Glyphly

Turn the text on your screen into language learning.

A local-first desktop app for CJK learners — Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Capture text from your screen, read it with on-device OCR, look up words, save vocabulary, and review — all locally on your own PC. Optional sentence translation is available only when you turn it on.

Windows 10 & 11 Mandarin Chinese Local-first Free to try

Available today: Windows, Mandarin Chinese. Japanese, Korean, and macOS are in development.

Download for Windows See pricing

Free to use with up to 150 saved words. No account required.
See the latest release and what's new →

How it works

1 · Capture

Select what you're reading

Drag a region or press a global hotkey to grab text from study PDFs, reading apps, websites, or your own materials.

2 · Understand

Read it, word by word

On-device OCR recognises the characters and splits the line into words, with definitions and pronunciation for each one.

3 · Save

Build a personal lexicon

Keep the words that matter to you, together with the sentence you first met them in. Your lexicon, on your machine.

4 · Review

Make it stick

Spaced-repetition review with FSRS scheduling brings each word back right before you'd forget it.

Optional sentence translation. Add your own DeepL API key in Settings and Glyphly will translate whole sentences on request. It is off until you turn it on, and it costs nothing extra — it uses your key, not ours.

A look inside

Glyphly Capture view: recognised Mandarin text with pinyin, an English translation, per-word token drill-down, and a dictionary lookup.
Capture & understand. On-device OCR, pinyin, per-word lookup, and an optional translation.
Glyphly Lexicon: saved words with pinyin, definitions, and the sentence each was first seen in.
Your personal lexicon. Every saved word, with meanings and the sentence you met it in.
Glyphly Library: saved sentences organised into named collections.
Organised into collections. Group saved sentences however you study.
Glyphly Review: an FSRS spaced-repetition card with meaning, pinyin, and rating buttons.
Review with spaced repetition. FSRS scheduling brings each word back at the right time.

Privacy-first by design

  • OCR, word segmentation, and dictionary lookup run on your device.
  • Screenshots and recognised text are never uploaded for OCR or lookup.
  • Saved words and review history stay in a local database — no account, no cloud sync.
  • Sentence translation is the one feature that sends text out, and only when you enable it.
  • After setup, capture, lookup, and review work with no internet connection.

Read the full Privacy Policy →

Glyphly Pro

The core loop is free

Capture, OCR, lookup, saving, and spaced-repetition review are all free, with a cap of 150 saved words. Words you've already saved are never locked, and your review history stays yours.

Pro removes the cap

  • Unlimited saved words
  • Clipboard watch
  • Collection quiz

File import In development
Included with Pro when it ships.

Launch offer
Founder Lifetime
CA$89.99

One-time payment. Limited early-supporter offer.

Yearly
CA$49.99 / year

Best value if you're subscribing.

Monthly
CA$8.99 / month

Cancel any time.

How to buy. Open Glyphly and go to Settings → License to choose a plan. Your license key arrives by email — paste it into that same card and press Activate. One key works on up to 3 devices, and Pro stays unlocked for 14 days offline. Prices in Canadian dollars (CAD); payments processed by Lemon Squeezy, our merchant of record, who will show your local equivalent at checkout.

Platforms & languages

Platform — available now Windows 10 and Windows 11 (64-bit)
Platform — in development macOS
Learning language — available now Mandarin Chinese
Learning language — in development Japanese, Korean
Explanation language English, French, German, Spanish, or Portuguese
Anything listed as in development is on the roadmap without a committed date. Each language needs its own dictionary and text-analysis work, and each platform needs its own build and testing — they ship when they are genuinely good rather than on a schedule. Please buy based on what Glyphly does today.

System requirements

Operating system Windows 10 or Windows 11 (64-bit)
Disk space At least 1 GB for the app and its language engine
First run Downloads the language engine once (about 300 MB). After that the core loop works offline.
Internet Needed for setup, updates, and license activation only
Updates Glyphly checks for new versions and can install them for you
About the SmartScreen warning. Glyphly's installer is not yet code-signed, so Windows may show a “Windows protected your PC” prompt. Choose More info → Run anyway. Code signing is in progress; until it's done, only download Glyphly from the official Releases page.

Support

Have a question first? The FAQ covers setup, the Windows security prompt, privacy, and how Pro works.

Found a bug, or something not working the way this page describes? Open an entry on the issue tracker and it will be looked at.

For billing, license, and refund questions, see the Refund Policy.

Would rather not use GitHub, or have something that shouldn't be public? Email support@getglyphly.com. Order numbers and license keys belong there, not in a public issue.