LiuChan (liú chàng, 流畅) is a Chrome extension that looks up Chinese text as you move the pointer over it. Version 2 is a Manifest V3 rewrite with Mandarin and Cantonese support.
- Fast mouse-over lookup on page text, inputs, and textareas
- Simplified and traditional Hanzi
- CC-CEDICT Mandarin definitions with Pinyin, tone numbers, or Zhuyin
- CC-Canto definitions and supplemental Jyutping readings
- Mandarin, Cantonese, or combined dictionary display
- Synchronized display settings, themes, and custom colors
- Text highlighting, speech, clipboard export, and navigation hotkeys
- User-triggered dictionary updates without reinstalling the extension
Click the toolbar icon to enable or disable LiuChan. The options page documents the available popup hotkeys.
The extension includes an offline dictionary. In Settings → Dictionary data, click Check for updates to download the latest CC-CEDICT editor export and the latest published CC-Canto data. Downloads happen only after this button is clicked. New data is validated before it replaces the active dictionary; Restore bundled data always returns to the release snapshot.
Dictionary files are data only. LiuChan does not download or execute remote code.
Requirements: Node.js 22 and pnpm 10.11.0.
pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
pnpm run compile
pnpm run lint
pnpm run test:unit
pnpm run build
pnpm exec playwright install chromium
pnpm run test:e2e
pnpm run zipLoad .output/chrome-mv3 as an unpacked extension for local testing. The Chrome Store zip is written to .output/.
- CC-CEDICT — community-maintained Mandarin dictionary published by MDBG, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0.
- CC-Canto — Cantonese dictionary, copyright Pleco Inc., Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0.
- CC-CEDICT Cantonese Readings — supplemental readings from the CC-Canto download, copyright Pleco Software Incorporated, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0.
LiuChan source code is licensed under GPL-3.0.
Chrome cannot inject extensions into internal pages such as chrome:// or into tabs that have not been reloaded since an extension update. Reload the affected page and try again. If a dictionary update fails, the previously working data remains active.