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Create and edit cards

Choose a capture method

All methods lead to a word or sentence card, an optional context sentence, and an optional image. Word cards can be enriched with a reading, furigana, dictionary definition, pitch accent, and pronunciation audio. These lookups happen locally on device except for pronunciation audio, which downloads from JapanesePod101 over the network. Missing dictionary entries or audio do not prevent saving a card.

Platform Capture a word or sentence
macOS Direct Entry: Copy text and choose Cards → Add.
Workshop: For images and manga/ebook screenshots, open Workshop. Paste an image (⌘V) or drag an image file onto the bench. Drag a rectangle over speech bubbles or text to OCR that region, or double-click for full-image OCR. Click Use as word, Use as sentence, or Attach region as image to populate draft cards in the right-hand tray, then review and save them.
Android In Create, import photos to your tray. Open a photo, crop or rotate if necessary, drag over the text area, and scan using manga-ocr or ML Kit. You can also use Create → Quick Add for text, or highlight text in another Android app and choose Share/Send to Tsumu from the text context menu.
Windows Windows workflows remain unverified against the current core. See installation status before using a Windows build.

On Android, imported photos stay in Tsumu's tray until you finish processing them. Tsumu only accesses photos you select via the system photo picker. An optional Delete source image when done switch moves the original photo to the system trash after card creation; saved cards always keep their own private image copy in app storage.

Screenshotting to the clipboard on macOS

When reading manga, visual novels, or ebooks, or watching videos on macOS, the fastest workflow is copying a screenshot directly to your system clipboard, then pasting it into Workshop:

  • Native macOS shortcuts:
    • ⌃⇧⌘4 (Control + Shift + Command + 4): Copies a selected rectangular screen area directly to your clipboard.
    • ⇧⌘4 (Shift + Command + 4): Select an area, then hold Control before releasing the mouse button to copy it to the clipboard rather than saving a file to the desktop.
    • ⇧⌘5 (Shift + Command + 5): Opens the macOS Screenshot utility. Under Options → Save to, choose Clipboard so future captures are copied directly to the clipboard.
  • Third-party screenshot apps:
    • Various third-party screenshot utilities also exist for macOS that can be configured with a global hotkey to capture and copy a selected region directly to the clipboard.
  • Pasting into Workshop: Switch to Tsumu, navigate to Workshop, and press ⌘V (or drag an image file onto the bench). Drag a bounding box over dialogue or text to run OCR.

If you are not currently mining from immersion material, you can use Discover to add frequent vocabulary directly to your deck: - macOS: Located on the Today tab. - Android: Located on the Create tab.

Discover displays curated vocabulary tiles. Clicking or tapping a tile pre-fetches the definition and audio, letting you preview the card and pronunciation before adding it to your collection with a single click.

Enrich, check, and save

In the card composer, select Word Card or Sentence Card: - Word Cards: Always enter the lemma / dictionary form in the word field (e.g., 食べる instead of 食べました). Tsumu searches Jitendex to populate definitions, furigana ruby markup, pitch accent graphs, and audio. If a word has multiple readings, choose the intended reading from the prompt. - Sentence Cards: Sentence cards focus on full phrases or context sentences and skip automatic word lookup. Use the definition field for a translation or note.

Furigana syntax and manual edits

Tsumu renders furigana ruby annotations above kanji. When editing cards manually, furigana can be edited or formatted as ruby HTML (e.g. <ruby>漢字<rt>かんじ</rt></ruby>). On word cards, enrichment generates furigana automatically.

Duplicates and enrichment

Tsumu detects duplicate cards before saving: word and reading match for word cards, exact sentence match for sentence cards. If a match exists, Tsumu flags it and offers Go to card. In the card editor, clicking Enrich lets you re-run lookups for missing or selected fields without overwriting fields you have manually edited.

Card Browser and Dictionary

The Cards tab serves as your collection browser and dictionary: - Search: Search existing cards by kanji, hiragana, katakana, or romaji. Switch the search mode to Dictionary to search the full bundled Jitendex dictionary directly. - Filters: Filter cards by Active, Bookmarked, or Deleted status. - Deleting and Restoring: Choosing Delete moves a card to Deleted cards and removes it from active review queues. You can choose Restore at any time to return the card with its full review history intact. (There is no permanent delete in the UI to protect your SRS history).