SparkleChinese – Learn Chinese while you browse
Like many Chinese Americans, I can speak Chinese fairly well, but I struggle with reading and writing. I've always wanted to improve, but I've never had the time to sit down and study. SparkleChinese is a browser extension that forces me to get better at reading Chinese by swapping English words on the pages I read with their Chinese equivalents. SparkleChinese is free and runs entirely on-device. Full disclosure: I vibe-coded this using Opus 5 and Fable 5.
SparkleChinese – Learn Chinese while you browse launched on August 19, 2026 with 5 votes, #1,809 of 23,274 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches.
What it does
Sparkle is a browser extension that swaps a few English words on the pages you read for the Chinese you are learning. Hover a word for the reading and the meaning. Matching runs in the browser.
Does a similar job
all alternatives →
Learn Japanese contextually while browsingDec 2025 · lingoku.ai · ▲92Hi HN, Just wanted to share a tool i've been working on to help with my own study routine. It’s a browser extension called Lingoku. The idea is simple: we spend hours browsing the web in English every day. This tool replaces some of the english words with Japanese vocabulary based on your japanese level (Similar to Toucan, but with a better user experience). It’s basically an attempt to make the "i+1" method actually passive, you understand the sentence because it's mostly english, but you pick up Japanese words naturally from the context. It uses an LLM in the backend to make sure the…
- IBI built an app so I could read the 3 Body-Problem in Chinese2025 · readly.ink · ▲29
Hey HN! I’m Alex, and one of my favorite ways to learn languages is by reading novels. Currently I’m reading 三体 (3 body problem), but one problem I've always had is it takes ages to look up words, and add them to Anki flashcards so I can remember them. 三体 is especially brutal with so much sci-fi vocab. That’s why I built Readly. I snap a pic of the page I’m reading, it loads the text in-app and lets me lookup words, add to Anki-style flashcards, or ask AI questions about the text, all in a single tap. It's a huge time saver. My specific learning strategy, if anyone wants to replicate it: 1.…
Flowlingo – practice a foreign language with tech news2019 · getflowlingo.com · ▲79Learn a language with pop culture. Get fluent with news, tv, books, and more.
More life & fun this month
the category →
A free city-building game in your browser. You are the mayor. You know what the city needs. Now get it past the zoning board, the neighbors, the appeals court and the next election.
Life & fun · 3d ago · permit.petercai.com
- IV
Life & fun · 15d ago · tanzaniaeducationproject.org
Turn a phone, tablet or TV into a sign. Type a message and it fills the screen: welcome signs, timers, Wi-Fi passwords and more. No app, no account, free.
Life & fun · 16d ago · bigwords.page
Play a free virtual guitar online with your keyboard or by touch. Slow songs down and see every chord, string and strum. Acoustic, classic, electric and bass.
Life & fun · 9d ago · guitoro.com
Carrier settings from iPhone, Pixel and Galaxy firmware, decoded and compared: APNs, VoLTE, 5G and Wi-Fi Calling per carrier, and what each build changed.
Life & fun · 14d ago · carrierexplode.com
Life & fun · 23d ago · space.bl2.net
Source: Show HN post ↗
Launched alongside, August 2026
the whole month →- TL
Life & fun · Aug 2026 · louisabraham.github.io
Clipto MCP▲655Hey HN, We recently built Clipto. It’s a tool that lets you search over terabytes of video, audio, and images on your computer, without relying on the cloud. Motivation: we probably all had this similar experience, we know a moment exists in a video or audio, but finding it takes hours scrubbing the timeline. You can send all the media to process in the cloud, but it’s slow, expensive and raises privacy concerns. So we decided to build our own on-device media search engine. How it works (high level): 1. We ingest video, audio, image; normalize formats via ffmpeg; run content analysis to…
Work · Aug 2026 · clipto.com
Hello HN! I found that picking out plausible but diverse skin tones for my digital art and game development projects was kind of difficult, and I got curious about if there was a way to define a color space that made it easy. I've built a color picker and procedural generation algorithm based on the space as well as a bunch of other fun js features and demos throughout the page that use the equations. If you find it interesting, I have lots of explanations of how I built it and what properties the space has. The methodology might be a bit shaky, but hopefully the result is as helpful for…
Life & fun · Aug 2026 · toneyalexander.github.io
Astute▲606Automate your B2B brand going viral, with new media creators
AI · Aug 2026 · company-app.joinastute.com