September 2024 Update

By Felipe / Last updated October 29, 2024

Three weeks have passed since the Chill Chinese app went live as a web app. New features and bug fixes are getting released every few days, so here is a quick summary of the new stuff that has landed since the initial release.

You might need to reload the web app in your browser to see the latest changes, as the browser might have cached the old version.

Dark mode

Do you prefer to use your phone or computer with dark mode? No problem, the Chill Chinese app now automatically adjusts to the system settings. So if you have your system set to dark mode, the app will be dark as well.

Overriding the system default and manually switching between light and dark mode will be possible in a future update.

Multi-word search

It was previously only possible to search for single Chinese words. Now you can also search for multiple words at once. Simply enter a full sentence into the search box and you get the definitions for all the words in that sentence.

This works well for short sentences, but for longer texts, there is something even better: The interactive reader.

Interactive reader

Right above the search results, there is now a text box containing the text you entered. You can click on any word (or hover over it on a computer) to see its definition. This makes it super easy to read whole texts and only look up the words you don't know. Received an email in Chinese? Simply paste it into the search box and read it with the interactive reader.

Onboarding

There is now a short interactive onboarding guide when opening the Chill Chinese app for the first time. It provides a quick introduction into searching for words in the dictionary.

What's next?

With multi-word search and the interactive reader mode, the Chill Chinese app is now a great tool to quickly analyze Chinese texts. To make it even better, we will add the ability to directly translate the whole search query into English. No more copy-pasting into Google Translate, just tap a button and see the translation right in the app.

Afterwards, we will start working on the following features:

• Example sentences

• Grammar explanations

• Bopomofo support

The Android app is also in the making and still scheduled for November.

Stay tuned for more updates!