Mekuru: Japanese Manga Reader

Learn Japanese by reading manga and novels you enjoy. Tap any word to see what it means, fully offline. Mekuru can even read the text in your manga on your phone (on-device OCR, Pro), so you can tap words right inside the speech bubbles.

◆ READ MANGA AND TAP ANY WORD
• On-device OCR finds and reads the Japanese in speech bubbles, offline (Pro). Test your phone's speed for free before you buy.
• Scan the page you are reading, or a whole volume from your library
• Already use mokuro? Open mokuro-processed manga, or CBZ files that carry mokuro data, and tap words right away, free
• Single page, two-page spread, and vertical scroll modes
• Auto-crop page margins (Pro) and support for your own OCR server (Pro)

◆ READ JAPANESE NOVELS AND LIGHT NOVELS (EPUB)
• Vertical text (tategaki) or horizontal, right-to-left or left-to-right
• Turn pages, or scroll through each chapter
• Furigana your way: off, the book's own, all kanji, only kanji above your JLPT level, or only kanji you haven't learned on WaniKani
• Save a copy of any book as an EPUB with furigana added
• Bookmarks, highlights (Pro), and your place restored every time
• Sepia and dark themes, font size, margins, and an animation switch for e-ink screens

◆ OFFLINE JAPANESE DICTIONARY
• Smart word detection recognizes conjugated verbs and compound words
• Download JMdict, KANJIDIC, kanji stroke order (KanjiVG), and JPDB frequency data
• Import your own Yomitan-compatible dictionaries
• Pitch accent and word frequency at a glance
• Search in kana, kanji, or romaji

◆ BUILD YOUR VOCABULARY WITH ANKI
• Save words together with the sentence you found them in
• Send flashcards straight to AnkiDroid, or export CSV
• Sentence mining from real books, not textbook examples

◆ TRACK YOUR READING
• Reading time, characters read, and words added
• A reading activity heatmap, lookup rate, and vocabulary growth over time

◆ YOUR LIBRARY, YOUR WAY
• Download books from your own Komga or Kavita server, with reading progress synced both ways
• Sort books into folders
• Turn image-only EPUBs into manga, and export manga as CBZ
• Back up your whole library to one file to move to a new phone

◆ MADE FOR JAPANESE LEARNERS
Mekuru is built for extensive reading (tadoku) and immersion. Reading real Japanese is one of the best ways to learn kanji, grammar, and vocabulary in context, from JLPT N5 beginners with graded readers to advanced learners reading light novels without a paper dictionary.

◆ FREE AND OPEN SOURCE
Mekuru is free and open source (AGPL). An optional one-time Pro upgrade unlocks on-device manga OCR, your own OCR server, manga auto-crop, and book highlights.

App interface in English, Spanish, Indonesian, and Simplified Chinese.

Mekuru (めくる) means "to turn the page": less time with a dictionary, more time reading Japanese.

Recent changes:
• New: import CBR, RAR and ZIP manga, switch the app to Japanese, add notes to highlights, write your own definitions, rearrange the bottom bar, and use a pure black theme.
• Improved: double-tap an illustration to see it full screen, and manga Spread view shows wide pages on their own and remembers each book's reading direction.
• Fixed: words written in katakana are found in the dictionary, and manga archives with chapter folders open in the right order.