Where you stand.
A first page is mostly blue. Mark the most common words known in one go.
Continue reading
Books you open show up here, so you can pick up where you stopped. Open a book
Last 7 days
Waiting for an answer
Their titles do not say which language they are in, so the time is measured and held here rather than counted. Answer once and the whole show is remembered.
Every word you have met.
Import from LingQ
From your LingQ account
Every word you marked as known in your LingQ account, including the ones you never saved as a LingQ. Sluka reads the list in a LingQ tab, where you are signed in, and keeps it on this computer.
This isn't an official LingQ export, so it can stop working at any time; the file import below always works. If you'd rather not use an unofficial route, ask LingQ support for a copy of your data and import that. Sluka is not affiliated with LingQ.
From an export file
Export your vocabulary from LingQ as CSV and open it here. Your words arrive with the meanings you gave them, and those show in the list below — including for words the dictionary has never heard of.
Only known words can be imported. A LingQ export says nothing about how well you know anything: there is no level in the file, and nothing to work one out from. So everything in it is filed as Known, and a file with words you are still learning in it would claim you know them. Export a known-words list, not your whole vocabulary.
Import from Language Reactor
In Language Reactor open Saved items, choose Export and then JSON. Open that file here. Only the words in the language you are reading now are imported, with the meanings you saved.
Words you marked known arrive as Known and words you are learning as level 1. Phrases and words you skipped are left out. A word you have already graded never moves down. The CSV export works too: open the .zip it comes in as it is. It does not say how well you know anything, so you are asked whether its words are learning or known.
The export may not hold everything you know. Language Reactor only exports saved items, and at least one user reports it leaving out words they had marked known. If the summary below shows fewer known words than you expected, that is the export, not the import.
Import from HanziHero
Export your words from HanziHero as a CSV file and open it here. They are imported into Chinese, so switch to Chinese first.
Each word arrives at a level that matches its HanziHero stage: Novice as level 1, Apprentice as level 2, Journeyman I as level 3, Journeyman II as level 4, and Expert, Master and words you skipped as Known. Words HanziHero has not taught you yet are left out. A word you have already graded never moves down.
Import known words from a text file
Open a plain text file (.txt) with one known word or phrase on each line, in the language you are reading now. Words on one line can also be separated by commas.
A meaning after a tab is saved with its word, so Anki's Notes in Plain Text export works as it is. Lines starting with # are skipped.
Only known words can be imported. A list says nothing about how well you know anything, so everything in it is filed as Known. A word you have already graded never moves down.
| Word | Reading | Meaning | Level | Forget |
|---|
Mark common words known
Chinese text is dense with function words you already know. Mark the most common words as known in one go, then let reading fill in the rest. This only touches words still marked new — anything you have already graded is left alone. The wall below is the words the slider takes in: grade any of them yourself first, and it keeps your grade.
How it is going.
Your level
How this is worked out
Calendar
This month
Goals & streak
A day is coloured in once it meets a goal; the rule below decides the streak.
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
Smart tracking is off.
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.
Waiting for an answer
Their titles do not say which language they are in, so the time is measured and held here rather than counted. Answer once and the whole show is remembered.
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
| Language | Today | Yesterday | Last week | Last month | Last year | All time |
|---|
| # | Name |
|---|
Known and Learning are words last marked in the period and still at that level. Streak is the run of days up to today, whatever the period: a day counts with 500 words read or 10 minutes listened in that language.
How Sluka behaves.
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.
Licensed to —
Issued —
It is yours, for you and the devices you read on.
Scoreboard
Compare your reading, listening and streaks with other Sluka readers on sluka.app/scoreboard and under Progress → Scoreboard. Off unless you turn it on.
What is shared
Your scoreboard name, and for each language and day: words read, minutes listened, words marked known and words marked learning. Your streak is worked out from those: a day counts with 500 words read or 10 minutes listened in that language. Nothing about which words, pages or videos, and no account.
The same four numbers are also shared all time, per language, for the page people see when they click your name.
Turning it on shares your last 12 months, so every view on the scoreboard has your numbers in it from the start. Turning it off takes them off the scoreboard again.
Your licence is sent once, to claim the name, and only its short serial number is kept. Your name and email in the licence are not stored.
The scoreboard tells readers apart by their licence, so it needs one on this device first.
Your name —
Reading
On web pages
Sluka runs on every site.
Looking up words
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.
Appearance
Word panel
Colours
Click a new word to start learning it, then grade it 1–4 as it becomes familiar. What each level means is up to you, and a word only moves when you grade it, or when its Anki card matures if you switch that on under Settings → Anki. 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.
Languages
Languages I'm learning
Sluka reads, switches between and counts only the languages ticked here. One always stays ticked.
Each language keeps its own. A row marked Shared with… is one setting for every language named.
Readings
Italian has no options of its own beyond its dictionary and pronunciation below.
Counting words
Checking…
Frequency list
Checking…
Use a list of your own, commonest word first, in place of the one Sluka comes with. Everything that ranks words goes by it: SlukaCC's 1x–8x, Shift+D and Shift+A, a word's place in its panel, Words → Most common and Mark known, and the Frequent counts.
