Skip to content

Chinese Support

Yatsu is still Japanese-first, but it supports Chinese ebooks and Chinese text inside mixed-language books.

The main Chinese-specific features are:

  • reader content language selection for Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese glyph forms
  • Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese font filters
  • Chinese preview text in the font picker
  • Chinese-capable Google Fonts
  • character counting through Yatsu's normal Japanese/Chinese counting method

Reader Content Language

Some Han characters are shared across Japanese and Chinese, but the preferred glyph shape can differ by language. If a Chinese book shows Japanese-style character forms, set the reader content language manually.

Open a book, then open Appearance from the reader toolbar. In Reader content language, choose:

Setting What it does
Auto Uses the language stored in the book file. If the book does not declare a language, Yatsu falls back to Japanese.
Japanese Renders shared CJK characters with Japanese glyph forms.
Simplified Chinese Renders shared CJK characters with Simplified Chinese glyph forms.
Traditional Chinese Renders shared CJK characters with Traditional Chinese glyph forms.

Reader content language is stored locally for the current book. It is available only from the live Appearance panel while a book is open, and it is not synced by Yatsu Account Settings Sync.

Chinese Fonts

Open Appearance, then use Font family to choose the reader font.

Use the language filter to narrow the font list:

  • Simplified Chinese for Simplified Chinese fonts
  • Traditional Chinese for Traditional Chinese fonts

Yatsu includes these Simplified Chinese Google Fonts options:

  • Noto Sans SC
  • Noto Serif SC
  • ZCOOL XiaoWei
  • ZCOOL QingKe HuangYou

Yatsu includes these Traditional Chinese Google Fonts options:

  • Noto Sans TC
  • Noto Serif TC
  • Noto Sans HK
  • LXGW WenKai TC
  • Chiron Sung HK

You can also use uploaded fonts or installed system fonts. If the font name or file name looks Chinese, Yatsu can include it in the relevant Chinese font filter.

Note

Google Fonts are fetched by the browser from Google. Uploaded fonts stay in your browser storage unless you export or sync browser data yourself.

Character Counting

Chinese books use Yatsu's normal Japanese/Chinese counting method. This counts CJK ideographs, Japanese kana, full-width alphanumerics, and related characters for progress, bookmarks, chapter totals, and reading statistics.

For Chinese books, leave Character Counting Method set to Auto or Japanese/Chinese. The Korean method is only for Korean books and will undercount Chinese text.

  1. Open the Chinese book.
  2. Open Appearance.
  3. Set Reader content language to Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese if the glyph shapes look wrong.
  4. Pick a matching Chinese font, such as Noto Sans SC, Noto Serif SC, Noto Sans TC, or Noto Serif TC.
  5. Leave Character Counting Method on Auto or Japanese/Chinese.

Limitations

Yatsu does not currently distinguish every regional Chinese glyph preference beyond the Simplified, Traditional, and Hong Kong/Taiwan-oriented fonts available in the font picker.

Dictionary, tokenizer, and segmentation features are outside Yatsu's built-in Chinese support. For Chinese books, Yatsu focuses on display, progress, bookmarks, and statistics.