What's new

Chinese Brain updates itself. This is what changed.

1.6.0 November 15, 2026

Your words on the web: a dashboard at chinese.cristianbagrin.com/brain/dashboard, with your three piles, what you stamped each week, and your word list to search, restamp and tidy. Works on a phone too. Needs the free account.
Practice with AI: Word list → Copy prompt gives a ready prompt with the words you're learning. Paste it into Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini for a story and a quiz.
Word colors on every website, with its own shortcut (Alt+Shift+A; Option+Shift+A on a Mac).
Settings fit on one screen: the sections sit side by side. Key names match your computer (Alt on Windows, Option on a Mac).
Give feedback, from Settings and the toolbar menu. A guide and a What's new page on the website.
Sync fixes: Chrome no longer sends back what it just received, and no longer asks the server every time it wakes up. A backup file no longer carries your sign-in.
Faster start: example sentences are searched when a card needs them, not indexed every time the extension starts.
A letter you chose as a shortcut no longer swallows the first letter you type into a page; Shift with a letter is left to the page.

1.5.0 November 15, 2026

Optional free account: sign in from Settings and your word list, saved sentences and settings stay in sync across your browsers (Firefox and Chrome). Forgot your password? Reset it by email. Everything still works without an account.
Change any shortcut: Settings → Shortcuts. Click a key, press the new one.
A simpler panel on YouTube (hover the 中 switch): how much you know, previous / replay / next line buttons and the switches. Nothing else.
Settings and the toolbar menu say less. New: Report a bug and Email support, straight to the developer.
A welcome page after installing, with Chinese to try the card on.

1.4.0

Now also for Chrome.
Editing a sentence in the card works inside pop-up dialogs, like YouTube Studio's video details: what you type goes into the card, not the video's description, and Esc closes only the card's editor.
With the pointer on the card, 1 2 3 0 and Esc are the card's even right after you typed in the page.

1.3.3

Hover lookup, page colors and the card work inside embedded frames right away, like an artifact on Claude or an embedded document: no need to start them with the right-click Look up first.

1.3.2

The card's shortcuts (1 2 3 0, Esc) work right away on YouTube and in pages you're typing in, like Notion: no need to click the card first. Once you type something else, digits go back to your text.

1.3.1

Stamping sounds like a rubber stamp: a thud with an ink tick in each status's own pitch (新 brightest, 熟 lowest). Clearing a status sounds like the stamp lifting off; saving a sentence has its own light tick. The word list's stamps make the same sounds.
Stamps land on the first frame, together with the sound, and spring back in a ring of ink. The card fades in from the word's side.
Editing a sentence: the text boxes grow to fit the whole sentence.
The word list and export show your edited version of a sentence you met, whole, instead of the long original cut short.
The toolbar menu no longer has a pale rim around its red top.
Reduced motion (system setting): stamps and the card change without moving.

1.3.0

The export saves through Firefox's save-as dialog, which opens in the folder you used last. Cancel it and nothing is marked as exported.
The sentence column holds the one sentence the word appears in (punctuation inside 「」 or 『』 doesn't end it; trimmed to about 80 characters around it, between words), or nothing when the captured text doesn't contain the word.
A new look: a new icon (中 made of a 口 and a pair of chopsticks) and red, ink and paper colors across the card, the word list, settings, the toolbar menu and the YouTube subtitles. Stamps look like seals.
New word list: words written in 田字格 squares with each character's pinyin above, in 楷書; it opens on your Fresh words, with a filter bar that stays on screen. Restamping a word keeps it in place; removing one can be undone; hover a word for its card.
Meanings in the list and export are short and whole (they used to be cut mid-word), long pinyin is spaced into its parts, and words typed in by hand get their parts' readings.
Fixed: a word opened inside the card (from an example or the breakdown) was saved with the page's sentence, which didn't contain it. Sentences without the word, and English notes, are no longer shown or exported.
Hover finds the whole word from any of its characters, also when a page splits the word over several elements.
Edit any sentence in the card, example sentences included, Chinese and English (the pencil); the edited version is the one saved.
The play, copy, edit and save buttons line up with the sentence.
A word whose sentence you saved is in the next export even if its status didn't change. The export header explains the date, sentence and saved columns.

1.2.0

Save the sentence you met a word in: the card shows the sentence you're reading, with a bookmark to save it and a pencil to trim it first (Enter saves, Esc cancels). Saved sentences go into your export.
Cleaner word list (the counts are the filter; export, import and backup in three small cards) and settings page.
The toolbar menu fits without scrolling; the voice choice moved to All settings.

1.1.0

Look up anything you select: tap Option (Alt) or right-click → Look up. Names, phrases and sentences get pinyin and a translation; short ones can be saved as words.
Taiwan place names, sights and dishes added to the dictionary (from Wikidata); 台 and 臺 spellings both work.
Option+Shift+C (Alt+Shift+C) turns word colors on or off for a website; also in the toolbar menu.
Page colors now work in editors like Notion and on pages that re-render text (image search, lightboxes).
Copy button on example sentences.
"Hold to look up" uses Option (Alt) instead of Shift.