iOS · JLPT N5–N3
Nazoru is a reading tool, not a dictionary. Tap any word in the text and its reading, pitch accent and meaning come up. Save it and the sentence you were reading comes with it — that sentence is what you see again at review.
iOS 18 or later. Not on the App Store yet.
HOW IT WORKS
The text is split before you touch it, so you cannot grab half a word. The bundled dictionary is matched first and longest match wins, which is why 一日中 stays one word instead of breaking into 一 and 日中.
THE VOCABULARY LIST
Other apps keep the word. Nazoru keeps the form it appeared in, the reading of that form, and the sentence around it. That is the whole difference, and everything else follows from it.
Saved as it appeared, with the reading of that form — not silently normalised to the dictionary entry.
Kept whole. At review it comes back with the word blanked out, so the context helps and the answer does not.
The source is stored too, so a word you saved months ago still tells you where it came from.
PITCH ACCENT
Two words can be identical in shape and differ only in what the following particle does. If a pitch line stops at the end of the word, the two are the same picture — so Nazoru always draws the particle.
はしが — the drop lands on the particle.
はしが — no drop; it stays up.
Same two syllables, same shape. Without the particle there is nothing to see, which is why learners can go years without hearing the difference.
REVIEW
Scheduling is FSRS-5 with the published weights, computed on the phone. Nothing about your list is sent anywhere to decide when a word is due.
The sentence you saved comes back with the word blanked out. You are remembering something you actually read.
Including the particle. Testing a reading while hiding the one clue that distinguishes it would make the test meaningless.
At an hour you choose, carrying the number of words waiting — and only on days something is actually due. Delivery is up to iOS.
GRAMMAR
Every book has the list of points. What is missing is the pair you keep getting wrong, set side by side, with the one question that settles which to use.
Which part is new, and which part is what you are talking about.
Whether the first half is how you did it, or why.
Whether the second half is allowed to contain someone's intention.
N5, N4 and N3. Chosen for contrast rather than coverage — a list of three hundred points is not what stops the mistake.
SAFARI EXTENSION
Turn on tracing in Safari and the words on the page become tappable exactly as in the reader. Turn it off and the page is an ordinary page again. What you save from a web page joins the same list, with its sentence and its source.
A mode rather than always on: tapping everything would break the links, and drag-selecting misses the word boundary, because Japanese is not written with spaces.
EXPLANATION LANGUAGE
You choose one language and that is what the app explains in. The two were written separately, because the two readers trip over different things.
Warnings where the characters look familiar and mean something else — 地味, 東洋, 面接.
The clusters that only collide out loud — 名刺 and 名詞, 感想 and 乾燥.
Japanese is always shown as it is. Words you have already saved keep the explanation they were saved with, even if you switch later.
OFFLINE
The dictionary is inside the app. There is no server, no account, and no model running while you read — the readings were compiled in advance, because a reading is the one thing this app must not get wrong.
PRICING
The reader, the vocabulary list, review, grammar and the Safari extension all work. Meanings are shown for N5 and N4.
No subscription · nothing to cancel
The price shown in the App Store applies. It varies by region.
QUESTIONS