switches the book you are in and changes this.

      Keyboard Computer only

      Click a shortcut, then press the keys you want.

      Videos

      On a YouTube or Netflix video with SlukaCC's subtitles showing; C also turns them back on. There A means the previous line; Check with AI stays a button in the word panel.

      Settings

      Appearance

      Theme
      Match system follows the browser's light or dark mode, which is the computer's unless the browser is set otherwise.Match system follows Android's Dark theme.
      Sluka’s own buttons, menus and messages. The languages you are learning are under Settings → Languages.

      Colours

      Click a new word to start learning it, then grade it 1–4 as it becomes familiar. The fill fades over the first two levels, becomes a line under the word at 3 and 4, and disappears at Known. “Known in the other script” is Chinese only: the word is new in the script you are reading, but you already know it in the other one.

      Highlight strength
      Settings

      Languages

      Languages I'm learning

      Auto-detection only considers these.

      Each language keeps its own. A row marked Shared with… is one setting for every language named.

      Readings

      Reading in the word panel
      How a word's reading is written in the panel that opens on it. Zhuyin is bopomofo.
      Reading in the word panel
      How a word's reading is written in the panel that opens on it. Jyutping is the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong's standard and what current dictionaries use; Yale is what many older textbooks were written in. Same sounds, different spelling — nei5 hou2 and néih hóu.
      Reading in the word panel
      How a word's reading is written in the panel that opens on it: tōkyō, とうきょう or トウキョウ. Romaji is modified Hepburn, the spelling used on road signs and in passports, with long vowels marked — ō is two beats, o is one.
      Reading in the word panel
      How a word's reading is written in the panel that opens on it: hangungmal in Revised Romanization, or 한국말 hangungmal for Both. Hangul is an alphabet, so you can sound a word out once you have learned it — but it spells the parts of a word rather than the sounds, and the two differ: 한국말 is written han-guk-mal and said hangungmal. The romanization is the said version, in the official spelling used on road signs and in passports.
      Reading in the word panel
      How a word's reading is written in the panel that opens on it. Thai spelling does not say outright how a word sounds: the tone depends on the class of the first consonant, the vowel length and the mark, and many vowels are not written at all. Paiboon spells the sound out with the tone as an accent and a long vowel written twice — ภาษา is paa-sǎa.
      Show them over
      New and learning are the blue and yellow words. A reading you no longer need is a reading in the way. Marking a word known takes its reading off the page at once, and the line keeps its height, so nothing below it moves.
      Notation above the characters
      One notation at a time — two of them stacked over a single character is unreadable at that size, which is why Both is offered for the panel and not here.
      Notation above the characters
      Notation above the characters
      としょかん, トショカン or toshokan. Hiragana and katakana go over the kanji only, as furigana does. Romaji goes over every word, kana words included — taberu over 食べる, desu over です — for reading before you know the kana.

      Counting words

      Checking…

      Dictionary

      Checking…

      Dictionary links

      The sites the word panel links to for Italian, in this order. Sluka sends them nothing: the word goes into the address only when you press a link. T opens the first one.

      Pronunciation

      Every word said in a real voice, rather than the synthetic one built into your device. The recordings are large, so they are not part of the app: they are downloaded once, kept on this device, and can be removed here.

      Every language, and whole sentences, can be heard in a cloud voice: Settings → Voice.

      Delete progress

      Delete all progress in ItalianYour words and their levels, your own meanings, statistics, streak and goals in this language. Books and settings stay. It cannot be undone.
      Settings

      Voice

      Cloud voice

      A natural, neural voice for every word, every sentence and anything you select, in every language. You bring your own key from one of the providers below: it is kept on your own devices, which share it when they sync, and is sent only to the provider you pick.

      How it speaks

      When a word has a recording too
      Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese and Swedish have downloadable recordings. They are free and offline and always say the reading the popup shows; a cloud voice sometimes picks another reading for a character with two. Whichever is second answers when the first cannot.

      In the popup, Sentence (or Shift+V) reads the whole sentence the word is in.In the word panel, Sentence reads the whole sentence the word is in. Everything said is saved on this device, so hearing it again costs nothing.

      Read aloud reads the page or the book from the top of the screen, or from the word you have open, underlining the sentence and marking each word as it is said: Shift+R, or Read page aloud in Sluka's toolbar menu.Read aloud in the ⋮ menu on a web page, or under Aa in a book. Without a cloud voice it uses the device's own voice. Its minutes count as listening.

      Settings

      Watch & Listen

      Browser tabs only. An extension can see what is playing in a tab — YouTube, the Spotify web player, a podcast site — and nothing outside the browser. Audio from the Spotify desktop app or any other program is invisible to it. The phone has no such limit: it counts whatever is playing anywhere.

      Settings

      SlukaCC

      Subtitles

      Subtitle
      The line in the language you are learning. Blurred or hidden, E peeks at it. The line in the language you are learning. Blurred, tap it to read it; a tap on a side of the picture shows it for the word it opens.
      Word meanings
      Each word of the subtitle with its meaning in small type under it: a word or two from the dictionary the word panel shows, in your definitions language, or the meaning you wrote yourself. Never ahead of the subtitle: under a blurred subtitle they wait for it. E uncovers the subtitle, then these, then the translation, a press each; blurred, pointing at a word shows its own. A grammar word the dictionary only describes, like a particle, gets none. Reading English, they come from a dictionary pack in another language. Each word of the subtitle with its meaning in small type under it: a word or two from the dictionary the word panel shows, in your definitions language, or the meaning you wrote yourself. Never ahead of the subtitle: under a blurred subtitle they wait for it. Swipe down on the left of the picture to uncover them with the rest of the line. A grammar word the dictionary only describes, like a particle, gets none. Reading English, they come from a dictionary pack in another language.
      Word meanings under
      New and learning are the words not yet marked Known. Marking a word known takes its translation away at once, and the line keeps its height.
      Translation
      Blurred, it is there when you want it and not read by reflex: point at it, or press E. Blurred, it is there when you want it and not read by reflex: tap it to read it.

