Manabi Reader (OP's app) is way too "busy" for my personal preference. Opening a book and seeing it covered in highlighting and annotations by default is intimidating. To the extent that progress tracking is fun, I want it to be something that's done passively rather than covering every page of every book with paragraph splitting.
It also does not support Yomitan-style custom dictionaries, which is a shame but I understand why it would be a non-goal. Shiori (the other iOS reader app the post mentions) and Jidoujisho (the Android app winner) both have only partial support. The Yomitan+ttsu stack on desktop is unbeatable for learning by reading in my experience. I hadn't heard of Lumie but will try it out on the blog's recommendation.
(Edit: 2 pages into a book, I am not a fan of Lumi's text rendering compared to ttsu.)
Thanks for trying it and sharing the feedback. I hear you... I'm working on a full redesign at the moment that is almost complete. In addition to making the highlights/annotations optional, it introduces a minimal "full screen" view that activates automatically when you scroll/paginate/tap blank space and makes the annotations much less prominent and hides navigation UI. I will post a screenshot of the WIP here in a moment.
I will consider more automatic ways of tracking reading progress as well. And I will make this tracking far more valuable soon too: it will automatically review your flashcards (ones that exist and ones you create in the future) when you read the words/kanji that appear in texts. This will also automatically transition words to "known" status simply by reading and applying the FSRS algorithm to it to determine learning status maturity levels based on the resulting intervals.
Yomitan is also absolutely a goal, and high priority. I'm working on Yomitan custom dictionary import at this moment. I hope to launch this very soon. Besides bringing your own dictionaries, it will also include Wiktionary ones out of the box so that you can get monolingual lookups easily (which will also let me add more languages than English for Japanese lookups).
Thanks for sharing the screenshots! The fullscreen view looks a lot cleaner, will look forward to the updates. For monolingual dictionaries, I'm always using Yomitan's ability to look up words within definitions.
Yes I've also just started adding sub-word lookups for ranges inside of the headword and for words appearing in the definitions. I hope to launch that together with Yomitan dictionary support. There is a lot packed into this next update...
I don't know what more prestigious annual Japanese learning tools awards you might be confusing this with though?
I did also get a recommendation from Tofugu / WaniKani's Japanese learning resources blog which was pretty popular at the time, but they've stopped that series.
I quit my job a couple years back to work on this app full-time, as well as its companion flashcard app, Manabi Flashcards. The goal is to help you learn through immersion and eventually replace some of your flashcard reviews time with reading (once I finish auto-reviews for flashcards)
What's special about it? Manabi Reader became popular as an Japanese-focused alternative to services like LingQ in that it locally tracks and analyzes all the words and kanji you read and study. It shows you which words are new and which you're currently learning via flashcards, so you can easily find content that suits your level and see what flashcards to prioritize adding.
The pricing is also unique: students or low-income earners can elect to pay less, without verification. This has helped with word of mouth growth.
It also passively accumulates an on-device (and in your personal iCloud) corpus of example sentences from your reading. It’s also one of few ways to mine sentences including pitch accent directly into Anki on iPhone.
I had built this part-time while working over many years (starting with flashcards and then the reader app) but going full-time gave me the time to do a full rewrite: SwiftUI, native iOS + macOS, and an offline-first architecture that syncs with iCloud and my server in the background.
Although it has an optional companion SRS algorithm (FSRS) flashcard app, it's also a popular choice for mining Anki cards. This works with AnkiMobile on iOS and AnkiConnect on desktop.
You can use it like a web browser for the web, or subscribe to RSS feeds. It comes with a bunch of curated content by level. Recently I added EPUB support, pitch accents, and note-taking with todos.
I'm now almost done adding a manga mode via Mokuro, and Netflix/streaming video support via realtime captioning of audio streams. I've fine-tuned a manga-specific MLX-based OCR model (since Apple's OCR cannot tolerate vertical text) and have it working on iPhone, so I also plan to have it work on-demand and in-browser for sites like Bookwalker where you can purchase and find free manga.
In terms of growth, it's been mostly word of mouth so far - to scale this with UGC/influencer marketing I need to make it more beginner friendly. Currently it assumes you can read kana at least. But I have gotten interest from a bunch of influencers who already use the app or like it enough to recommend it generously (I'm starting with commission deals) so I am optimistic as I begin that campaign.
Manabi Reader (OP's app) is way too "busy" for my personal preference. Opening a book and seeing it covered in highlighting and annotations by default is intimidating. To the extent that progress tracking is fun, I want it to be something that's done passively rather than covering every page of every book with paragraph splitting.
It also does not support Yomitan-style custom dictionaries, which is a shame but I understand why it would be a non-goal. Shiori (the other iOS reader app the post mentions) and Jidoujisho (the Android app winner) both have only partial support. The Yomitan+ttsu stack on desktop is unbeatable for learning by reading in my experience. I hadn't heard of Lumie but will try it out on the blog's recommendation.
