What it is
Kimochi is a free desktop companion for reading Japanese games and visual novels. It reads the
text on screen, draws it back over the game so you can point at any word to look it up, and keeps
a running log of every line with audio, Anki export and a notebook for names and places. It is a
Tauri 2 app (Rust and React), built for macOS first, with Windows and Linux builds.
- OCR where the text is: Google Lens by default (captures are sent to Google), or local
engines (MeikiOCR, Manga OCR, Apple Live Text on macOS, OneOCR on Windows 11). Auto OCR waits
for text to settle, then reads it once.
- Pop-up dictionaries: Yomitan, Hachidori or 10ten, downloaded on demand from their
upstream releases, hash-checked and run unmodified, with your own dictionaries; or the Yomitan
API, which looks words up through the Yomitan already in your browser.
- Reading log: a built-in texthooker with sessions, reading stats, a notebook and VNDB
import; clipboard and WebSocket texthookers work too.
- Controller-friendly: a radial menu and gamepad navigation, including Steam Deck Gaming Mode
(experimental).
Install
Download the app from kimochiapp.com. Builds are published on
GitHub Releases, and the app updates itself.
Building from source
You need Node 22+ and stable Rust, plus per OS:
- macOS 14+: the Xcode Command Line Tools. Run the bundle rather than the bare executable,
which can get a different WebKit storage identity and appear to lose your dictionaries.
- Windows 10 22H2 or 11 (x64 or ARM64): the Visual Studio Build Tools "Desktop development
with C++" workload. For the OneOCR helpers also
rustup target add x86_64-pc-windows-msvc aarch64-pc-windows-msvc and the MSVC ARM64 build tools.
- Ubuntu 24.04+:
sudo apt install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev build-essential curl wget file libxdo-dev libssl-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev patchelf pkg-config libpipewire-0.3-dev libpipewire-0.3-modules pipewire-bin libspa-0.2-dev libclang-dev libudev-dev libgstreamer1.0-dev gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad libavif-dev
(details in src-tauri/src/platform/linux/DEPS.md).
The OCR engines are separate crates (kimochi-meikiocr,
kimochi-mangaocr); Cargo fetches them at the exact
revisions pinned in src-tauri/Cargo.toml, so there is nothing else to clone:
git clone https://github.com/hamstu/kimochi
cd kimochi
npm ci
npm run dev # the app with live reload
npm run bundle # a debug bundle for this OS, under src-tauri/target/debug/bundle/
No dictionary engine or OCR model is in the repository. The app downloads the engine you choose
(Yomitan, Hachidori or 10ten) from its pinned upstream release (extensions/<id>.source.json),
checks every file against extensions/<id>.sha256.json and runs it unmodified; OCR models are
downloaded the same way (src-tauri/ocr-models.json). For development,
node scripts/sync-extension.mjs --all --if-missing fills a gitignored copy of the engines in
extensions/<id>/; npm test runs it first, so the first test run needs the network.
npm run dev serves every window from a Vite dev server at http://127.0.0.1:1430: React
panel edits hot-reload, ui/ edits reload their window, and src-tauri/ or host/ edits
rebuild and relaunch the app. Set KIMOCHI_DEV_PORT to run a second checkout alongside.
Local bundles are signed with an Apple Development certificate if one is installed (ad-hoc
otherwise) on macOS and unsigned on Windows. CI signs with Developer ID and notarises on macOS
(tauri's own signing, from the APPLE_* secrets) and signs with Azure Artifact Signing on
Windows (scripts/sign-windows.mjs); setting the same variables locally does the same.
How it is put together
| Folder | What lives there |
|---|
src-tauri/ | The native app: windows, settings, capture, OCR, input, tray, updater and the texthooker server. Its command interface is documented in COMMANDS.md. |
capture-core/ | Screen and window capture (ScreenCaptureKit, Windows Graphics Capture, PipeWire). |
frontend/ | The React windows: controller, settings, log/texthooker, notebook, welcome. Built from the kit in frontend/kit. |
ui/ | The always-present overlay: scanning, change detection, OCR backends and the boxes drawn over the game. |
host/ | The extension host that runs the downloaded dictionary engines unmodified. |
oneocr-worker/ | Small helpers that run Windows' built-in OneOCR. |
site/ | The marketing site. |
Settings, history and downloaded engines live in the app's data folder (on macOS,
~/Library/Application Support/dev.kimochi.app/); dictionaries live in the webview's IndexedDB.
Reporting a problem
Open an issue with the Bug report template, or ask in the
Discord. In Kimochi, Settings → About → Debug info → Copy
gives you the details a report needs (version, OS, hardware, displays, OCR engine, dictionary,
recent errors), with tokens and your user name left out. Save debug bundle adds the recent logs
as a zip; turn on Verbose logging first to record more while you make the problem happen.
Contributing
Kimochi is open source under the GPL and open to thoughtful contributions, but it is not
actively looking for features or collaborators. See CONTRIBUTING.md before
opening anything large.
License
GPL-3.0. Kimochi includes Apache-2.0 code (LICENSE-APACHE) and
fonts under the SIL Open Font License (LICENSE-OFL.txt); the third-party
notices, including the OCR models and the dictionary engines it downloads, are in
NOTICE. The licence files ship inside the app.
