Store Release Notes

Update summary for users on Chrome Web Store, Firefox Add-ons, and the App Store (iOS / iPadOS Safari). Lists only changes that directly affect end users; bug fixes and refactors are omitted unless user-visible. The full version history (every patch and technical detail) lives in the GitHub CHANGELOG.md.

v2.0.9 Released 2026-07-09

Compared with the previous store version v2.0.0

This release focuses on stability, with a large batch of fixes across page translation, YouTube subtitles, and bilingual mode.

Several YouTube subtitle fixes: when switching videos quickly, in-flight subtitle translations for the previous video no longer bleed into the new one; fixed translations failing to appear for Japanese / Korean source subtitles in single-language mode; on video pages, the floating button's long-press menu gains a new row to toggle subtitle translation for the current video with one tap.
Bilingual mode fixes: on pages that use "anti-scraping flips" (e.g. Google Search results), translations are no longer rendered upside down; the translation block no longer steals interactive buttons (such as a "show more" expander) from the original paragraph — the original stays intact.
The floating button is no longer printed when printing / saving to PDF: previously, printing a page or saving it as a PDF would paint the floating button into the output; it is now hidden automatically when printing, with on-screen display unaffected.
Target-language guard: with the translation target set to a Latin-script language (English, German, etc.), paragraphs that occasionally come back in Chinese now keep the original text instead of showing the wrong language; internal placeholder markers leaking into the visible page are also fixed.
Other fixes: when every request on a page fails (e.g. the API key is missing or invalid), the page is no longer incorrectly marked as translated (previously this left a stale toolbar badge and required pressing the shortcut twice to re-translate); Gemini calls now send the API key in a request header instead of the URL (Google's recommended form — more secure; translation behavior and cost are completely unchanged); fixed a layout issue where rows of small avatars or thumbnails on some article pages exploded to full size after translation; hidden (display:none) content is no longer translated (wasting tokens); links inside SVG graphics no longer break full-page translation; fixed the glossary running silently on fresh installs even though it shows "off".

v2.0.0 Released 2026-06-23

Compared with the previous store version v1.10.42

The two headline features in this release are the floating button and Send to Instapaper; Shinkansen for iOS / iPadOS Safari is also coming soon to the App Store.

New "floating button": a draggable button pinned to the edge of the page — tap to translate the page, long-press to switch translation engine or open the menu; on by default on all platforms, with adjustable button size (small / medium / large) and opacity.
New "Send to Instapaper": after linking your Instapaper account, save the whole translated article to your own Instapaper with one tap from the toolbar popup or a shortcut (it saves the translated version, optionally with an AI summary) to read again later. Unlike the usual read-later flow that stores the URL and lets the server re-fetch the original, Shinkansen uploads the translated content directly.
Shinkansen for iOS / iPadOS Safari is coming soon to the App Store: full-page translation on iPhone / iPad is on the way — currently in review, stay tuned. It offers a "four-finger tap" full-page translation gesture; a first-launch onboarding flow lets you enter your Gemini API Key and pick a default translation method (the iOS version does not include PDF document translation).
Several site-translation and stability fixes: accumulated fixes for misplaced translations on React / Next.js article sites, crashes on RSS / XML feeds, untranslated forum main posts, and a long article's last paragraph never finishing — plus translation error messages now follow your UI language (8 languages).

v1.10.42 Released 2026-06-09

Compared with the previous store version v1.10.17

This release improves YouTube subtitles, adds custom translation shortcuts, makes translation cancellation restore instantly, and ships several site-translation and settings fixes.

