Meikipop Setup Guide

Meikipop is an incredibly fast OCR popup dictionary that lets you look up Japanese text anywhere on your screen. Just point your mouse at any Japanese text, press a hotkey, and you get instant dictionary definitions. Magic.

Unlike browser extensions, Meikipop works with any on-screen text.

Installation

Prebuilt Binaries (Recommended)

1. Download the latest release from the Meikipop Releases page
2. Extract the archive to a folder of your choice
3. Run the executable

The prebuilt binaries come with the dictionary included, so no extra setup is needed.

From Source

Requires Python 3.10+.

1. Clone or download the repository
2. Install dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt
   pip install lxml
   

3. Build the dictionary:

   python -m scripts.build_dictionary
   

4. Run:

   python -m src.main
   

macOS Permissions

macOS users will need to grant these permissions in System Preferences:

• Input Monitoring - For hotkey detection
• Screen Recording - For capturing screen content
• Accessibility - For mouse position tracking

Basic Usage

1. Launch the application - A system tray icon will appear
2. Select scan region - On first launch, you'll be asked to select a screen region to scan
3. Position your mouse over the Japanese text you want to look up
4. Press and hold the hotkey (Shift by default)
5. View the popup - Dictionary results show up instantly
6. Release the hotkey to dismiss the popup

Right-click the system tray icon to access settings and options.

Configuration

You can access settings through the system tray icon's right-click menu. Your configuration gets saved to config.ini in the application folder.

Available options:

• Hotkeys - Change the trigger key
• Themes and colors - Customize the popup appearance
• Scan region - Switch between region-specific or fullscreen scanning
• Auto scan mode - Enable continuous scanning without holding the hotkey
• OCR provider - Choose between Google Lens, meikiocr (local), or OwOCR (WebSocket)

Anki Mining Forks

If you want to make Anki cards directly from Meikipop, there are a couple of community forks worth checking out:

pnotisdev's fork

pnotisdev's fork adds:

• Anki card creation (Alt+A) - Captures screenshots and context sentences
• Duplicate detection - Prevents adding words already in your deck
• Automated audio - Fetches audio from languagepod101.com
• Additional shortcuts - Alt+C to copy text, Alt+J for Jisho
• More dictionaries - Supports monolingual dictionaries like kaikki

zurcGH's fork

zurcGH's meikipop-anki adds:

• Yomitan-style Anki integration - Card creation workflow similar to Yomitan
• Frequency and pitch accent - Displays frequency info and pitch accent marks
• Yomitan-api integration - Uses your existing Yomitan dictionaries (bilingual and monolingual)
• Toggleable features - Enable or disable individual features as needed

Limitations

The original Meikipop focuses specifically on dictionary lookups. It doesn't support:

• SRS flashcard mining (use JL or the Anki forks above)
• Multiple dictionaries simultaneously

Tips

• Auto scan mode works well for games where text changes frequently and you want continuous lookups
• Especially handy for JRPGs with complex menus where text shows up all over the screen, compared to VNs where text is usually in a predictable spot
• For games that can be text hooked, consider using Textractor + JL instead
• Click the system tray icon to quickly toggle Meikipop on/off