Installation

Droid Sentence Miner is distributed as a signed APK on GitHub Releases. It is not on the Play Store, so Android will ask you to allow installs from the app you download it with.

Requirements

Android 8.0 (API 26) or newer.
Audio capture requires Android 10 (API 29) or newer.
AnkiDroid 2.16+ and/or desktop Anki with AnkiConnect.
About 31 MB of storage for the Japanese OCR models, plus the size of your dictionaries.

Install a release

Open GitHub Releases on the Android device.
Download droid-sentence-miner-vX.Y.Z.apk from the newest release.
Open the downloaded file. If Android blocks it, allow installs from your browser or file manager when prompted.
Install, then open Droid Sentence Miner.

Newer releases upgrade in place. Your dictionaries, settings and text log survive.

From 0.5.0 on, the app looks for a newer release when it opens. Home then shows Update available: tap Update, and the app downloads the APK and opens Android’s installer. The first time, Android asks you to allow installs from Droid Sentence Miner; allow it, go back and tap Install again. You can also check by hand, or turn the automatic check off, in Settings → About.

First permissions

The app asks for permissions only when a feature needs them:

Permission	When
Screen capture	When you start auto OCR, a manual scan or the live text window. Android shows its own consent dialog.
Microphone	Only if you enable microphone fallback, and only for audio capture. It is also required by Android for playback capture.
Notifications	Android 13+ asks when the foreground service starts. The notification keeps capture running and gives you a shortcut back to the app.
Overlay	Needed for the floating bubble, live text window and screen dictionary. On some phones this is reset after an update and must be enabled again.
Accessibility service	Optional, Android 11+. Lets quick lookups take a screenshot without a screen-sharing prompt. Auto OCR still uses MediaProjection (it records the game audio).

Screen capture consent is not permanent. If you close the captured app or revoke sharing, start capture again from the bubble menu.

Install the recommended dictionaries

Open Settings → Dictionaries:

Jitendex — the recommended Japanese-to-English dictionary.
JMdict — an alternative, community-maintained dictionary.
JMnedict — proper-name entries. It installs at the bottom of the priority list so names do not shadow vocabulary.
Kanjium pitch accents — 124,000 words of pitch data for the Yomitan-style pitch graph.

Settings → Dictionaries can check installed dictionaries for a newer revision, and cards can be dragged by their handle to change priority (lower number = higher priority).

Each is a one-tap download. See Anki mining for the fields that pitch data fills.

Import your own dictionaries

Any Yomitan/Yomichan format 3 .zip works. The same page has two buttons:

From files opens Android’s file picker. Long-press to select several zips; they install one after another.
Google Drive opens a sheet with two options:
- Browse my Drive opens the same picker. Choose Drive in the top row or in the ☰ menu to pick your own files, private ones included. You sign in through the Google Drive app (Sign in / switch account); Droid Sentence Miner never sees your Google password.
- Shared link: paste a Drive link to a zip or to a folder of zips (the paste button reads your clipboard). The link must be shared as Anyone with the link. A folder opens as a list: open subfolders, tick the dictionaries you want, then tap Install. Folders you open are kept under Recent.

Download the OCR models

Open Settings → OCR and tap Download meikiocr models (about 31 MB). Until the download finishes, the app falls back to Google ML Kit, which is built into the phone.

meikiocr is recommended: it is trained on Japanese game text and makes significantly fewer character errors on stylized fonts. The measured difference is in OCR benchmarks.

Build from source

If you prefer to build the APK yourself, see Build from source. No Android Studio is required.