New "custom translation shortcuts": the shortcut keys for all three translation presets can now be recorded directly on the settings page under "Translation shortcuts" (click the field, then press the combination you want). This works on every platform and specifically solves the lack of a key-remapping entry point on Safari / iPad external keyboards.
Canceling a translation now restores immediately: previously, canceling with a shortcut had to wait for the in-flight batch to return before the original text was actually restored (a large batch on a slow model could take several to a dozen seconds); this release restores instantly on key press and lets you re-translate right away, and rapid repeated presses no longer get stuck.
Several YouTube subtitle improvements: (1) a new "subtitle size" setting (100%–200%, in the toolbar popup, shown only on YouTube video pages, applied on both desktop and mobile full screen); (2) mobile m.youtube.com now supports subtitle translation; (3) fixed auto-generated subtitles suddenly ballooning in size during pauses in speech; (4) fixed translated subtitles disappearing after entering native full screen on iPhone / iPad (both auto-generated and English subtitles).
Forum main-post translation fix: on forums like vBulletin / phpBB where the entire main post is wrapped directly in bold, the whole post was previously left untranslated (while quoted blocks in the same post were translated), causing "some translated, some not" within one post; this is now fixed and the main post translates normally.
Importing settings no longer drops fields: when exporting and re-importing settings, fields such as a custom model's thinking level, extra request parameters, and the glossary's dedicated model were previously silently discarded; this release fills them in so settings round-trip completely.
PDF narrow cells no longer reveal source text: in very narrow PDF table cells (quantity / unit columns), the white mask was previously sized incorrectly, leaving the source uncovered with the translation overlapping it; this release covers the cell fully.
Cost accounting aligned with Gemini 3 billing: Gemini 3 is a reasoning model, and Google bills the "thinking" process as part of output; the usage breakdown now includes thinking tokens and aligns with Gemini 3's generation parameters (Top P / Top K, which are inert on Gemini 3, are no longer sent and have been removed from the settings page). Amounts for the everyday default model (Flash Lite) are unaffected.

v1.10.17 Released 2026-06-02

Compared with the previous store version v1.10.11

This release focuses on X (Twitter) tweet and YouTube video / comment translation stability and quality, and fixes repeated quota usage on re-translation, custom-model timeouts, and incorrect export-filename timestamps.

X tweet translation stability fixes: tweets no longer revert to English after clicking to open them; newly loaded tweets while scrolling are no longer missed, and tweets that scroll out of view and back (virtualized scrolling) are reliably re-translated.
YouTube video translation quality fix (eliminates "second-hand translation"): foreign-language videos (e.g. Japanese) were occasionally auto-translated by YouTube into English first and then into Chinese, giving worse quality; this release now reads the original-language subtitles of the currently playing video, and switching between videos no longer picks up data from the previous one.
YouTube comment and emoji fixes: comments containing emoji images or timestamp links are no longer skipped entirely; emoji are preserved after translation and no longer disappear or stick to adjacent Chinese text; sporadic missed comments when a large batch loads at once are also fixed.
Re-translation no longer wastes quota: paragraphs whose translation equals the source (brand names, personal names, etc.) were previously never cached, so re-translating the same page hit the API every time; this is fixed and they now cache normally.
Configurable custom-model API timeout: a new timeout setting under "Custom model → Advanced" (default 15 seconds, adjustable 5–600 seconds) lets you raise the limit for local LLMs (e.g. Ollama) that are slow to load a model on first use, avoiding timeout failures.
Export filename time fix: timestamps in exported settings and log filenames used UTC, so Taiwan users saw a time 8 hours earlier than actual; this release uses the local time zone.

v1.10.11 Released 2026-05-26

Compared with the previous store version v1.10.0

This release focuses on X (Twitter) tweet translation quality, Google Translate engine injection fixes, and improved detection coverage for Amazon and other foreign-language shopping sites.

