Hakase
Japanese vocabulary, from your menu bar.
Hakase keeps a Japanese word in your menu bar while you work. Click it whenever you feel like practising and a small panel asks what it means. No account, no cloud, no subscription — and no daily quota waiting to be missed.
Why Hakase?
Always There, Never Loud
A word sits in your menu bar and rotates while you work. Passive exposure costs nothing; the quiz only happens when you click.
No Pressure by Design
No daily quota, no guilt streak, no red numbers. Goals and streaks exist for people who want them, off by default.
Words You Will Actually Hear
The deck is ordered by how often words appear in real life — subtitles, conversations, the web — not by newspaper vocabulary.
Private by Default
Everything lives on your Mac. No network access at all, no accounts, no telemetry. The quiz panel can hide itself from screen sharing.
Features
Spaced Repetition
Words come back on a schedule that stretches as you learn them, from minutes to a week
Forgiving Answers
Typos, synonyms and articles are accepted. If your answer was right, one keystroke teaches it to the app
Mix-Up Detection
Confuse two words repeatedly and Hakase notices, then puts them head to head until they separate
Listening Rounds
Hear the word spoken with nothing shown, and answer from sound alone
Example Sentences
Real sentences in romaji and English, so a word arrives with context
Add From Anywhere
Select Japanese text in any app and send it straight to your practice through the Services menu
Anki Import
Bring your review progress with you — your reps carry over instead of starting from zero
English and Spanish
Both the deck and the interface, switchable at any time without losing progress
How It Works
A Word Appears
It sits in your menu bar and changes every few minutes while you work
Click When Ready
A small panel opens in the centre of your screen, keyboard first
Type the Meaning
Or press Enter to simply see the answer — nothing is held against you
Back to Work
Esc closes the panel. What you learned comes back exactly when it should
Perfect For
- Understanding anime, film and games without subtitles
- Keeping vocabulary warm between formal study sessions
- Learners who bounced off apps that nag and count streaks
- Anyone working toward a JLPT level, at their own pace
- Spanish speakers, who have almost no Japanese trainers of their own
Requirements
- macOS 13.0 (Ventura) or later
- The widget requires macOS 14.0 or later
- About 20 MB of disk space
- No internet connection, at any point
Download
Available on the Mac App Store
(Coming Soon)
Support & Privacy
Questions? Contact us at hello@luissantanderart.com
Hakase is built by Codeform, creating simple, focused tools for Mac users.