chinese-reading-lens

About

Chinese Reading Lens is a modern reading assistant for learners of Chinese, built for the way people actually read Chinese today: on complex, dynamic websites like Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, Zhihu, Weibo, Baidu Baike, Douban, WeChat articles, and Chinese news sites.

Many Chinese dictionary extensions work well on simple static pages, but struggle on modern webpages with nested text, comments, dynamic layouts, overlays, and rich interaction areas. Chinese Reading Lens was designed around these real reading environments.

Hover over Chinese text to get a compact word card with pinyin, English definitions, simplified/traditional forms, and candidate word boundaries. If hover is difficult on a complex page, select the Chinese text instead and use the selection lookup fallback.

Chinese Reading Lens is not a full-page translator. It helps you keep reading Chinese, not replace it.

Key features:

Built for modern Chinese webpages, including complex feeds, articles, comments, and encyclopedia-style pages
Fast hover lookup using a local Chinese-English dictionary
Selection lookup fallback when hover is not the best interaction
Candidate word boundaries to help you see where Chinese words start and end
Compact word cards with pinyin, definitions, simplified/traditional forms, and source sentences
One-click saving for useful words and phrases
Local saved-word panel with delete and export options
Export to Anki Basic CSV, regular CSV, or JSON backup
Adjustable pinyin format, tone colors, hover delay, and selection behavior
Lightweight highlights that avoid rewriting the page
Isolated extension styling to reduce conflicts with the websites you read
What makes Chinese Reading Lens different:

Chinese Reading Lens is built for authentic Chinese reading, not textbook snippets or clean demo pages. It uses more robust text detection strategies than simple event-target lookup, and it treats selection as an equal fallback when webpages are too complex for reliable hover.

It is also intentionally quiet. Unlike heavy annotation tools, it does not cover every page with colors, labels, or full-page transformations by default. Reading stays first; help appears when you need it.

When you save a word or phrase, Chinese Reading Lens can preserve the original source sentence, page title, and URL so you can review vocabulary in real context later.

Privacy: Chinese Reading Lens only stores learning items that you actively trigger, such as looked-up words, selected text, source sentences, and saved items. It does not collect full webpage content, full browsing history, or large unselected page text. Current learning data is stored locally in your browser.

Chinese Reading Lens is useful if you:

Read Chinese social platforms, articles, forums, comments, encyclopedias, or news sites
Want dictionary help that works better on real modern webpages
Struggle with Chinese word boundaries
Want to save vocabulary together with real source sentences
Prefer learning from authentic Chinese content instead of relying on full-page translation
Chinese Reading Lens helps you capture real learning moments while reading real Chinese on the modern web.