Bringing Migaku/LanguageReactor-Style Features to LingQ

Open Forum
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Both Migaku and LanguageReactor differ from LingQ in that they can be used in real time while watching videos on Netflix, YouTube, etc.
What is Migaku?
Language Reactor Getting Started

LingQ currently requires that all content be imported before use, while LanguageReactor and Migaku do not.

I feel that LanguageReactor is a better representation of features compared to Migaku, as it’s easier to use—one click captures audio, video, and a screenshot in the background. With Migaku, you have to replay the video or audio to capture it (which it does automatically, but the video has to reply what is being saved).

Here’s an example of using LR directly on YouTube.
Subtitles are interactive with a popup dictionary, and you can enable a side pane on the right to display them as well. Clicking a word to mark it as learning automatically captures a screenshot, audio, and text—everything needed to create a card for your favorite SRS system. Or, you can import the text into LanguageReactor’s Reader.

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LanguageReactor also has a YouTube media browser accessible from LR’s website, and it’s laid out in a way that feels more user friendly. This all works in real time and doesn’t require importing.

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Podcasts are a delight to listen to and study within LR. The interface is clean and much faster than LingQ.

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Here is a quick video of watching a video using LR

I guess this is a mix between asking for support—hoping LingQ considers upgrading their addon to work with real-time video watching—and highlighting LR’s interface advantages. Honestly, it just feels better than LingQ’s right now.

If LingQ could combine its lesson importing capabilities with real-time use like Migaku and LR, it would be the most unique learning tool available today. There wouldn’t be another option offering the same robust feature set.

Here are a couple of feature suggestions that can be upvoted in favor of adding something like this to LingQ

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I use often Language Reactor too, and yes, it would be great if LingQ could combine this, but I think they have already too many things.

At this point, they could combine ReadLang as well, which is basically the same real-time thing, but for reading and not for videos.

They would both allows us to read and watch content in real time, with some extra features, but mostly for using and integrating our own already extensive self-made vocabulary!

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I think this is the holy grail for LingQ. To incorporate Language reactor and ReadLang style features to their web extension so we can LingQ words in the wild. It would be a game changer 100 times bigger and better than any AI feature they could add.

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Not sure if you’ve seen Rooster Video Tools or not but it is Video Tools for LingQ on 50+ video websites. Happy to take suggestions on improving the software.

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The big problem is that both use browser extensions, and iOS devices either do not support browser extensions, or it’s too difficult or expensive to do. So they would be unable to support iOS. To be honest if I was using Windows, and not iOS, I’d probably have left LingQ long ago, and migrated to one of the apps you mention,

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Well, they are a bit different and complementary to LingQ anyway. However, it is not difficult to use Language Reactor on iPhone. I don’t remember how I did it in the past, but it didn’t take me much. I think it works with Opera, or something, where you can download plugin and extensions. ReadLang works as a bookmarklet as well on the browser, and I think it can be used with the same trick.

But I use iOS as well, and LingQ’s app is much better. Plus, the features offered go well beyond Language Reactor and ReadLang.

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This would be massivee!! By far one of the most wanted features for LingQ

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But not on my list, anyway.

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I tried using them on an iPad via other browsers including Opera. I can install the extensions, but they don’t work. The issue with LingQ is stability, though it has been stable for some months now. The only features I use they I don’t get elsewhere are the quick sentence and word lookup. The LynxAI is very good. The gameification is detrimental to learning. Just my opinions of course.

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Try Orion Browser by Kagi. It supports extensions like Language Reactor on iOS.

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another option could be to upgrade the SRS so that it’s more like how migaku works, where you have an in app anki like SRS with the clip of the imported media and a whole sentence. For those who would want to use it as more of a sentence mining, mass sentence SRS tool as well as a reader

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It doesn’t, not when I tried it on my iPad anyway. iOS is a highly locked down OS.

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Sorry, my bad. The LR website is working in Orion but not the extension.

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The idea is good, but it seems that LingQ lacks the development ability and it’s difficult to achieve.

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I appreciate everyone taking the time to read and reply to my post.