A plain text file (.txt or .csv), one word on each line. A count or a rank beside the word is fine, as are columns separated by tabs or commas. Up to 15,000 words are kept, and a word past the end of your list has no place.
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
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
In the popup, the sentence button (a speaker with lines) or Shift+V reads the whole sentence the word is in.In the word panel, the sentence button (a speaker with lines) 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.
Watch & Listen
Notifications are turned off for Sluka, so the ongoing notification that says smart tracking is running cannot be shown. Counting still works; there is just nothing on screen saying so.
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.
Before you switch these on: to count, Sluka asks YouTube's servers for each video's subtitles the way YouTube's phone app does, without your cookies. YouTube does not offer this to extensions, so it can stop answering at any time, and if it is asked too often it can briefly refuse subtitles, the ones you watch included.
SlukaCC
Subtitles
Word colours
Text & background
More
Readings above the charactersOne switch for pages and subtitles, in Languages › Readings. Keys for videosIn Reading › Keyboard: A S D for the lines, Q to auto-pause.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.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
- 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.
- 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.
- Press any button Its row lights up under Buttons, below.
- 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
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.
A check goes only to the provider you picked, and only when you press Ask AI. It sends the word, and its sentence if you switched that on. Highlighting, the dictionary and your vocabulary stay on your devices.
Anki
Send the words you're learning to Anki as flashcards, all of them by themselves or only the ones you pick, and let Anki tell Sluka when you know them. Each card has the word on the front, and on the back what you choose below: its reading, its meaning, the sentence you met it in. It needs Anki on this computer with the AnkiConnect add-on: in Anki, open Tools → Add-ons → Get Add-ons…, paste the code 2055492159 and restart Anki.
Send the words you're learning to AnkiDroid as flashcards, all of them by themselves or only the ones you pick, and let AnkiDroid tell Sluka when you know them. Each card has the word on the front, and on the back what you choose below: its reading, its meaning, the sentence you met it in. It needs AnkiDroid on this phone, which is free; Sluka asks for permission to add cards to it when you switch either of the first two on.
A word only ever has one card, however it was sent, made with the note type “Sluka”.
Sluka talks only to the Anki on this computer.
Sluka talks only to AnkiDroid on this phone. If your computer sends cards to Anki too, the two keep to one card a word between them, as long as both Ankis sync with AnkiWeb.
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.
Not often on the same wifi? Sync through Google Drive instead.
Paired with —
Code on this phone: …
This phone's own code
Only needed if the computer cannot find this phone by itself — on a guest network, say, where the two are kept apart. Type this into the computer instead.
…
Paired with —
On the phone, open Sluka → Settings → Sync & backup, and type this code in:
…
Use this code on your other phones and computers. A phone given it is found by itself while this page is open.
The phone can't be found
Searching only covers the network this computer is on. If the phone is somewhere else — a guest network, or a VPN in the way — open Sync on the phone, expand This phone's own code, and type the longer code from there in here instead.
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.
Android deletes everything an app owns when it is uninstalled, so without this a reinstall starts from nothing. Pick a folder — Documents/Sluka is a good one — and it is written there from now on.
Backing up to —
Last written —
Everything lives in this browser's profile, which goes when the extension does — or when the profile is reset. Pick a folder outside it and it is written there from now on.
Brave keeps folder access off until one setting is turned on.
Set up folder backup
- Open brave://flags/#file-system-access-api
- Set File System Access API to Enabled
- Press Relaunch, then come back and choose a folder
Or back up without it
Sluka can write to Downloads\Sluka instead, which needs no setting and survives an uninstall just the same. The catch is that every write flashes the downloads button, so this runs about once an hour rather than within a minute.
Backing up to Downloads\Sluka
Last written —
About once an hour, because each write flashes the downloads button. Turn on Brave's File System Access API flag and choose a folder to get the prompt version.
To bring it back after a reinstall, press Import and pick the file in Downloads\Sluka.
Backing up to —
Last written —
Chrome is no longer letting Sluka write to that folder, so nothing has been backed up since. One click restores it — the folder and everything in it are unchanged.
Sync through Google Drive, step by step
Keep Sluka's backup folder in Google Drive on every device, and each one's words reach the others by themselves, wherever they are. Sluka only ever writes files into the folder; Google's own app carries them. on this phone the FolderSync app carries them to and from Google Drive.
A green tick is a step Sluka has seen done. A grey one is a step it cannot check from here: it looks done from what came after.
- Install Google Drive for desktop Google's own app for Windows and Mac. Sign in, and Google Drive shows up as a drive of its own, with a letter such as G:. Download Drive for desktop It keeps files online until they are needed, so this computer has to be online to fetch your phone's newest words. Google makes no Drive app for Linux. A folder kept in step some other way works just the same, Syncthing for one. A Chromebook has Google Drive built in: nothing to install. It is under Google Drive in the folder window.
