Chinese immersion made easy

Mogao runs on your computer, server or even a Raspberry Pi and connects to Anki through AnkiConnect. You add your own EPUBs or videos and read or watch them in a browser. You can open Mogao on the computer where it runs or from another device - Mogao was made to work particularly well on mobile devices.

Tapping a word shows its definition and pinyin. Mogao includes a dictionary based on CC-CEDICT; you can use a compatible dictionary of your own if you want to. Optionally, Mogao can use an LLM to analyze the book or subtitles and add entries missing from the dictionary like proper nouns, slang or rare words.

When you create a card (it takes just one tap!), Mogao sends the word, definition, pinyin, and source sentence directly to Anki, then requests a sync. There is no manual export; your new cards are immediately available on all your devices where you use Anki. For a video card, it also attaches a screenshot and a clip of the original audio. If enabled, a local or online LLM can add a translation and pinyin for the sentence, and ElevenLabs can generate sentence audio.

When I started learning Chinese, I was using a popular browser extension, Yomitan, to look up words and sentence mine while reading. It's a great tool, but I soon realized that I didn't enjoy reading on my PC, and the amount of time I spent doing it was very low. I also noticed that I had no issues mindlessly scrolling on my phone while lying in bed for hours. I realized I could solve both issues at the same time.

Unfortunately, Chrome on Android doesn't let users install extensions, so I decided to make my own app. I soon decided to make it a website running on a server to avoid potential issues with connecting Anki to it directly on the phone and to make it universally accessible across all of my devices.

Immediately after switching to using Mogao, the amount of Chinese I read increased dramatically. It took me 39 days to make as many flashcards as I did in the previous nine months. A month later, I started wishing I had a tool as nice for watching videos on my iPad, so I added this functionality to it, too.

Mogao started as a private project I made for myself. I used it every day for months, and I still do. Eventually, I decided to open-source it because I thought it might be useful to other people, too.

Mogao is named after the Mogao Caves (莫高窟). One interpretation of Mogao is “none higher,” or “peerless”: 莫 (mò) means “none,” and 高 (gāo) means “high.” I wanted to build the best tool for my own needs, so that meaning felt fitting. Coincidentally, “Mogao” starts with “mog,” which in English means “to look or perform far better than someone else.”