(Edit: 2 pages into a book, I am not a fan of Lumi's text rendering compared to ttsu.)
Thanks for trying it and sharing the feedback. I hear you... I'm working on a full redesign at the moment that is almost complete. In addition to making the highlights/annotations optional, it introduces a minimal "full screen" view that activates automatically when you scroll/paginate/tap blank space and makes the annotations much less prominent and hides navigation UI. I will post a screenshot of the WIP here in a moment.
I will consider more automatic ways of tracking reading progress as well. And I will make this tracking far more valuable soon too: it will automatically review your flashcards (ones that exist and ones you create in the future) when you read the words/kanji that appear in texts. This will also automatically transition words to "known" status simply by reading and applying the FSRS algorithm to it to determine learning status maturity levels based on the resulting intervals.
Yomitan is also absolutely a goal, and high priority. I'm working on Yomitan custom dictionary import at this moment. I hope to launch this very soon. Besides bringing your own dictionaries, it will also include Wiktionary ones out of the box so that you can get monolingual lookups easily (which will also let me add more languages than English for Japanese lookups).
Here is a roadmap: https://blog.manabi.io/articles/manabi-reader-roadmap/
If you have any other feedback please let me know, it's very helpful.
EDIT - some screenshots of the redesign:
The new bottom navigation, including the audio player (for which there is also synchronized text highlighting, karaoke-style): https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1383634595697918062...
The karaoke highlighting of text synchronized to audio: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1209908367821373500...
Updated lookup popover navigation with sentence and paragraph tabs: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1383634595697918062... I am also now adding sub-word lookups to this...
The full-screen view of an ebook: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1209908367821373500... (I am going to minimize this further, and will also have JLPT level underlines off by default)
Thanks for sharing the screenshots! The fullscreen view looks a lot cleaner, will look forward to the updates. For monolingual dictionaries, I'm always using Yomitan's ability to look up words within definitions.
Yes I've also just started adding sub-word lookups for ranges inside of the headword and for words appearing in the definitions. I hope to launch that together with Yomitan dictionary support. There is a lot packed into this next update...
The app seems to be Manabi Reader, by the way: https://skerritt.blog/best-japanese-learning-tools-2025-awar...
... from some random blog. Happy users are great, but your post title is misleading and, basically, a click-bait.
I doubt any major publications are choosing the year's best Japanese learning tool for iOS.
Ok, I edited the title!
I don't know what more prestigious annual Japanese learning tools awards you might be confusing this with though?
I did also get a recommendation from Tofugu / WaniKani's Japanese learning resources blog which was pretty popular at the time, but they've stopped that series.
Reddit discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/1phbsk4/i_te... (147 comments)
My app: https://reader.manabi.io
I quit my job a couple years back to work on this app full-time, as well as its companion flashcard app, Manabi Flashcards. The goal is to help you learn through immersion and eventually replace some of your flashcard reviews time with reading (once I finish auto-reviews for flashcards)
What's special about it? Manabi Reader became popular as an Japanese-focused alternative to services like LingQ in that it locally tracks and analyzes all the words and kanji you read and study. It shows you which words are new and which you're currently learning via flashcards, so you can easily find content that suits your level and see what flashcards to prioritize adding.
The pricing is also unique: students or low-income earners can elect to pay less, without verification. This has helped with word of mouth growth.
It also passively accumulates an on-device (and in your personal iCloud) corpus of example sentences from your reading. It’s also one of few ways to mine sentences including pitch accent directly into Anki on iPhone.
I had built this part-time while working over many years (starting with flashcards and then the reader app) but going full-time gave me the time to do a full rewrite: SwiftUI, native iOS + macOS, and an offline-first architecture that syncs with iCloud and my server in the background.
Although it has an optional companion SRS algorithm (FSRS) flashcard app, it's also a popular choice for mining Anki cards. This works with AnkiMobile on iOS and AnkiConnect on desktop.
You can use it like a web browser for the web, or subscribe to RSS feeds. It comes with a bunch of curated content by level. Recently I added EPUB support, pitch accents, and note-taking with todos.
I'm now almost done adding a manga mode via Mokuro, and Netflix/streaming video support via realtime captioning of audio streams. I've fine-tuned a manga-specific MLX-based OCR model (since Apple's OCR cannot tolerate vertical text) and have it working on iPhone, so I also plan to have it work on-demand and in-browser for sites like Bookwalker where you can purchase and find free manga.
In terms of growth, it's been mostly word of mouth so far - to scale this with UGC/influencer marketing I need to make it more beginner friendly. Currently it assumes you can read kana at least. But I have gotten interest from a bunch of influencers who already use the app or like it enough to recommend it generously (I'm starting with commission deals) so I am optimistic as I begin that campaign.