-
Choose a folder in My Drive
Press the button. In the folder window:
- On the left, open This PC → Google Drive (G:), or whichever letter it got (on a Mac: Google Drive under Locations)
- Open My Drive, press New folder and name it Sluka. If a Sluka folder is already there, from your phone, use that one instead.
- Open it and press Select Folder (Select on a Mac)
- When the browser asks whether Sluka may view and edit the files there, allow it
Brave keeps folder access off until one setting is on. Show me the setting - Do the same on your phone Open Sluka on the phone → Settings → Sync & backup → Sync through Google Drive, and follow its steps. Another computer takes the two steps above. No Sluka on the phone yet? Get the Android app
-
Wait for its backup to arrive
It shows up in the next step, usually within a few minutes, and up to 15 with the phone's schedule. A device writes its file only once it has saved a word.
- Press Sync with this device Once for each device of yours. Not Restore as this device in the list below, which is only for this same computer reinstalled.
-
Choose a folder on this phone
Press the button. In the folder window:
- Open Documents
- Press the folder icon at the top and name the new folder Sluka; it opens by itself
- Press Use this folder, then Allow
- Install FolderSync A free app with ads, by Tacit Dynamics rather than Sluka, that copies a folder on the phone to and from Google Drive. Open it, and when it asks, allow it to manage all files: that is how it sees Documents/Sluka.
- Connect FolderSync to Google Drive Add an account and pick Google Drive. Press its sign-in button (Authenticate account, or Sign in with Google in some versions) and sign in with the same Google account as on your computer.
-
Pair the two Sluka folders
Press Create folderPair, then one screen at a time, each ending with Next:
- Sync type: Two-way
- Left: the phone's own storage → Documents → Sluka → Select folder
- Right: your Google Drive account → My Drive → Sluka → Select folder. No Sluka there yet? Make it with the new-folder button first.
- Schedule: Sync interval minutes, 15 (it suggests 12 hours). To sync away from wifi too, turn on Use cellular network connection.
- On the last screen, Save
- Do the same on your computer Install Google Drive for desktop, then open Sluka in the browser → Settings → Sync & backup → Sync through Google Drive, and follow its steps there.
-
Wait for your computer's backup
It shows up in the next step after FolderSync's first sync, within 15 minutes. A device writes its file only once it has saved a word.
- Press Sync with this device Once for each device of yours. Not Restore as this device in the list below, which is only for this same phone reinstalled.
Something not working?
- Google Drive is missing from the folder window: Drive for desktop is not running. Start it from the Start menu (Applications on a Mac) and choose again.
- The other device never shows up: both must be signed in to the same Google account, and both must use the same My Drive/Sluka. Two folders named Sluka in My Drive keep the devices apart: keep one, move the files into it and choose it on both. Open My Drive to see which files have arrived: one sluka-….json per device.
- Its file is not in My Drive either: that device has not written one yet. It does once it has saved a word; Back up now on its own card writes it at once.
- Nothing arrives away from home: FolderSync syncs over wifi unless the pair's schedule also has Use cellular network connection on.
- It syncs once and then stops: Android is putting FolderSync to sleep. Under the phone's Settings → Apps → FolderSync → Battery (App battery usage on some phones), choose Unrestricted.
- FolderSync cannot see Documents/Sluka: it was refused access to all files. Turn it on under the phone's Settings → Apps → FolderSync → Permissions.
- FolderSync reports a sign-in error: open its Google Drive account and sign in again.
- The folder window shows no Documents: open its ☰ menu and pick the phone's own storage first.
- Each device writes only its own file and never touches the others', so nothing is lost while one waits for the next sync.
API keys in backups
How to use the passphrase
- Type a passphrase of at least 8 characters in the box below.
- Press Lock keys into backups. Typing it is not enough: nothing is saved until you press it.
- Then press Back up now at the top of this card, or wait for the next automatic backup. Only backups written after that carry your keys.
- On the new device, restore that backup with Restore here or Import under Your data. A box then asks for the passphrase: type the same one and press Unlock the keys.
Only the automatic backup carries the keys. A file saved with Export never does, not even locked. Nobody can recover a forgotten passphrase, so write it down somewhere safe.
The backup you restored holds your API keys, locked with its backup passphrase. Type that passphrase here and press Unlock the keys.
Other devices in that folder
Put this folder somewhere a file-syncing service already keeps up to date — OneDrive, Dropbox, iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Syncthing, even a memory card — and point your other computer at the same place. Each device writes only its own file, so they never overwrite each other, and Sluka never talks to any of those services itself.
Press Sync with this device once for each device you recognise. That says it is one of yours, and from then on its words, reading marks and statistics arrive here by themselves, about a minute behind. Restoring is always a merge and never a replace: nothing here is lost, a word you deleted stays deleted, and doing it twice changes nothing.
Only press it for devices you know. A folder shared with somebody else would mix their vocabulary into yours, and there is no undo.
Your data
Everything is stored locally in this browser. Keep a backup.
Everything is stored on this device. Keep a backup.