Akebi Japanese Dictionary

Craxic

About this app

With stroke-order independent handwriting recognition, 320k+ example sentences, 200k+ words and 6k+ Kanji database!

Akebi allows you to use character masks to filter out thousands of words from a large Japanese Dictionary. It allows you to specify what radicals appear in each character of the word, and set particular characters. Using this, you can find extremely specific words without a lot of Japanese knowledge.
Akebi is designed to allow fast searching, and as such, the word can be specified by last letter, first letter or any letter in between.

NOTE ABOUT THE INTERNET PERMISSION:
I hope this doesn't scare you off downloading Akebi: It is fully available offline, but the dictionary needs to be downloaded first. If you choose to allow it, Akebi will also send a small bit of analytical data back to me so I can find out which features are most used (It absolutely will not send anything if you disable it.).

Some of the features include:

- Word lists
These allow you to add any word you're searching for to a list with just one press. The next time this word fits a mask you're searching for, it appears in red at the top of all possible words, to make it easy to find in case you forget. It's also good for words that the dictionary doesn't have, like names specific to what you're doing. You can even test yourself on these words too using a flashcard test! If you want, you can export them to a text file for use elsewhere as well.

- Radical search
Specify which characters of the word contain what radicals. Words that don't fit this will be filtered out.

- Inbuilt Japanese Keyboard
You don't even need to swap keyboards to use Akebi. You just jump in and start typing. But, if you prefer, you can turn this feature off if it causes issues with your keyboard, or if you just want to use your normal keyboard! You can even pick Akebi's keyboard/handwriting recognition as your input method!

- Kanji descriptions
Find out how common a character is, what grade level it is, what it means, how to read it, its Unicode number, how many strokes are in it, its reference numbers (Heisig, Nelson...), a stroke order diagram for it, a decomposition of it, all the words that contain it...

- English to Japanese searching
Search with English as well!

- Handwriting recognition
Akebi has custom built handwriting recognition - and stroke order doesn't matter! Find that complex kanji quickly thanks to the "Tomoe" handwriting database!

- Example sentences
Akebi has 320,000+ example sentences: search for any word and find out how to use it in a sentence! Tap the sentence for further information: including each word in the sentence's definition and reading.

- Kanji test
Test yourself on any kanji you want! Create sets and test yourself!

- Deconjugation
Search for 言って and you'll get results for 言う. Works for other forms too, such as ます, ない, た, られる/Potential form.

- Animated stroke order diagrams
See exactly how to draw a kanji correctly!

- Asynchronous loading
Akebi opens instantly: you can start typing in the word you want to find while Akebi loads the dictionary in the background.

- Tiny memory footprint
Akebi uses only 20mb of storage space for the entirety of its data. Compressions are handwritten by myself!

- Holo themed
Using ActionBarSherlock, I've totally rethemed the entire UI, adding tonnes more features and making the app much easier to use

- No DRM
Because it just makes everyone angry!

- No Ads
Because they kill battery life!

Akebi has to do an initial ~20mb download when it starts - so make sure to have internet access on first use!

Ratings and reviews

Hands down the best Japanese-English dictionary app and has made reading in Japanese a pleasure with how quickly I can look up a word and save it into vocab lists. Improvements I'd like to see: (1) option to save word to list as hiragana for quizzes, (2) more anki transfer options (option to keep only kanji on front and hiragana/translation on back), (3) or even better, more functionality added to quizzes (limit # of words in quiz, more anki like features for remembering words you get right).

This is by far the best Japanese dictionary for Android that I've ever seen or used. The pitch accent information, easy copy and paste of definitions into my notes, and word list features are extremely helpful. The one thing I would like to see improved is the handwriting recognition. It's too strict with strokes and doesn't let you input characters in cursive. Try Pleco's handwriting input to see what I mean (a Chinese dictionary). That's a hard task though, so still 5 stars.

I discovered this app while living in Japan 8 years ago. It remains the best dict app I've found—and, yes, I've looked at others in that time. It took me eight years of almost daily usage to finally come up with a feature request: related vocabulary links. Ex: the entry for 帝 might link to 天皇. Even with not having been updated in two years, I've never encountered bugs or crashes. I hope the update hiatus is not permanent, but being both free and ad-free I understand if the dev has moved on.

What's new

Updated to support the latest version of Android.
Attempted to fix strange issues with the data file downloader.
Hopefully more to come soon!