A clearer setup screen, and a word list you can actually navigate.

Setup now explains what each HSK level means and shows ten real words from it, so you can pick your level by recognising the vocabulary rather than by guessing at a number.

Your word list is now paged fifty at a time, with back and next buttons and a page number you can type. Sorting by "newest first" starts at the highest level you have, instead of opening on the most elementary words on your list.

Sparkle also draws its own logo properly now — the setup screen had been showing a blank gradient tile where the mark should be.

Since 1.4.1, Sparkle also favours the levels you are actually studying when a page has more words it could swap than it should, and steps back from words it has shown you many times.

Sparkle now picks better words for the level you are on.

If you are studying HSK 4 or 5, a page has far more words Sparkle could swap than it should, and almost all of the extras are elementary — so pages used to fill up with words you knew years ago. Sparkle now favours the levels you are actually working on, and quietly steps back from words it has already shown you many times. Beginner words still turn up sometimes, which is the point: they are often the ones that read most naturally.

Your word list: "Newest first" now starts at the highest level you have, rather than opening on the most elementary words on the list.

Fixed a wrong translation: "packed" is now 打包 rather than 包装, which is commercial packaging.

Sparkle no longer has a server.

There is no account and no sign-in any more: pick your level and start reading. Nothing is sent anywhere, and the add-on now contains no code that could send anything — unzip it and search the scripts, and the file that reads your pages has no fetch, no XMLHttpRequest, no WebSocket and no web address in it at all. The manifest declares connect-src 'self', so Firefox itself refuses an outbound request.

To move to another browser, or to keep a backup, the settings page now has Export and Import. Everything Sparkle knows about you is in that one file and nowhere else, which also means uninstalling deletes it.

"Say it" now uses only the speech voices installed on your device, never a cloud voice — so a word is never sent to a vendor to be read aloud. Where a machine has no local Mandarin voice, the button is hidden rather than silent.

If you signed in to an earlier version, that account and its database have been deleted.

Fixes the "seen in the wild" count, which was counting words Sparkle had substituted on your own Sparkle dashboard — a page listing the very words you are learning — as words you had met while reading. It no longer counts the same page twice when you change a setting, and no longer counts pages sitting in background tabs you have not looked at yet. Changing a setting also stops shuffling which words on the page are in Chinese.

The popup is simpler: it keeps the switches, your progress and your newest words, and the reading settings it used to duplicate now live on the settings page — including "How much Chinese", which moved there. The hover card has a cleaner shape — the English word, its HSK level and the speak button form a header across the top, with the characters, reading and meaning below — and it no longer collapses to a sliver on short words.

The word list sorts predictably: words that arrived on the same day are listed by level, most useful first. Sparkle now follows HSK 3.0 (2021) only; the HSK 2.0 option is gone, and anyone who had it selected continues seamlessly on HSK 3.0. The character breakdown stops repeating a component that is also its own character.

This build also changes how the extension is built, so that anyone can rebuild these exact files from the source and check them against the hashes published with it.

Hover a word and the popover now takes each character apart by default: which piece carries the meaning, which piece gives the sound, and the characters you already know that share them — all computed ahead of time and shipped with the extension, so it works offline like everything else. A setting in the popup folds it behind a Character Breakdown bar instead, and the switch for skipping the site you are on now sits with the one that turns Sparkle off everywhere.

Hover a word and press 字 Parts to take each character apart: which piece carries the meaning, which piece gives the sound, and the characters you already know that share them — all computed ahead of time and shipped with the extension, so it works offline like everything else. A new Reading setting can keep the section open on every popover.

Sparkle is 1.0. Changing how fast you learn now applies from today instead of rewriting your history: slowing down keeps every word you have already been given, where before it could take back half your list. Signing in has a proper six-box code field that accepts a code pasted straight out of the email.

Sparkle now says words aloud in a consistent, better-sounding Mandarin voice instead of whichever one your computer happened to list first. On Firefox, this release also requires version 128 or newer: below that, a permission Sparkle depends on was ignored by the browser, so it installed and then quietly did nothing.

This release is about accuracy. Sparkle is considerably better at telling apart the different meanings of an English word — it no longer reads the "like" in "what will the week look like" as the verb, and it picks the right Chinese word far more often for words that have several. Where a sentence does not make the meaning clear, Sparkle now leaves the word in English rather than guessing.

Sparkle now asks for your email when you set it up, so your word list, level and progress follow you into every browser you read in — sign in with the same address and the same list is waiting. New in this version: browse every word you are learning by level or by how little you have met it, and drill any of them as flashcards, either Chinese to English or the other way round.

Removes a permission the extension was not using.