Meikipop 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