Formatting tools - bold, underline, and highlight - are now one tap away above the keyboard.
New: Cozy Dark Mode is here — easy on the eyes while you study into the night.
• New: Format study notes with bold, underline, and highlights. • New: Read Aloud reads your notes, with precise word highlighting. • Improved: TipKit helps you discover OCR, dictionary lookup, grammar insertion, and smoother text editing on macOS.
Minor UI update
- New: Copy Japanese text anywhere and Kaku will drop it into a new note the next time you open the app.
- New: iCloud Sync keeps your notes up to date across iPhone, iPad, and Mac (Premium). - New: Search the dictionary anytime from the main menu — no need to select a word first. - Fixed an issue where the dictionary lookup button was unavailable without a text selection.
- Word lookups from links now open full screen, so it feels more like flipping open a dictionary instead of a popup. - The first line of a note is now bolded automatically, like a title. - Fixed Read Aloud not producing any sound on Mac.
Kaku 7.0 - rebuilt from the ground up This is the biggest update in Kaku's history: the entire app has been rewritten from scratch to be faster, smoother, and ready for everything we have planned next. A brand-new writing experience - Clean, paper-inspired design that stays out of your way - Organize your notes into folders - Adjustable text size for comfortable reading and writing A dictionary that comes to you - Highlight any word and matching entries appear right above the keyboard. No app-switching, no copy-paste - Full entries with readings, word types, and real example sentences - Writing in Japanese and stuck on a word? Look it up in English and insert the Japanese with one tap Read and listen - Read Aloud speaks your note with word-by-word highlighting so you can follow along - Choose from the best Japanese voices on your device Kaku Premium - Scan printed or handwritten Japanese straight into a note with your camera - Translate entire notes into 20 languages - Unlock the full grammar toolkit Kaku now feels at home on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. If Kaku helps your Japanese studies, a review makes a huge difference. Found a bug or have an idea? We'd love to hear from you. 頑張って！
Updated some grammar patterns
- New Liquid Glass app icon! - All sheets can be exported to a text file
Minor UI updates.
New app icon!
Added video tutorial.
Optimised to support iOS 17!
Fixed some grammar examples and improved the translation speed for shorter texts.
Fixed some grammar examples.
Highlight a word in English or hiragana, and select Quick Replace (⌘ R) to replace it with the kanji writing. e.g. meat becomes 肉
Added setting to increase/decrease font size.
Placeholder text is automatically deleted as the user enters text.
Removed clutter from highlighted word menu.
User interface improvement - added a close button to the word bank and conjugation modal sheets.
Kaku 5.0 MAJOR UPDATE! - The UI has been overhauled. The number of tabs has been reduced to bring greater focus to the writing tab. - New light/neutral colour theme similar to Financial Times - Adopted a Helvetica-like font for Japanese text - A toolbar has been added to easily access features such as the Word Bank, external dictionary search, inline translation, conjugations and grammar examples, keyboard toggle - New app logo/icon - Updated in-app icons with the latest SF Symbols - Added external dictionary search for popular dictionary apps such as imiwa?, Japanese, Midori, Shirabe Jisho - Added conjugations for potential form, you-form, ba-form, passive form, imperative form, negative imperative form, causative form, causative passive form - Added over 80 grammar examples that can be applied to any highlighted verb, adjective or noun - Added onboarding tutorial
Translation section is now editable so you can correct any outputs before saving your sheet.
In this major update we have collaborated with the popular Nihongo dictionary app. Highlight any text and save it directly to Nihongo as a clipping! Also, search for the definition of any word in Nihongo by highlighting and pressing ⌘ + D. You can select your preferred external dictionary app via the Settings tab.
Icons have been updated with the latest SF Symbols.
Highlight any verb and conjugate it to the ~te-form from the menu.
Highlight any verb, adjective or noun and conjugate it to the past form (~ta) from the menu.
New app icon!
Kaku x Japanese dictionary app collaboration is here! Search for the definition of any word in the popular Japanese dictionary app by highlighting and pressing ⌘ + D.
Highlight any verb, adjective or noun and conjugate it to the negative past form (~nakatta) from the menu.
You can now highlight any noun or adjective and immediately convert it to the negative/~nai form via the menu.
Conjugation Assistant is here! Type and highlight any verb and immediately convert it to the negative/~nai form via the menu.
Added counter words to the Word Bank.
Added i-adjectives and na-adjectives to the Word Bank.
User interface improvements: - Updated buttons with more suitable icons - Dictionary lookup no longer does multiple searches as you drag highlight a word - Decluttered the right-click menu by removing some system defaults