That’s fantastic. Well done Sonja
Konfuzius Institute in Freiburg says that HSK exams will be probably on Dec,4th. It is not yet confirmed though. I focus on improving my 听力 now. For me doing the HSK is a nice aim, a fixed number of words and grammar. I have done HSK 1 in Freiburg and I liked the atmosphere. The examiners were happy to have young pupils (10 to about 16) who try to do HSK1. And I was the only adult in my group. We have two regular schools (Gymnasium) here in Freiburg and Staufen who teach Chinese.
Two small points:
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It would be nice if when logging it loaded up the dashboard first.
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Say you come across a word in the wild giving you trouble, you check and its already in one of your lists and learned. If you want to adjust it ie. change back to “learn as new” or “boost”, its quite time consuming to find the word tile.
Thanks @Feng2.Zhe2-HSK_4_plus for the great suggestions. A new ‘first log in action’ option is available in Basic Settings that will let you log in and head straight for your dashboard!
For point #2, we will add word control options to the dictionary page soon. We also need to make words more searchable as you’ve detailed - working on it!
Hello Daniel,
I was searching to turn on the < character only > mode because I found that I’m relying too much on pinyin, but I guess the functionality is not implemented yet.
Any plan to do something like that in the future ? 
Welcome to the forum Antoine and it’s great to have your with us.
I will leave answering that question to Daniel from Hack, but if you have any questions about Flexi, studying Chinese in general or just need some advice how to get fluent, just create a new Post and I will reply straight away.
Thanks for the message Antoine! Can you help me understand exactly what you are looking for… do you mean hide pinyin entirely? Or just skip the question about it? What would the quiz flow (word elements on screen, questions, responses) be?
It’s been a while since I shared my thoughts on Hack, but just to prove how key consistency is, this is my dashboard.
Oddly enough though, I have found the ritual of every single day, after nearly two years, to finally get a little too much.
Therefore I am now planning to do one day on, one day off to keep Hack feeling fresh, rather than a chore.
This does go against my usual thoughts on consistency, but I plan to fill the blank day doing other language based things. I also figured that it’s actually a consistent way to study, one day on, one day off… do hopefully it doesn’t harm me too much.
Interested to hear how others are finding Hack. It’s the same with all SRS I believe - it can wear thin after a while but the key is to remain engaged in it.
I’ve never used an app so extensively after almost two years so @Hack-Chinese-Daniel - you’ve done something right! Thanks for helping me get to 5,000 words!!
Wow, extremely impressive.

Mine looks quite differently, more like the skyline of mountains 
But I am also quite proud of my growth of strong words.
I’ve started with about 300 strong words in May and have now 1100 reliable strong words, plus an up and down of 200 words which I had no time to test regularly or are really weak.
But I don’t care about my skyline, as long as I review daily and there is a constant growth. 
Here’s mine.
I like to do 6 minute sessions throughout the day. I am coming up on 6 months of regular use. I’ve only missed 1 or 2 days in that time.
Initially, I wasagainst flashcarding vocabulary, but I found its been a great help. It’s really helped make my reading faster and easier.
Looking forward to the upgrades of having settings on individual words where you can boost them or set them “learn as new” even when your not in a review session.
I wonder if a “random” mode would be useful? Where you could be given words that are not yet up for review, but randomly test whether you remember them - or just remind you of words you know that you may not have come across lately.
Nice work Philip. I also agree, Hack was the first software that got me consistently using Flashcards and SRS.
I know Daniel is working hard on some upgrades (as always) for early next year. We’ll also release a review video of Hack when those updates are made.
Very cool to see you guys dashboards. They look very lovely. Mine on the other hand…
… I have had a real mix of consistency in the last 2 months so my weak words has taken a hit. @Max I finally went over 1000 weak words
.
To be honest the words are coming back down now I’m doing 10min a day regularly. Hack has made a massive difference to my reading ability and all my teachers comment on how many words I can recognise, which I attribute fully to Hack!
@Max - how do you not have any difficult words? you are just great at remembering them all? haha
Hi @Antoine-Mandarin-Intro , is hackchinese new for you? Maybe you haven’t tried the 4-click review mode yet? (Settings - review mode)
There you can take your time before the first click and think only about how to pronounce super correctly, and then think about the meaning. I used that mode for many months, now I am trained to review these steps also in the two-step mode, I think about tone and sound first, and only after that separately the meaning.
Funnily enough Daniel asked me the same question when we had a phone catch-up recently!
I found that I was taking on too many words so I focused on nailing down the words I’d learnt, especially the harder ones until I felt comfortable with them so that was probably why. Therefore I study and when new words appear, I typically stop now, or just add 1/2.
It fluctuates though, I have a couple again of “hard to remember” words now, and then they disappear again when I revise them.
I don’t plan to take on many more words, I think 5,000 is a fairly solid foundation in any language! Therefore for now I’ll just use Hack to absolutely consolidate all those words in my bank
Hi everyone,
Sorry I just received the answer notifications so I didn’t see your answers before.
@Hack-Chinese-Daniel
Yes, I’m using the Excel Mandarin review mode and want to hide totally the pinyin on the 2nd click.
So I will still heard the character sound on first click, and then have the translation and some examples on 2nd click.
Maybe a key shortcut to quick-show the pinyin if we are unsure could be a great idea, but I feel like I’m not event paying attention to characters once pinyin is appearing.
@Sonja-Mandarin-HSK_3
Hi Sonia, I’m using hack chinese since six month I guess but now I have too much words to review each day (200-400) to use 4click review mode.
@Max
I think I need to slow down my learning path too as it’s becoming harder and harder to review daily all the stuff in a reasonable set of time.
Hi @Hack-Chinese-Daniel, would it be feasible in hackchinese that you could switch between different fonts?
I am thinking of something like STXinwei.
The HSK Standard Course is using something like that and I have some problems to read it.
I m sure I will get used to the font by typing it myself, but I thought I tell you what could be an exclusive special thing about hackchinese.
These Google fonts would be easy to install as options, are any of these similar:
Ma Shan Zheng is very similar to the books’ font, I think.
I tried some typical characters:
the 口 is always smaller, all 月,目 ,田,are very narrow
Anybody else wants to comment?
I find it so difficult reading in different fonts
even just when looking up song lyrics sometimes the fonts stress me out haha. Well done you for trying out different ones!
Personally I would just keep with existing hack chinese font as it’s pretty similar to my textbook / things I read, but I can see the advantages of having other fonts
I have started now HSK 3 Standard Course Book without pinyin. One really gets used to other fonts, and I think especially this font that makes things smaller and narrower is very important to get used to.
I noticed HOW I remember characters in a new way. A different font forces me to look at the “content” always, the radicals, the strokes. Characters like the 舞,e.g., I never cared about the “content” , it is such an outstanding “fat” sign, - buuuut not in another font…