Major X tweet translation quality improvements (single & dual mode): fixes 11 versions' worth of structural issues — complex tweets containing URLs, @mentions, #hashtags, emoji images, and multi-line paragraphs no longer suffer from missing middle paragraphs, text sticking together, or quoted tweets showing unwanted grey bilingual blocks. Clicking "Show more" to expand truncated tweets now automatically retranslates the expanded content. In dual (bilingual) mode, an entire tweet now produces a single, coherent translation block instead of 5-7 fragmented blocks in reverse order.
Google Translate engine quality fixes: three Google MT-specific fixes — (1) review titles on Amazon and similar sites (link structure containing star icons + text) are no longer skipped; (2) CJK translation results no longer stick to adjacent URLs / @mentions (automatic spacing inserted); (3) emoji images no longer duplicated after translation.
Improved detection coverage for Amazon and foreign-language shopping sites: (1) product recommendation carousel cards no longer lose ratings, badges, and prices after translation; (2) button text (e.g. "カートに入れる", "参考になった") is now translated; (3) short-text anchors, mixed-content labels, and comparison table buttons on foreign-language pages that were previously blocked by the detection pipeline are now broadly unblocked.
Three YouTube subtitle fixes: (1) disabling YouTube translation no longer hides native subtitles (fix #51); (2) invalid API key or exhausted quota now shows an error message in the subtitle area instead of stalling on "Translating..."; (3) the toolbar icon translation badge now appears immediately when translation starts, rather than waiting until translation completes.

v1.10.0 Released 2026-05-20

Compared with the previous store version v1.9.24

This release focuses on structural fixes for X (Twitter) and Instagram comment translation, plus an updated Gemini model lineup and pricing.

X / Twitter tweet translation — structural fixes: tweets containing URLs, @mentions, #hashtags, emoji images, and multi-line paragraphs are now translated in place (single-language overlay) instead of showing a grey-bordered bilingual block below. Specifically: URL anchor inner structure (https:// prefix / main domain / truncation ellipsis) is preserved; @mention and #hashtag clickability is intact; emoji images stay at their original positions in text; original paragraph blank lines (double newlines) are preserved; connectors like "by @username" merge into the translated main text without leaving English remnants.
Instagram comment translation: when you open the comment dialog on an Instagram photo post (the modal viewer), comments used to be excluded because they sit inside a "like / reply / more" button group. This release now excludes only the buttons themselves, leaving the comment text translatable. Nested replies that expand from "View replies" — including short ones starting with @mention like "@username ja wirklich!" — are also translated.
"Translate into" picker in toolbar popup (since v1.9.16, reminder for users jumping multiple versions): the target language picker has moved from the settings page into the toolbar icon popup. Click the toolbar icon and pick from 8 languages directly (Traditional Chinese / Simplified Chinese / English / Japanese / Korean / Spanish / French / German). Changes take effect immediately for the next translation. UI language and translation target remain independently configurable.
YouTube subtitle bug fixes accumulated: multiple YouTube subtitle improvements since v1.9.25 — batch size tuning to save tokens, subtitle timing correction at faster playback speeds, sentence segmentation stability for auto-generated (ASR) subtitles, "Translating..." overlay disappears immediately when CC button turns off subtitles, and automatic fallback to the original spoken-language track when your YouTube account has "auto-translate to Simplified Chinese" preference set — avoiding double-translation quality loss.
Gemini model lineup update: the legacy Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview is retired and replaced with Gemini 3.5 Flash ($1.50 / $9.00 per 1M tokens). Users who previously selected 3.1 Pro will see the dropdown swap to 3.5 Flash after upgrade. Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite pricing updated from $0.10 / $0.30 to $0.25 / $1.50 (per Google's new pricing). Pricing calibration date updated to 2026-05.
macOS Safari version available for public download: the macOS Safari `.pkg` installer (previously only accessible via GitHub Releases manual search) now has a direct download button on the landing page (Developer ID signed + Apple notarized). Double-click the `.pkg` to install. The App Store version is still in review; we'll announce when it ships.

v1.9.24 Released 2026-05-18

Compared with the previous store version v1.9.8

This release focuses on a major overhaul of YouTube subtitle translation, plus improved support for several categories of pages. It also moves the "Translate into" picker into the toolbar popup.

