Cotobara only has a handful of settings, and three of them decide almost everything about your experience. This guide covers what each one does and how to choose.
All of it lives under Settings, and you can change any of it at any time — nothing you've already learned is disturbed when you do.
Starting level (including half-levels)
What it does: stops Cotobara from offering you new words below the level you set.
If you're genuinely a beginner, leave it at N5. If you passed N4 last December, set it to N4 and skip the pile of N5 vocabulary you already own. Nothing is more demoralizing than an app confidently teaching you 水.
Half-levels are the interesting part. Set N3.5 and you get everything at N3 and above, plus the most common half of N4 — because "I passed N4" almost never means you know every N4 word. The common ones you certainly know; the rare tail you probably don't, and those are exactly the ones worth picking up. Half-levels let you skip what's safe without skipping what isn't.
How to choose: pick the level you most recently felt comfortable with, then go half a step below it. If you're wrong, the words come fast and easy and you've lost a few days. Setting it too high leaves permanent holes.
Not sure? The placement test at signup suggests a level for you, and if you score under 70% it will recommend starting one level lower.
Rare-word filter
What it does: excludes vocabulary below a frequency threshold from your new lessons.
Every word in Cotobara carries a frequency rank based on how often it shows up in real Japanese. This filter says "don't bother me with anything rarer than this yet."
How to choose: if you're building practical Japanese — reading, conversation, an upcoming exam — a moderate filter is the highest-value setting in the app. The frequency curve is steep: the most common few thousand words cover the overwhelming majority of what you'll actually meet, and rare vocabulary costs the same review time as common vocabulary while paying back a fraction as often.
Turn it off if you're a completionist chasing full JLPT coverage, or if you're deep into N1 where the rare words are the material. Words excluded by this filter show as their own segment on your JLPT readiness bars, so you always know what you're leaving out.
Daily new-word limit
What it does: caps how many new words you can start per day. It never limits reviews — those are always unlimited, on every plan.
How to choose: lower than you want to. Every new word today is roughly a dozen reviews over the next year, so the limit isn't really "how many words do I want to learn," it's "how big a daily review queue am I signing up for two months from now."
- 3 a day (the free plan) — over 1,000 words a year. A real JLPT level.
- 5–10 a day — a serious pace if you study daily, including on bad days.
- 20+ — for a fixed exam date, and only if you've checked you can clear the reviews.
The honest test is your weekly accuracy on the dashboard. Sitting above 90%? Raise the limit. Below 80%? Lower it. The dashboard will tell you unprompted. More on picking a pace.
Premium raises the ceiling to 100 a day; free accounts are capped at 3.
Furigana
What it does: shows or hides the kana reading above kanji, everywhere in the app.
How to choose: on while you're learning to read, off once you can mostly manage. Furigana is the crutch that becomes a habit — leave it on forever and your eye learns to read the kana and skip the kanji, which means you're not building kanji recognition at all. Most learners flip it off, have a rough week, and never turn it back on. More on the reading tools.
Autoplay audio
What it does: plays the word's pronunciation automatically when a correct answer is revealed.
How to choose: on, unless you're studying somewhere you can't have sound. Hearing a word as you confirm it is nearly free reinforcement, and Japanese pitch accent is not something you can learn from spelling. (The lesson quiz never autoplays regardless — a question that pronounces its own answer isn't a test.)
WaniKani integration
What it does: imports your WaniKani progress so Cotobara never re-teaches what you've already mastered there, and four filters control exactly how much the two apps overlap.
This is now free for every account — it used to be Premium. If you use WaniKani, connecting it is the first thing to do. Full walkthrough: how to use Cotobara with WaniKani.
A worked example
Say you passed N4 a year ago, you're aiming at N3 in December, and you can give it 20 minutes a day:
- Starting level: N4.5 — skip the N4 vocabulary you certainly know, keep the rare tail you probably don't.
- Rare-word filter: moderate. You have a deadline; frequent words are what gets tested.
- Daily new words: 10, then check your weekly accuracy after two weeks and adjust.
- Furigana: off. N3 reading assumes you can handle kanji.
- Autoplay audio: on.
- WaniKani: connected, with the burned filters on.
Then stop configuring and go study. The settings are a five-minute job; the results come from showing up.
Start for free, or read the complete feature tour.