Tipword
Most learners hit the same wall: the course is fine, but real Japanese, in news, chats and shows, is full of words you haven’t met. Looking each one up breaks your flow, so you stop reading. The fix is to make looking up a word take one second.
Read what you already read, in Japanese
Switch one daily habit to Japanese: the news you check in the morning, a recipe blog, a series with Japanese subtitles. Pick something you’d read anyway, so you keep coming back.
Look words up without leaving the page
With Tipword, hold ⌥ Option and point at a word. Its English meaning appears right beside it, then goes away. No typing, no new tab, so you keep reading in Japanese.
No spaces, no problem
Japanese doesn’t put spaces between words, so copying “one word” into a dictionary is half the battle. Tipword uses macOS’s own word detection to find where the word under your pointer starts and ends.
Questions
Is Japanese free?
Yes, on macOS 15 or later: Japanese translates on your Mac with Apple, so there’s no key and nothing extra to pay.
Does it work with anime and drama subtitles?
Yes. Pause the video, hold ⌥ and point at the word in the subtitle.