FAQ¶
Questions, not symptoms. For a symptom, see troubleshooting.
Is any of my data sent anywhere?
No. WuWeiDict binds to the loopback address 127.0.0.1 on one port. It has no
account system, no telemetry, no analytics and no crash reporting.
Your dictionaries are read from your disk, indexed on your disk, and served to your own browser.
Why two names, WuWeiDict and wudict?
Wú wéi (無為) is the classical Chinese term for effortless action, or no action, depending on whom you ask. The project took this name, because good tools should not get in the way (no pun intended).
The program is called wudict because you type it more often than you read
it.
Where is everything on disk?
~/.wudict/
wudict.toml your settings; created and commented on first run
state.json dictionary order and on/off switches
db/ the library: one folder per prepared dictionary
spxcache/ converted Speex audio
~/Dictionaries the default dictionary folder - change as needed in wudict.toml
Windows and Android put the same tree elsewhere. See every file WuWeiDict owns.
Can I move my library to another machine?
Yes. One dictionary is one folder under ~/.wudict/db. Copy or zip the
folder and put it in the other machine's library folder.
text.db carries all the search. Media either travels with the folder in
media.db, or falls back to the original file when one is present.
How do I update WuWeiDict?
Download the new binary and replace the old one. That is the whole procedure. For windows, download the wudict setup wizard and rerun it.
Your prepared libraries stay. WuWeiDict checks what each database supports
when it opens it, so an older text.db keeps working, without the newest
index until you rebuild it.
wudict --version prints the version you are running.
Can I take back the disk space an index uses?
Yes. Every switch in the ☰ panel turns off again, and shows the size in megabytes before you click.
Removal is offered while the original dictionary file is still on disk, because that is what makes it reversible. A dictionary whose original file is gone keeps its prepared data - that data is now the only copy - and its switches lock.
Can I use WuWeiDict without a browser?
Yes. Every search mode has a CLI equivalent command.
Can I use it on my phone?
Yes, on Android. The app uses the same wudict server codebase and works offline; your dictionaries go in Internal storage ▸ Dictionaries. It also adds a wuDict entry to the text-selection toolbar, so you can look a word up without leaving the app you are reading.
There is no iOS app, and not planned, unless sufficient interest arises.
Can other computers on my network use it?
Set SERVER_IP
to 0.0.0.0 and WuWeiDict accepts connections from your network.
Do this only on a network you trust. WuWeiDict has no login and no access control.
Does WuWeiDict change my dictionary files?
Never. It reads them. Everything it builds goes into the library folder, which is a different folder by design.
To fix a broken file inside a dictionary, put a replacement in that
dictionary's res/ folder. Delete your file
and the dictionary is exactly as it shipped.
Why does searching estuviera find nothing?
Because word-form data for Spanish is not installed. WuWeiDict retries a failed search with the word's dictionary form — knew → know — but only English is built into the program; every other language is a small file you install.
Click 🔤 Lemmatization in the ⚙ box of the ☰ panel (or on the settings
page), tick Spanish, and search again — it works immediately, with no
restart. On a desktop,
wudict lemmas download es does the same.
** 💡 IMPORTANT**: Dictionary formats like .mdx, .slob and others contain
NO DATA about the actual language of the headwords in the dictionary.
Lemmatization will only work for these dictionaries if their filename starts
e.g. with es-es, fr-en (will be detected as French).
Or, as an alterntive, you can place all the dictionaries for a specic language
under a sobfolder that must match exactly the language code, e.g. de or it.
For English language dictionaries the en-en prefix is optional, since wudict
will by default use English as the fallback lemmatization language if it cannot be detected
from the dictionary metadata or from the filename or subfolder name.
Which download should I take, -cgo or -purego?
Take -cgo for OS's for which it exists. It uses the faster SQLite driver and converts
Speex audio internally without requiring external decoders.
-purego is the fallback. It is slightly slower and needs the external
speexdec program for Speex audio.
How do I stop the browser tab opening at every start?
Start WuWeiDict with --no-browser, or put NO_BROWSER = "1" in
~/.wudict/wudict.toml.
How can I build this documentation site?
The site is built with Zensical and needs Python 3.