"Translate into" picker moved to the toolbar popup: switching target language no longer requires opening the settings page — pick it directly from the toolbar icon. The change takes effect immediately for the next translation (existing translation cache is not cleared automatically; to re-translate an old page, open the toolbar popup and use "Clear cache"). UI language and translation target remain independently configurable (e.g. "English UI + translate into Traditional Chinese" still works).
Major YouTube subtitle overhaul: if your YouTube account has the "Auto-translate subtitles to Chinese (Simplified)" preference set, Shinkansen now switches back to the original spoken-language track (English, Japanese, French, etc.) on load, so translation quality is no longer degraded by double translation (YouTube translating first, then Shinkansen translating that); subtitle translation quality is improved for 20 non-English spoken languages (Japanese, Korean, French, German, etc.); single subtitle lines are capped to two rows, so a single utterance no longer balloons to four lines and covers the picture; videos with a native Traditional Chinese subtitle track (including videos with multiple subtitle tracks where one of them is Traditional Chinese) skip translation entirely and let YouTube show the native track; seeking on the progress bar is far more stable; the "Translating…" overlay disappears immediately when you press the CC button to hide subtitles.
Improved support for previously unsupported pages: (1) pages that use web components to render content (for example, the titles, tables, and footnotes inside Datawrapper interactive charts) are now translated — previously these blocks stayed in the source language; (2) Chinese tech-news sites whose article body interleaves ad cards used to leave roughly half the paragraphs untranslated; this release fixes the structural misjudgment, taking one test article from 7 of 17 paragraphs translated to a full 17 of 17; (3) Goodreads reviews and some blog / comment sections that wrap several lines inside a single paragraph element were previously skipped by detection and are now translated normally; (4) plain-text pages wrapped entirely in a <pre> tag (such as asuswrt-merlin.net/changelog-3006) used to be treated as source code and skipped; this release recognizes them as plain text and translates them.
Medium / Substack and similar sites: "500 Something went wrong" fix: previously, enabling auto-translate on these sites would occasionally surface a "Sorry, something went wrong on our side" error page; this release fixes the underlying race. Related fix: Medium comment "more" expand buttons keep their underline styling and remain clickable after translation (previously the button was replaced by the bare text "更多" with no underline and no click handler).
Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite promoted from preview to stable: Google released this model out of preview, and this version updates the default model ID from gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview to gemini-3.1-flash-lite accordingly. Existing user settings are migrated automatically on upgrade — no manual action required.
Auto-translate site list treats www. prefix interchangeably: an entry of example.com in the "Auto-translate listed sites" list now also applies to www.example.com (and vice versa); the match is case-insensitive.
Settings import dropped 13 fields — fixed: previously, importing a backed-up settings file silently dropped 13 fields — fixed glossary entries, translation target language, UI language, display mode, display currency, translation accent color, toast opacity and position, "skip already-Traditional pages" toggle, "disable update notice" toggle, custom translation presets, YouTube subtitle settings, and others — so settings imports effectively reset most preferences. This release imports those 13 fields as well, with per-field validation that filters out malformed values.

v1.9.8 Released 2026-05-12

Compared with the previous store version v1.9.0

This release focuses on the translation experience on social-media sites (X / Twitter, Threads, Reddit, Mastodon), and corrects previously overstated cost figures and a usage-record mismatch.

