Mining workflow

SubMiner turns lines from the video you are watching into Anki cards. You look up a word on the overlay, add it with Yomitan, and SubMiner fills in the sentence, an audio clip, and a screenshot. For Anki setup, field mapping, and media options, see Anki integration.

Look up a word

1. Hover the subtitle line on the overlay. Each word is its own hover target.
2. Press your Yomitan scan key or modifier (whatever your Yomitan profile uses, for example Shift).
3. The Yomitan popup opens for that word.

Playback pauses while you hover the subtitle and while the Yomitan popup is open. Turn this off with subtitleStyle.autoPauseVideoOnHover and subtitleStyle.autoPauseVideoOnYomitanPopup.

Add a word card

Click the add button in the Yomitan popup. SubMiner sees the new note and fills it in:

Field	Content
Sentence	The current subtitle line, with the mined word in bold
Audio	A clip cut from the video using the subtitle's timing
Image	A screenshot, or an animated AVIF clip of the line
MiscInfo	Source file name and timestamp

Which note fields receive each item is set in ankiConnect.fields. With the default proxy mode the card is filled as soon as Yomitan adds it. If you disable the proxy, SubMiner polls Anki and fills the card a few seconds later.

Update the last card by hand

Use this when auto-update is off, or when the line you want is not the one on screen.

1. Add the word with Yomitan.
2. Press Ctrl/Cmd+C to copy the current line. To combine lines, press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+C, then a digit 1 to 9 for how many recent lines to include.
3. Press Ctrl/Cmd+V. SubMiner writes the clipboard text into the last-added card's sentence field and adds fresh audio and an image.

A manual update always replaces the sentence audio, even when ankiConnect.behavior.overwriteAudio is false.

Mine a sentence card

Press Ctrl/Cmd+S to create a sentence card from the current line without a Yomitan lookup. Press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+S, then a digit 1 to 9, to combine several recent lines into one card. The digit prompt closes after shortcuts.multiCopyTimeoutMs.

Sentence cards use the note type named in ankiConnect.isLapis.sentenceCardModel and write to its Sentence and SentenceAudio fields. That note type must exist in Anki. See sentence cards.

Mark an audio card

After adding a word, press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+A. SubMiner sets the Lapis/Kiku IsAudioCard flag on the last-added card and fills Sentence, SentenceAudio, the image, and MiscInfo.

Merge repeated words

If you mine a word you already have a card for, SubMiner can merge the new sentence, audio, and image into the existing card instead of keeping a duplicate. This needs the Kiku or Senren note type with field grouping turned on. In manual mode a dialog shows both cards and lets you pick which one to keep. See field grouping.

Subtitle display

The overlay has a primary subtitle bar (the Japanese line you mine from) and a secondary bar for a translation track. Each bar is hidden, visible, or shown only on hover.

Shortcut	Action
V	Cycle primary bar mode
Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+V	Cycle secondary bar mode
Shift+J	Cycle the secondary subtitle track
Right-click	Pause or resume
Right-click + drag	Move the subtitles

Set the starting modes with subtitleStyle.primaryDefaultMode and secondarySub.defaultMode. The full list of keys is on Keyboard shortcuts.

Controller

With a gamepad and keyboard-only mode on, you can mine without a mouse: move across words with the left stick, look up with A, mine with X, and close the popup with B. The keyboard keeps working alongside it. See controller support.

Fix subtitle timing (subsync)

If the subtitles are out of sync, press Ctrl+Alt+S to open the subsync dialog. It uses alass or ffsubsync, which you install separately.

1. Pick the engine.
2. For alass, pick a reference: a subtitle track with correct timing (the secondary track by default) or the video file.
3. Pick the track to retime (the active primary track by default).
4. Run it. SubMiner loads the retimed subtitle back into the same slot.

For remote streams such as Jellyfin, only alass with a subtitle reference is available, because ffsubsync and the video reference need the local file. If the tools are not found, see Troubleshooting.

Texthooker

SubMiner can serve a texthooker page at http://127.0.0.1:5174 that shows each subtitle line as it arrives, so you can do lookups in a browser instead of on the overlay. Start it with texthooker.launchAtStartup, the --texthooker flag, or the mpv plugin's texthooker_enabled option. Change the port with the plugin's texthooker_port option. To build your own client, see the WebSocket / texthooker API.

Related features

• Jimaku: search and download subtitle files from the overlay (Ctrl+Shift+J).
• Subtitle annotations: highlight known words, N+1 targets, JLPT levels, and frequency.
• Immersion tracking: log watch time and cards mined, and view them in the stats dashboard.