      Word colours

      Colour new words
      On SlukaCC's subtitles and transcript. 1x colours the new words up to 500 past the ones you've marked Known: with 800 Known, the 1,300 most common, the common ones you never marked too. 2x, 4x and 8x reach 1,000, 2,000 and 4,000 past them. Rarer words are drawn faint and still open on a click, and words Sluka can't rank (names, slang, some word forms) keep their colour. As you learn words, the cutoff moves on. R steps through the choices in the player. On SlukaCC's subtitles. 1x colours the new words up to 500 past the ones you've marked Known: with 800 Known, the 1,300 most common, the common ones you never marked too. 2x, 4x and 8x reach 1,000, 2,000 and 4,000 past them. Rarer words are drawn faint and still open on a tap, and words Sluka can't rank (names, slang, some word forms) keep their colour. As you learn words, the cutoff moves on.

      Text & background

      Subtitle size
      Measured against the player, so the subtitles grow with it in theatre mode and full screen. Measured against the picture, so the subtitles grow with it in full screen.
      Translation size
      Sized on its own, apart from the subtitle.
      Font
      For the subtitle and the translation both. In Serif, a Chinese, Japanese or Korean subtitle gets its own script's serif.

      More

      Keys for videosIn Reading › Keyboard: A S D for the lines, Q to auto-pause.
      Touch controls The sides of the picture step through the words of the line: tap for the next or previous word, swipe up to mark it Known (right) or ignore it (left), swipe down on the right to close it and play on, and on the left to unblur the line. The guide shows over the video in the YouTube tab.
      Settings

      Game controller

      ExperimentalBuilt from 8BitDo's own manuals and tested with a simulated controller, not yet with every real one. On yours a button may come out swapped, A for B: press it and see which row lights up under Buttons, where any button can be changed.
      ExperimentalBuilt from 8BitDo's own manuals and tested with a simulated controller, not yet with every real one. On yours a button may come out swapped, A for B: press it and see which row lights up under Buttons, where any button can be changed.

      A small Bluetooth controller like the 8BitDo Zero 2 or Micro steps through words and subtitle lines, with no other app.

      Sluka maps its buttons itself, under Buttons below: no JoyToKey, Karabiner or other app in between.

      Set it up

      1. Turn it on as a controller Zero 2: hold Start and press X on Windows (the light blinks twice), or A on a Mac (three times). Zero 2: hold Start and press B (the light blinks once). Micro: set the switch underneath to D, then press Home. Not Start + R: that makes it a keyboard, which Sluka cannot tell from your own.
      2. Pair it, the first time only Zero 2: hold Select for 3 seconds, until the light blinks quickly. Micro: press its pair button. Then pick it in your computer's Bluetooth settings, as you would headphones. Then pick it in your phone's Bluetooth settings, under Pair new device.
      3. Press any button Its row lights up under Buttons, below.
      4. Read with it On a page the D-pad steps through the words: → the next, ↑ marks it known, ↓ puts it away. With SlukaCC on a video, A and Y go to the next and previous line, and B plays and pauses. Click the page once: until then the browser keeps it silent.
      Something not working?
      • Close JoyToKey, or any app that turned its buttons into keys: with both, every press counts twice.
      • It types letters instead: it is a keyboard. Hold Start for 3 seconds to turn it off, and turn it on again as in the first step.
      • It goes to sleep after 15 minutes unused: press Start to wake it.
      • Click this window first: a browser shows a controller only to the window in use.
      • On the Micro, try the switch on S.
      • Use a game controller, above, has to be on.

      Buttons

      With SlukaCC's subtitles up, the second layout; everywhere else, the first.

      Settings

      AI check

      CC-CEDICT misses new coinages, slang and proper nouns. When a word has no entry, this asks an AI whether it is genuinely a word — and it can answer "not a word", which is often the correct answer.

      Answers are written in the language set under Languages → Dictionary → Translate words into.

      Who answers

      This is the one feature that leaves your machine. Everything else — highlighting, the dictionary, your vocabulary — stays local. A check goes only to the provider you picked, and only when you press Ask AI.

      Settings

      Sync & backup

      Sync with your other device

      Your words, statistics, books and listening time keep themselves up to date between your computer and your phone whenever both are on the same wifi. Nothing goes near the internet — the two talk to each other directly.

      Automatic backup

      A second copy of your vocabulary, statistics, shelf and listening history, kept somewhere uninstalling cannot reach. It is written by itself as you read — there is nothing to remember to do.

      Or save a file of your own: Export. Bring a file back in with Import.

      API keys in backups

      Settings

      Your data

      Everything is stored locally in this browser. Keep a backup.

      Everything is stored on this device. Keep a backup.

      Export words and progressYour words, statistics, shelf, listening history and settings, in one file. API keys are left out.
      Import words and progressMerges an export or an automatic backup file into what is here. The latest change to each word wins.
      Import from LingQWith your LingQ API key, at your LingQ levels — or a known-words export. Opens in Words › Tools. Import from Language ReactorA Saved items JSON export, with your levels. Opens in Words › Tools.

      Danger zone

      Reset settingsEvery setting on this device goes back to its default. Words, statistics, books and your licence stay.

      Reset every setting?

      Every setting goes back to its default, your daily goals included, and your other devices of the same kind follow when they sync. Your API keys, words, statistics, books and licence are not touched.