Major fixes for social-media sites (X, Threads, Reddit, Mastodon): these "load-as-you-scroll" sites received a number of fixes — translations no longer have to wait for the user to stop scrolling before appearing (in our test, 5.1 s down to 3.2 s); scrolling a tweet out of view and back no longer re-translates it (no double-charge) and no longer produces a different translation; tweets with line breaks keep their multi-line layout (previously collapsed into one line); when an emoji image splits a tweet body into multiple text blocks, the translation no longer drops the first half; the large image preview on X link cards no longer disappears after translation when the image loads in later; short Simplified-Chinese content (which these sites often tag only as "Chinese" without specifying Traditional or Simplified, or which appears in very short article-card titles) is no longer mistakenly skipped as already-Traditional.
Google Translate garbled-output fix on mixed Chinese-English pages: when using Google Translate on pages mixing Chinese and English (X, Threads, Reddit, etc.), English paragraphs are no longer mistaken for a Simplified-Chinese variant and mangled into garbled output (e.g. "No API billing, no latingle m…" — English fragments mashed with stray Han characters). After upgrading, the extension automatically clears pre-1.9.8 garbled output left behind by Google Translate once; Gemini and custom-model translation memory are untouched, so previously paid translations are preserved.
Scroll-based re-translation no longer pops a repeat notification: on sites that load new content as you scroll, scrolling back to already-translated paragraphs no longer pops the "translated N new segments" notification. This scroll-based catch-up is passive (the user didn't press a button), so popping a notification each time was just noise.
Google Translate / custom-model no longer silently switches to Gemini on dynamic sites: previously, when users picked Google Translate or a custom OpenAI-compatible model to translate sites that load new content as you scroll (X, etc.), the first translation succeeded but newly loaded content quietly switched to Gemini in the background (and failed entirely if no Gemini key was set — felt like "only translates halfway"). This release keeps the user's chosen engine consistent throughout.
PDF document translation supports custom OpenAI-compatible services: selecting a custom-model preset to translate a PDF no longer silently falls back to Gemini — local Ollama, llama.cpp, or services like OpenRouter can now be used for PDF translation. Selecting a Google Translate preset for PDFs now shows a clear inline error pointing the user to Gemini or a custom model (Google Translate itself has no document-translation capability).
Google Drive video subtitle translation supports custom OpenAI-compatible services: previously only Gemini and Google Translate were supported.
YouTube "already in Chinese but translated anyway" fix: some YouTube manual subtitle tracks are tagged only as "Chinese" (without distinguishing Traditional or Simplified). Previously, because the tag didn't match any specific Traditional or Simplified variant, the extension would still send the subtitles for translation even when the text was already Traditional Chinese. This release detects the actual subtitle content: when the target language is Traditional or Simplified Chinese and the subtitles are already in that variant, they are no longer translated again.
Cost display correction + customizable repeat-content discount: usage details and notifications used to hardcode 25% as the share to pay for repeat-content cache hits (a Gemini 2.0-era figure). Starting with Gemini 2.5+, that share dropped to 10%; this release applies the correction, and exposes a repeat-content discount setting for custom models (which varies widely across services, from 2% to 50%). Impact on existing users: after upgrading, displayed Gemini costs drop to about 0.4×, and displayed custom-model (OpenRouter) costs drop to about 0.2× — this corrects previous over-estimation, not a step backward.
Usage records unified to a single source: the running cost shown by the toolbar icon used to come from one source, while the settings-page usage table came from another — so the two could fall out of sync. "Clear records" in settings only cleared the table, while the toolbar icon kept showing the old total. This release unifies both to the same record. Tokens and cost consumed by glossary extraction are now also included in the usage table (with a "[Glossary]" prefix).
"Thinking off" actually works for custom models: when connecting to services like Fireworks, Together, Groq, or DeepInfra running thinking-capable models (Qwen, DeepSeek, etc.), choosing "Off" for thinking used to be silently ignored — users set "Off" but the model still spent a long time thinking. This release sends the standard parameter; choosing "Off" now actually drops from 56 s to 1.2 s in our test.
Custom-model default changed to OpenRouter GPT-5.4 Mini: new users opening the "Custom model" tab only need to fill in an OpenRouter API key to start using it — the API endpoint, model name, and two pricing fields are pre-filled.

v1.9.0 Released 2026-05-09

Compared with the previous store version v1.8.55

Two main themes: both the translation target and the UI now span 8 languages, and complex page layouts get major bilingual-mode polish.

