A vocabulary app for Mac, and the part that actually stops people

It is never the reviewing. It is that every word costs you a trip to a dictionary, a copy, a paste, and a card you have to write yourself.

Where the effort really goes

Ask anyone who gave up on a vocabulary habit and the story is the same. The word list was fine for a week. What killed it was the twenty seconds each word took: stop reading, switch app, find the meaning, copy it, write a card, come back, find your place again. Twenty seconds is nothing once and unbearable forty times an evening.

So the useful question about a vocabulary app on a Mac is not how clever its review algorithm is. It is how many steps stand between seeing a word you do not know and having it saved, with enough around it that the meaning still makes sense next week.

What the word on its own is worth

A saved word with no sentence is a word you understood once. You look at it three days later, you recognise it, you cannot say what it meant. The sentence is where the meaning actually lived: which sense of the word it was, how it was being used, why you noticed it at all.

This is why "saves the sentence" is worth more than a longer feature list. It is also the line that separates the tools below into two groups.

What is actually available on a Mac

Anki is free, and it is far and away the best of these at deciding what you should see and when. Its weakness is the other half: every card is yours to write. Apple's own dictionary is already on your Mac and costs nothing, but it only works in apps built on Apple's text views and it keeps nothing after you close the panel.

Of the tools built for this specifically, Capecho captures off the screen, keeps the sentence, schedules reviews, and syncs your words between devices, which Leafy does not do at any price. NearWord reads the screen in any app and keeps a lookup history, which is a different thing from a vocabulary library. Leafy captures off the screen and always keeps the sentence, with nothing to sign up for.

Checked August 2026, from each product's own public pages. Prices and features move, so read theirs before you commit to one.

How Leafy handles it

You press ⌥A and draw a box around the word, wherever it is. A PDF, an ebook, a scanned page, a subtitle burnt into the picture, a screenshot someone sent you. macOS reads the text off the screen, so it does not matter whether you could have selected it.

The meaning appears where you are looking, and the word goes into your library together with the line it came from. Later, review blanks that word out of your own sentence and asks you to fill the gap. There is nothing to set up, because the deck is just what you have been reading.

The library is a file on your Mac. No account, no sync server, and the screenshot never leaves the machine. Only the word itself goes out, to get the explanation.

What it does not do

  • It does not sync. Your library stays on the Mac you saved it on.
  • It does not plan your week. There is a daily quota, not a scheduler with years of tuning behind it.
  • There are no ready made decks.
  • The Anki export goes one way.
  • It needs macOS 14 or later.
  • Ten languages so far: Arabic, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Thai.
  • It is a direct download and is not on the Mac App Store.

What is the best vocabulary app for a Mac?

It depends on which half of the job you want handled. Anki is the strongest at scheduling reviews and the weakest at getting words in, because you type every card yourself. Capecho and Leafy both capture off the screen and keep the sentence. NearWord is a lookup tool with history rather than a vocabulary library. If you already read a lot in another language, pick whichever one puts the fewest steps between reading a word and having it saved.

Can I save a word from a PDF or a video on a Mac?

From a normal PDF, yes, any tool that reads selected text works. From a scanned PDF, a subtitle burnt into the picture, or an image, you need something that reads the pixels rather than the text layer. Leafy and NearWord both do this with on device text recognition, so it works where select and copy does nothing.

Do I need an account?

Not for Leafy. There is no sign up and no sync server, and the library is a file on your Mac. Capecho does need an account, because it syncs your words between devices. That is a real feature, not an oversight, and it is the trade you are making either way.

Is it free?

Leafy is free for everyday reading. Past that it is $6.99 a month or $49 once, and the difference is how much scanning is handled for you. Anki is free on macOS. Apple's own dictionary is built in and free, but it does not save anything.

Does it replace Anki?

Not the scheduling. Anki has years of work behind its algorithm and nothing here matches it. What Leafy replaces is the card making: you read, you press one key, and the word is saved with its sentence. If you want both, export to Anki and keep using it for reviews.