MAL Updater OS X

Open Source macOS Scrobbler for Kitsu and AniList

malupdaterosxdev

KaniManabu is now Available on the Mac App Store

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After three months of development, KaniManabu is now available on the Mac App Store. I decided to develop this app since I felt that Anki isn’t working for my Japanese language studies and I want something like WaniKani where you type the meaning and the reading to study words. The templates for Anki just feels too clunky to use or don’t work with mobile.

KaniManabu is meant to be an easy to use alternative to Anki for those who are in the Apple Ecosystem. No need to mess with templates in Anki. There are three predefined deck types (Kana, Vocabulary, and Kanji) to choose from. An other deck type will be added in the future. KaniManabu features a Wanikani-like system where you type in the answers. However, if you prefer the Anki-style of studying, Anki Mode is available.

You can learn more about our new Japanese vocabulary/Kanji flash hard app at the official website. A subscription is available for additional decks above three, premium TTS voices, and other planned features. I plan to release an iOS/iPad version, which will be included in the future, which should have most of the features of the macOS version.

For active patrons, you should continue to use the Patron-exculsive client, which is downloadable from the official website.

Funimation Phaseout

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As recently announced or some see this coming, Funimation will be merging with Crunchyroll, or rather Funimation is going away in the future. Note that Hachidori will still support Funimation, but no updates will be made besides bug fixes if possible until the service ends. Once the service closes, the detection code will get removed in a future version.

We still plan to support Crunchyroll and Hidive in the Hachidori Lite Safari Extension, but there is no plans to add support for other streaming sites in the iOS/iPadOS Safari Extension. I plan to use the work from the Safari Subscription to add stream detection support to Firefox on macOS in the future.

KaniManabu 1.0 Alpha 1 Released

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Our new Japanese vocabulary study app is now released and available for download for macOS. KaniManabu allows users to study vocabulary and Kanji effectively. What makes it different is that you have to type the answers instead of looking at the answer and choosing the difficulty. You can learn more about this new app on its own page.

Of course, there will be bugs as this is the first release and we are looking for feedback. Report bugs as usual on our support forums. While donation licenses are available through the app, it’s not available on the website yet. Active patrons can unlock the deck limit and remove the notification with their existing Patreon license key. This release can be downloaded from Github.

The iOS release will hopefully become available for testing sometime in February. That depends how stable and when we will receive approval for TestFlight testing from Apple.

Year in Review – 2021

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At last, 2021 comes to an end and of course, there were some advancements in our apps. First off, we finally released Shukofukurou 3.6, which contains new features as customizing library views, a macOS Big Sur optimized UI. We also finally restored the streaming links feature, which went down since Because.moe stopped updating its data.

With Shukofukurou for iOS/iPadOS, there were some big changes. With iOS/iPadOS 15, Apple introduced Safari Extensions. For the first time, we were able to bring the ability to update your list based on what you are watching on Crunchyroll, Hidive, VRV, and Funimation. This is a vast improvement over the old share extension, which only worked on a few apps and it’s not reliable. While scrobbling within the mobile apps are no longer possible, browser based stream detection still works. We are thinking about using this strategy to bring stream detection support for Firefox via an extension that interfaces with Hachidori.

Lastly, there is Hachidori, which we made some fixes, adding support for Crunchyroll beta site, Peacock TV, and experimental Youtube support. Nothing too major in that department and thankfully, Monterey didn’t break the app at all.

Looking in the future, we hope to make the iOS/iPadOS versions of Shukofukurou meet parity to the macOS version. This means viewing user profiles and browsing their lists. We hope to also add syncing of lists between services as well, although I do plan to rewrite Hato since it hasn’t been reliable as of late. I am also hoping to integrate Apple Music support to allow users to look up opening/ending songs on there, if available. Also, I want to start rewriting part of the Hachidori scrobbling engine to Swift as there is now ABI support with Hachidori 4.0.

Either way, I thank everyone who uses my apps and patrons in supporting the project. Without you, these apps wouldn’t be possible. Let’s make 2022 a great year.

Shukofukurou for macOS Legacy Version Released

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Shukofukurou for macOS 3.5.8 is now released, which is the legacy release that supports macOS 10.13 to 10.15. We will only be releasing bugfixes. However, there won’t be any new features added to this release. The 3.5.x series will be supported until next year. The legacy release has a different app name, but it will use the same settings and stored lists until you are ready to upgrade to 3.6.x or later release, which requires Big Sur or later.

To unlock donor features and you have the App Store release, do not uninstall or overwrite the App Store version. When you launch the Legacy version, it will unlock these features automatically.

To download the Legacy release, click here.

Sukofukurou for iOS 2.2 Now Released

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Shukofukurou for iOS/iPadOS 2.2 is now released after being released for testing for the last few months. This release drops iOS 12 support and adds iOS 13 or later features. Also, there is now a new scrobble extension for Safari, which will eventually replace the share extension. This allows user to update their list based on what you are watching. It’s not automatic and you need to tap the extesnion icon and then Hachidori Lite to use it. Make sure you enable the extension first.

Also, the icon for the iOS version now matches the Mac version.

Change log is below

New Features​

  • Add What’s New onboarding to show what is new in the release.
  • Hachidori Lite Safari Extension is now added, allowing users to update their list based on what you are watching. Simply tap the Extensions icon, Hahidori Lite and follow the instructions to update your list based on the title and episode you are watching.
  • iOS/iPadOS 15 Support
  • Password Autofill support for Kitsu login

Bug Fixes and Enhancements​

  • Remove OnePassword icon on the Kitsu login.
  • Removed support for iOS 12
  • Adopted iOS/iPadOS 13 UI additions (e.g. icons, table views)
  • Added deprecation notice for Shukofukurou Scrobble extension, will be removed in a future release.

You can discuss this release on our forums.