Multi-language translation target: the translation target expanded from Traditional Chinese to 8 languages (Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, German). Switch in the "Target language" panel of options; all translation modes (web pages, PDF, YouTube subtitles, custom models) share this setting; the default follows your browser locale.
Multi-language UI: popup, settings page, web translation progress toast, and PDF document translation reader are all available in 8 languages. The UI language can be set independently from the translation target (e.g. "English UI + translate into Traditional Chinese").
Correct CJK glyph variants in translations: when translating into Japanese or Korean, translated text now picks the corresponding locale font stack, avoiding glyph drift on pages locked into Traditional-Chinese fonts (e.g. the Japanese "査" still rendered as the Chinese form).
Major bilingual-mode fixes for GitHub / Medium and other complex pages: bilingual mode received 15+ structural fixes — GitHub code blocks no longer overlay translations, filename cells are no longer mistranslated, table cells now have proper breathing room from the translation block, commit dates no longer trigger LLM hallucination of long stories, Medium pull-quote translations no longer overflow the column, like / comment counts are no longer mistranslated, and more.
Custom provider strong segment markers (default on): when using a custom OpenAI-compatible provider against locally quantized models (Ollama / llama.cpp running gemma-4 / Qwen quantized), Shinkansen now uses sturdier segment markers so they aren't mistranslated as "N1, N2" leaking into the output. Commercial API users (OpenRouter / DeepSeek / Groq, etc.) can turn this off in the "Custom model" tab to save tokens.
Full privacy policy update + English version: the privacy policy now reflects the 8 target languages, 3 engines (Gemini / Google Translate / OpenAI-compatible), and 5 outbound connections (including FX rate API / GitHub release check), and is now available in English.
YouTube subtitles "Chinese flickers back to English" fix: in some YouTube playback scenarios (quality switch, ad break end, player remount, theatre toggle), YouTube fires phantom navigation events that previously caused Shinkansen to reset subtitle translation state and re-fetch captions (~10 seconds), so users saw the translated subtitle flicker back to English for a while before returning. This release adds a guard: if it's the same video and translation is still active, the reset is skipped — flicker gone.
Log system fixes: the Log tab in settings now loads history from before a service-worker restart, and the "Clear" button actually clears persisted entries (previously, old logs would reappear after each SW restart).

v1.8.55 Released 2026-05-05

Compared with the previous store version v1.8.38

This release focuses on PDF document translation and bilingual experience polish.

PDF document translation (beta): drop a PDF onto the "Translate Document" tab; Shinkansen parses the layout locally, sends the extracted text for translation, and presents the result in a side-by-side reader for users to read. Can be downloaded as a bilingual PDF. The whole document is processed inside your browser; only the extracted plain text is sent to the translation endpoint you configured.
PDF translation editing: the reader supports per-segment editing of the translation, with basic markdown (bold, italic, links) and built-in find / replace. Saving regenerates the side-by-side preview.
Article glossary: before translation, AI can extract a glossary of names and proper nouns from the article. After review or editing, this glossary is used during translation to keep names consistent throughout the document. The glossary can be imported and exported as JSON.
Google Drive video subtitle translation: the YouTube subtitle translation pipeline extends to videos hosted on Google Drive, with consistent styling and bilingual behavior.
YouTube bilingual subtitle visual integration: in bilingual mode, the original and translated lines now share a single black background, fully solving the previous "two-line English crowds out the translation" and "three black bars stacked" issues.
Customizable accent color for bilingual mode: bilingual mode offers 8 accent colors and automatic dark-mode contrast, improving legibility on dark pages.
Translation memory no longer cleared on extension version updates: the cache survives version bumps so users do not lose data each upgrade. Manual clearing is still available from the popup or settings page.
Display currency switch (Traditional Chinese UI only): cost statistics in the settings page can switch between USD and TWD with automatic conversion.

v1.8.38 Released 2026-05-01

Compared with the previous store version v1.8.30

This release focuses on UX polish and cross-browser compatibility fixes.

Local Ollama / llama.cpp connection guidance: the custom Provider tab in settings adds an expandable section "Getting 403 connecting to local Ollama / llama.cpp?" with two viable workarounds (configuring OLLAMA_ORIGINS, or using a hosts-file fake domain).
Support for browsers without openOptionsPage (e.g. Arc): clicking the "Settings" button in the popup now opens the settings tab correctly on Arc.
YouTube no longer keeps translating after CC is turned off: when the user toggles off the YouTube CC button, Shinkansen pauses subtitle translation immediately and hides any leftover Chinese subtitles, so tokens are not consumed when subtitles are not visible.
Bilingual mode contrast on dark backgrounds: the bilingual wrapper now auto-detects the actual page background luminance and applies a contrast-strengthened color scheme on dark pages, fixing the previous "beige fill clashes with light-gray text" issue. Border radius, padding, and inter-paragraph spacing also tuned.
Subscribed-thread title detection on forums: thread titles in vBulletin-style forums (which add a wrapper and small icon when subscribed) are now correctly detected and translated.

v1.8.30 Released 2026-04-30

Compared with the previous store version v1.4.22

A long stretch separated this release from v1.4.22, with substantial accumulated changes. The user-visible highlights are below.

