These tools have been very useful while learning japaneseI put here the software I have use for learning japanese.

Android

  • Google Translate
    • Useful to Translate Japanese to English or English to Japanese. Specially useful is the camera tool to translate live or to “scan” and translate by selecting the text. Another useful tool is the writing tool, which permits to write kanji directly, and even if not written too accurately the system is able to recognize it and offers some suggestions too.
  • Takoboto (Japanese-English Dictionary)
    • Japanese English Dictionary that searches for the words while you are typing, which makes it very convenient to search quicly for words. It permits to search both in English and in Japanese (using romaji, kana or kanji).
  • Kaku - Floating Japanese Dictionary (OCR)
    • OCR (Optical Character Recognition) system to capture and translate text in Japanese. Specially useful for manga in Kindle or PDF where you cannot select the text, or for slides in Japanese shown on Zoom or Youtube videos. See also Windows->Capture2Text for a similar tool for Windows.
  • AnkiDroid
    • AnkiDroid is the app for using Anki on Android, so as with Anki I would suggest: use in moderation (See Windows->Anki below too).

Chrome Extensions

  • Yomitan
    • By holding Shift key and positioning the cursor over a work you can see the furigana, the meaning in English and the meaning of individual Kanji. Extremely useful.
  • Language Reactor
    • Adds functionality to subtitles on Netflix and Youtube so you can put the mouse over the words and see the translation immediately.

Windows

  • Capture2Text
    • I really recommmend reading the documentation completely (it should take about 30minutes) to be able to use this app effectively, since it relies on the use of hotkeys. This is an OCR app so you can capture text from images, but it also has the option to translate directly and even pronounce with text-to-speech.
  • Takoboto
    • This app starts searching even when you haven’t finished writing, so it is very good specially to use in class where you have to find the words as fast as possible to continue paying attention to the professor.
  • Anki
    • I recommend to use this in moderation, since learning must be fun and Anki can drag the fun out of it very quickly. However, it is a good alternative for physical flash cards, and you can download Shared Decks for classic resources (e.g. Minna No Nihongo, JLPT preparation, Soumatome books, etc).