HandyLearn

Pick up English effortlessly while reading in Obsidian.

HandyLearn turns your vault into a personal English vocabulary notebook. While reading papers, docs, or notes, you can capture unfamiliar words, build flashcards with rich context, and review them with spaced repetition — without leaving Obsidian.

Features

• Capture words while reading: right-click any English word in reading view to create a flashcard instantly.
• Highlight known words: words you've already captured are underlined with a dashed line; click one to jump to its card.
• Extract vocabulary from a note: scan the current note, group words by exam list (CET-4 / CET-6 / 考研 / 托福 / 雅思 / GRE) or by frequency, then tick and batch-create cards.
• Batch create from exam lists: build cards in bulk from a curated exam word list.
• Spaced repetition (SM2): review with recognition cards (recall the meaning) and spelling cards (type the word), with keyboard shortcuts.
• Pronunciation: click the speaker icon to hear the word (system text-to-speech).
• AI example sentences (optional): generate example sentences via DeepSeek or Doubao (OpenAI-compatible APIs).
• Contextual backlinks: each card records the note(s) where you encountered the word.

Installation

From the community directory

1. Open Obsidian → Settings → Community plugins → Browse.
2. Search for "HandyLearn" and install.

Manual installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Put them in <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/handylearn/.
3. Enable the plugin in Settings → Community plugins.

Usage

• Open the HandyLearn sidebar from the ribbon icon (book) or the "打开顺手学" command.
• Create a card: right-click a word in reading view, or run the "新建词卡" command.
• Extract from note: run "从当前笔记提取生词" to scan the current note and batch-create cards.
• Batch create: run "批量建卡" to create cards from an exam word list.
• Review: click "开始今日学习" in the sidebar. Press Space to flip a card, then 0 / 1 / 2 / 3 to rate. For spelling cards, type the word and press Enter; if wrong, press Space to continue.

Settings

• Vocab folder: where flashcards are stored (default Words).
• Highlight known words: toggle the dashed-underline highlighting in reading view.
• AI examples: configure an API key and provider (DeepSeek or Doubao) to generate example sentences. Leave the key empty to disable AI examples.

Acknowledgments

Parts of the implementation (notably pronunciation and the dictionary / word-card handling) are based on obsidian-spaced-repetition by Stephen Mwangi, licensed under the MIT License.