Instant Translation: see the page start turning into your target language within 1 second of pressing translate, instead of waiting for the entire batch to come back at once (Gemini engine only). The first paragraphs now stream, dropping first-character latency from 2.5–4.4 seconds to 1.0–1.2 seconds.
Bilingual side-by-side mode: a one-click toggle in the popup. "Overlay" replaces text in place; "Bilingual" keeps the original and appends the translation as a new paragraph. Bilingual mode offers four visual treatments (subtle background tint, left border, wavy underline, none) for the translated paragraphs.
Custom AI models: in addition to Google Gemini and Google Translate, a new "Custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint" tab lets users connect to OpenRouter, Together, DeepSeek, Groq, Fireworks, Anthropic Claude, local Ollama / llama.cpp, and any other OpenAI-compatible service — hundreds of models in total.
YouTube auto-caption smart re-segmentation: YouTube auto-generated captions (videos without manual subtitles, marked CC auto-generated) used to arrive as 1–3 word fragments without punctuation, with translations broken to match. Now AI re-segments the whole batch by sentence boundaries and adds punctuation before translating, so Chinese subtitles read as complete sentences instead of word fragments. Default mode is "hybrid": local heuristic segmentation appears immediately, AI re-segmentation runs in the background and replaces it once ready.
Translate opening only (cost saver): translate only the first few paragraphs (5–50 range, default 25), dramatically reducing token usage — useful for previewing before deciding whether to read the whole article. After translation, a "Translate remaining paragraphs" button appears in the bottom-right; clicking it finishes the article, reusing previously translated paragraphs from the local cache without re-charging.
Blocked-word list: a user-editable substitution list (25 defaults, e.g. mainland Chinese phrasings to avoid in Taiwan-Mandarin output), explicitly telling the AI to never use the left-column terms.
Translation shortcuts and three presets: three customizable translation presets, each bound to a shortcut (macOS Option+A/S/D, Windows Alt+A/S/D); engine, model, and label per preset are configurable in the "Translation shortcuts" section of settings. Pressing any shortcut while translated restores the page; pressing during translation cancels.
Cross-tab translation continuity: after triggering translation in tab A, opening a link from A in a new tab B (including Cmd / Ctrl-click, target="_blank", or programmatic window.open) automatically translates B with the same preset. Multi-level: B opening C also continues.
Faster translation startup: long pages (Wikipedia, forums, long Medium articles) now start translating noticeably faster. Across a representative set of long pages, first-character latency dropped by an average of 29% (NPR from 11.7 s to 5.1 s).
More intuitive translation order: on long pages, the first translated text users see is now the article title and first paragraph instead of navigation menus, cookie banners, or tables of contents (paragraphs inside main / article are translated first).
Store update notifications: when Chrome Web Store or Firefox Add-ons auto-updates to a new version, popup and toast show a "Welcome to the new version" message listing the headline features. Patch-level updates are silent and don't pester users.
"Translate this page" toolbar button: clicking the toolbar icon directly triggers translation and can be configured in settings to use a specific preset.
Background-tab CPU and battery savings: when a tab is in the background, Shinkansen pauses content detection and SPA URL polling, reducing power drain on inactive tabs.
Reload button on the usage history page: the usage history tab in settings adds a "Reload" button so users can see the latest entries without closing the settings tab.
Multiple YouTube subtitle improvements: subtitles bypass YouTube's native "word-by-word" rendering for stable full-line display, subtitle styling auto-aligns to the native YouTube caption style, the YouTube subtitle settings tab is reorganized (auto-translate, engine, advanced, window, prompt), and subtitle translation can optionally apply the fixed glossary and blocked-word list (off by default to save tokens).