Developing features like these would require significant focus from LingQ’s team. My suggestion is mainly for desktop use, since—as others have pointed out—mobile platforms come with added limitations.

Several small development teams have already built similar tools. A good example is asbplayer. It works on a simple principle: capture a video’s native subtitles (or import your own) and then allow you to work with them—timing, exporting audio, screenshots, and sending items into Anki.

LingQ could take a comparable approach but integrate the full Reader experience directly on top of a video. Since LingQ already handles subtitle parsing when importing a resource, the foundation is partly in place.

The core requirements would be:

  1. Subtitle capture: Hook into the player’s text track API (or intercept subtitle requests) to stream them in real time.
  2. Interactive overlay: Render clickable words/phrases with a side transcript panel, plus pop-ups for definitions, audio replay, and quick actions.
  3. Account sync: Ensure all interactions feed back into LingQ, keeping progress and vocabulary tracking consistent.

One thing I really want to highlight is just how smooth Language Reactor’s UI flow is. It’s not a full-featured reader like LingQ, but if the LR team expanded on it, the cleaner interface alone could give LingQ a real run for its money. Specifically, LingQ’s desktop UI, the mobile UI is already leagues better than using LingQ on desktop.

In my demo video, you can see how each line is separated clearly, with translations that don’t overlap or clip like they sometimes do on LingQ. You can also click on any sentence and the video instantly jumps to that spot—seamless playback. Podcasts work much the same way, with every sentence broken down and playable from its starting timestamp. (Important to note: that the demo video shows a YouTube video that is “embedded” in LR’s own web-interface, not on YouTube’s native website. I’m sure that’s obvious, but you know what they say about assumptions.)

LR’s Reader follows a similar pattern, though it doesn’t let you import original audio or video. Instead, it generates AI audio to go with the text. It’s not ideal, but it gets the job done. If they added the option to import both text and media, that would be a huge leap forward.

They also track vocabulary through frequency lists, highlighting words by color: orange for common words to learn, purple for less common, and green for words you already know.

On top of that, LR comes with its own SRS system called PhrasePump, which is surprisingly intuitive. It builds cloze-style cards from the words you’ve marked in your immersion and has a “suggestion” mode that recommends high-frequency words you might have overlooked.

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And for what it’s worth, LR offers a solid free version. I’d definitely suggest checking it out just to see why I think this approach shows what LingQ could evolve into. I’m not suggesting LingQ should copy LR’s approach—they’re just the clearest example of features that are becoming more and more common in extension-based language learning apps for the desktop web.

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LR looks much better now, since the last time I looked at it.

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It doesn’t have ability to import ebooks though only text, but there is books section with 2000 books (looks like public domain books) in french, The podcasts section looks really good too, didn’t knew there were so many different podcast in french.

If it can import ebooks/epubs and sync their matching audio books that will be great. thanks for sharing.

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I’ve just tried Language Reactor. The interface was very clean, whereas the LingQ iOS app is clunky. LR has a fixed library of YouTube videos which is a limitation IMO. However, it looks very good, and the German library is good. The French library includes some of my favourite channels.

There is also Lingua Verbum, which looks a bit clunky.

I imagine this is why LingQ is adding bells and whistles, to claim they are better.

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Those are good features and the LingQ team has talked about this in the past. However, there are currently other features that are being prioritized.

I can say personally, I’m in favor of some sort of browser look-up feature :sunglasses:

Edit: Adding some thoughts. I did come across a similar web app [fluentai.pro] and tried it out. This was built by a 1 person :grimacing: Pretty impressive.

Developing features like these would require significant focus from LingQ’s team. My suggestion is mainly for desktop use, since—as others have pointed out—mobile platforms come with added limitations.

I wouldn’t use these look up extensions on my phone…way too hard to see and navigate because the screen size is so small.

I have to give language reactor a try!

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i agree desktop use would be fine by me with some features that would be too hard to implement for moblie

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I got a lifetime subscription for Migaku months ago and it’s so much more modern than LingQ and not as buggy.

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