SubMiner/release/prerelease-notes.md

This is a prerelease build for testing. Stable changelog and docs-site updates remain pending until the final stable release.

Highlights

Added

• Watch History Browser
  • New subminer -H / --history command lets you browse your local watch history, replay the last episode, jump to the next one, or pick an episode via fzf or rofi.
  • The rofi picker now shows AniList cover art for each show, making it easier to spot the right title at a glance.
• Card Audio Normalization
  • Audio extracted for Anki cards is now volume-normalized by default, giving more consistent playback loudness across cards.
  • Prefer the original source volume? Disable it via the new ankiConnect.media.normalizeAudio setting.

Changed

• New App Icon
  • SubMiner now ships pixel-art submarine artwork contributed by an anonymous community member.
  • Applied across the app icon, tray icon, notifications, README, docs site, and stats page.
• Launcher Preview Layout
  • fzf previews in the launcher now sit below the menu instead of beside it, giving long titles and metadata more horizontal room.

Fixed

• Character Name Highlighting in Subtitles
  • Fixed unspaced Japanese names (e.g. 東紫乃, 渡辺真奈美) being split at the wrong point, which left surnames like 東 and 渡辺 without their character portrait or hover lookup.
  • Fixed names getting cut off or losing their highlight when caught by the subtitle scanner's punctuation handling, misclassified by grammar tagging, or swallowed entirely by a longer generic dictionary match (e.g. ヨータ disappearing inside a false とヨー match).
  • Fixed a single unrecognized word in a subtitle line (like a stray interjection) causing character-name highlighting to drop for the whole line instead of just that word.
  • No action needed — existing data upgrades automatically the next time a matching name is seen.
• Known-Word Highlighting
  • Words are no longer marked "known" (green) just because they share spelling with a known Anki card that actually teaches a different reading (e.g. 床 read as とこ no longer falsely matches a known 床/ゆか card).
  • Kanji words are also no longer marked known just because a different mined word happens to share their reading (e.g. 渓谷/けいこく no longer falsely matches a known 警告/けいこく card).
  • Single-kana grammar tokens (particles like よ, え) no longer borrow an unrelated card's reading and get falsely painted as known.
  • Stats sessions now correctly reflect known-word counts again after the reading-aware matching upgrade, instead of showing 0 everywhere.
• Annotation Highlighting Refinements
  • Restored frequency/JLPT highlighting and vocabulary-stat counting for words like 確かに and やはり, which were wrongly treated as grammar noise.
  • Kanji nouns that MeCab tags as "non-independent" (e.g. 日, 点, 以外) also keep their highlighting and stats counting again.
  • Suffix-only tokens (e.g. さん, れる) are now excluded from JLPT/frequency highlighting by default to match how particles and interjections are treated; known-word highlighting for them still works, and this is configurable.
• Unparsed Subtitle Text
  • Subtitle text the dictionary can't recognize (like a truncated verb form) is now still hoverable for lookup and correctly counted toward a sentence's difficulty, instead of showing as dead, non-interactive text.
• Kiku Manual Field Grouping
  • Fixed the field-grouping dialog getting stuck invisible behind fullscreen video on Hyprland/Wayland, and failing silently on repeated attempts after the first use.
  • Fixed a timed-out or failed grouping request leaving an invisible, stuck dialog covering the video; it now closes automatically so the overlay recovers.
  • Fixed a duplicate "Field grouping cancelled" notification appearing when grouping was cancelled via the trigger shortcut, and added a proper error message for the previously-silent case where the original card can no longer be loaded.
• Secondary Subtitles
  • Karaoke-style secondary subtitles (common in opening/ending songs) no longer spam dozens of lines down the screen; repeated lines are now collapsed and the subtitle area is capped to a strip at the top.
• YouTube Extraction
  • Fixed direct YouTube stream extraction occasionally corrupting the stream URL and causing failed audio/video capture.
• Background Stats Server
  • Launching SubMiner in the background now correctly auto-starts the stats server when enabled, and won't start a duplicate if one's already running.
• Stats Trend Charts
  • All trend chart titles now show by default, with the ability to hide specific titles (remembered across sessions) and cap how many top titles a chart displays.
• Stats Cover Art
  • Cover art now loads as soon as a series starts playing instead of waiting for your first visit to its detail page, so the stats timeline shows artwork right away.
  • Existing series missing art are backfilled automatically the next time you open the stats page.

What's Changed

• fix(youtube): parse mpv EDL stream URLs with byte-length guards by @ksyasuda in #134
• Normalize generated Anki audio by default by @ksyasuda in #135
• feat(launcher): add -H/--history command to browse local watch history by @ksyasuda in #136
• fix(overlay): prevent field grouping modal from freezing overlay on Hyprland by @ksyasuda in #138
• fix(overlay): collapse karaoke syllable spam in secondary subtitles by @ksyasuda in #139
• feat(stats): Trends dashboard overhaul — title visibility, ranking modes, calendar-accurate windows, tooltips by @ksyasuda in #140
• feat(branding): replace app icon with contributed pixel-art set by @ksyasuda in #141
• feat(anki): reading-aware known-word matching (cache v3) by @ksyasuda in #142
• fix(stats): start stats server on background app launch by @ksyasuda in #144
• fix(tokenizer): keep unparsed Yomitan tokens hoverable by @ksyasuda in #145
• fix(overlay): resolve unspaced Japanese name splits and scan recovery by @ksyasuda in #146
• fix(tokenizer): prevent grammar tokens from borrowing known-word highlight via unrelated readings by @ksyasuda in #147
• fix(stats): fetch cover art eagerly at session start instead of on series page visit by @ksyasuda in #148
• fix(overlay): keep frequency/JLPT highlight for kanji non-independent nouns by @ksyasuda in #150
• fix(tokenizer): greedy name pre-pass to prevent generic matches swallowing character names by @ksyasuda in #151

Installation

See the README and docs/installation guide for full setup steps.

Assets

• Linux: SubMiner.AppImage
• macOS: SubMiner-*.dmg and SubMiner-*.zip
• Windows: SubMiner-*.exe and SubMiner-*-win.zip
• Optional extras: subminer-assets.tar.gz and the subminer launcher

Note: the subminer wrapper script uses Bun (#!/usr/bin/env bun), so bun must be installed and on PATH.