Obsidian Hanzi

Offline Chinese-English dictionary lookup for Obsidian. Hover over any Chinese character to see its Traditional/Simplified forms, pinyin, and English definitions.

Powered by CC-CEDICT with 115,000+ entries. The dictionary is automatically downloaded on first use and cached locally for fully offline lookups.

Features

• Instant popup: hover over any Chinese character in your notes to see definitions
• Longest-match lookup: automatically finds multi-character words (configurable up to 12 characters)
• Traditional & Simplified: displays both character forms with pinyin and all matching definitions
• Tone-colored pinyin with optional color-coding by tone (Pleco color scheme)
• Offline lookup (after first use): the dictionary is downloaded once on first load and cached locally, no network needed after that
• Theme-aware: inherits your Obsidian theme's colors and fonts

Usage

Desktop (hover mode): Move your cursor over any Chinese character to see its definition in a popup.

Desktop (selection mode): Select Chinese text to trigger the popup.

Mobile: Selection mode is always used.

Switch between modes using the command palette:

• Hanzi: Use hover mode
• Hanzi: Use selection mode

Settings

Setting	Description	Default
Trigger mode	Hover or Manual Selection	Hover
Show Traditional	Display traditional character form	On
Show Simplified	Display simplified character form	On
Show Pinyin	Display pinyin pronunciation	On
Show Definitions	Display English definitions	On
Tone-colored pinyin	Color pinyin by tone	On
Popup font size	Size of popup text (8–32px)	12px
Max look-ahead	Characters to scan for word match (1–12)	8

Network use

On first launch, the plugin downloads the CC-CEDICT dictionary file (~4 MB) from the plugin's GitHub Releases page using Obsidian's built-in requestUrl API. The file is cached locally in the plugin's assets/ directory. After this one-time download, all lookups are fully offline - no further network requests are made.

Installation

From Obsidian Community Plugins

1. Open Settings → Community plugins → Browse
2. Search for Hanzi Lookup
3. Click Install, then Enable

Manual Installation

1. Download hanzi-lookup-<version>.zip from the Releases page
2. Extract the zip into your vault's .obsidian/plugins/ directory (this creates the hanzi-lookup/ folder with all required files)
3. Reload Obsidian and enable the plugin in Settings → Community plugins

Building from Source

npm install
npm run build

Create a hanzi-lookup/ folder inside your vault's .obsidian/plugins/ directory, then copy main.js, manifest.json, styles.css, and assets/ into it.

AI Disclosure

This plugin was developed with the assistance of AI tools (Claude by Anthropic). AI was used for code generation, architecture design, and documentation throughout the development process. All AI-generated code was reviewed and tested before inclusion.