Totally offline performant dictionary, with prefix fuzzy autocompleting search, live, and clipboard watching (lookup by selection on Linux).

• Linux only, currently

Obtain dictionary from https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmQP6BiPnwvYGuPGXKm4frRFSubA5jrwHXR9VeydvLwV25/ 74MB, continaing English <-> Chinese and classical Chinese terms, totalling 1.5M.

• To import dictionaries
  1. Just grab a data folder from somewhere (might have vulnerability)
  2. or, extract the compressed archive, and ⚠️import with 🅰️./offdict yaml -p '*.yaml' ⚠️(supports wildcard *)
  3. ⚠️Then build the index 🅱️./offdict build ⚠️
• Input anywhere to start live search.
• Copy/select anything to look up.
  1. Tap ctrl+alt+c or it won't show up
  2. Select the text, or in some cases, you have to copy it. (explanation below)
• Press ⬅️ or ➡️ for scrolling
• Tap Enter to perform an extensive & expensive search
• It loads config.json5 in the working directory. example file
• Install userscript that monitors selection in browsers
  • You have to set the IP of Offdict by changing a variable.

./offdict yaml -p '*.yaml sometimes fails due to variance in shells. Try using absolute path and double quote it.

API:

• 127.0.0.1:3030/q/some_word_to_lookup
• /stat/

git clone --recurse-submodules <url>
apt install libxcb-shape0-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev # required for building clipboard-master

Dependencies I found on a clean Arch install

pacman -S libsoup webkit2gtk clang

• Format I camp up with deliberately when cleaning up some dictionary files
  • API server
  • REPL
  • GUI (tauri)

I personally have some Chinese-English dictionary source files. I cleaned up the data into open formats, and this program is specifically for that.

• IBus seems to write into the PRIMARY of X11 (when I am using Wayland), which was intended to be user selection
• Wayland can't set window on top tauri-apps/tauri#3117 You have to set it manually (temporarily or permanently through system settings)
• Wayland global shortcut tauri-apps/tauri#3578
• IME doesnt work in the input on Wayland
• Cannot watch clipboard on wayland.

For now GDK_BACKEND=x11 is set by hardcode

• Lookup by selection only works in XWayland windows.
• IBus still messes with Primary (only in windows named 'Chromium Clipboard', like, it doesnt happen in firefox)
  • workaround: Ignore Chromium Clipboards
  • The change also propagates to Wayland primary
• Global shortcut ctrl+alt+c works

• Complete support for 'lookup by copy' and 'lookup by selection'
  • Wayland. Upstream dependecies are not yet working
  • https://github.com/bugaevc/wl-clipboard works
• Lookup by cursor pointing?
  • Embed it in other applications

• cargo tauri build -d -b none

• I built this on a fresh Arch install on 2025.9.5
  • Rocksdb had to be upgraded to 0.24 to fix a build error
  • Absolute path spec and double quote had to be used, in nushell
  • Frontend, backend, and database were built, Entries in database, 1618336.
  • Again, after importing dictionaries, run offdict-tauri build

~/offdict> du data/*
╭───┬─────────────────────────────────┬──────────┬──────────╮
│ # │              path               │ apparent │ physical │
├───┼─────────────────────────────────┼──────────┼──────────┤
│ 0 │ /home/---/offdict/data/dicts.db │ 257.4 MB │ 257.5 MB │
│ 1 │ /home/---/offdict/data/strprox  │ 213.4 MB │ 213.4 MB │
╰───┴─────────────────────────────────┴──────────┴──────────╯