Installing WeDict with custom dictionaries

WeDict is a native iPhone application that can read the standard stardict dictionary format.

WeDict is available from the App Store for free.

(Note: WeDict Pro is, as you might guess, the Pro version. See below.)

** (Note 2: As of 06/2009, WeDict Pro has added an internal FTP server, making the process simpler still, and it seems the basic WeDict is no longer even available.  Also see below.  So basically this entry is now pretty much outdated, but see Note 2, below, anyway.)

Unfortunately, it only comes only with a basic English dictionary and a Chinese-English dictionary and no instructions on how to add others. To make matters worse, if you install the dictionaries in the location that iTunes puts WeDict on your iPhone, then iTunes will erase them next time you sync.  So you have to work around this. This is the method that worked for me:

Install WeDict through the App Store

Do this normally and sync your iPhone. Then run WeDict once on the iPhone. Note you must set your dictionaries in WeDict settings.

Obtain some stardict dictionaries

Thousands of dictionaries are available for free, so start here to find some. Note that each stardict dictionary contains two files, one with a file extension .dict and the other with a file extension .idx.  If they are compressed, you must extract them.  Note that MSDict dictionary files are basically bundled stardict dictionaries.  So you can use those simply by showing the package contents of an MSDict file and using only the .dict and .idx files with WeDict.

Connect to you iPhone with SFTP and find the WeDict.app

First refer to my SFTP guide. I would emphasize again that CyberDuck worked much better than others.

Basically what you need to do is move the WeDict application from the location that iTunes installs it to the location used for the iPhone Apple factory applications, so that iTunes does not mess with it.

To do this, navigate to:

/private/var/mobile/Applications/

There you will find a bunch of folders with long hex code names, which are the unique IDs of your installed applications.  You have to find the one that contains the WeDict.app folder.

If you SSH into your iPhone (ssh root@iphonename.local) you can find this with a Terminal command:

find /private/var/mobile/Applications/ | grep WeDict

With FW 2.0 you might have to use this path instead:

find /User/Applications/ | grep WeDic

It’s probably easier, however, just to open the disclosure triangle of each folder until you find the right one. Remember this ID folder for now.

Move the WeDict.app folder

Now you want to move the entire WeDict.app folder to /Applications/.  Do this with drag & drop, with both the source folder and the destination folder disclosed.

Remove all traces of what iTunes installed

Entirely delete the original ID folder, which had the WeDict.app folder in it.

Then go to iTunes and select the Applications library, and delete WeDict by selecting it and pressing CMD-OPT-DELETE.

Install dictionaries

Drag & drop the .dict/.idx files for each dictionary into /Applications/WeDict.app/.  For good measure (possibly not necessary), change permissions for each dictionary file to 644.

Note that there appears to be some maximum file size.  WeDict just crashed when I tried to Install Meriam-Webster (90 MB).  There may be a limit on total number of dictionaries.  I found it works with about ten without problem. Because of this issue, I created a folder at /User/Media/Dicts/ to store extra dictionaries so in case I need them later I don’t have to recopy them from my Mac.

Reboot your iPhone

Now reboot your iPhone.  Try WeDict, making sure to set your newly installed dictionaries in settings as desired. If it works, sync with iTunes for good luck, just to make sure you’re good to go.

Cautions

I found out the very hard way that even though you’ve done this, iTunes still somehow treats WeDict as an installed purchased application, even though you can’t even delete it on the iPhone.  So if ever you need to remove all purchased applications (due to crashing problems with free ones perhaps), you must also manually delete WeDict using SFTP.

WeDict Pro

The developers of WeDict released a Pro version called WeDict Pro ($5.99) since this tutorial was written.  It claims to allow downloading dictionaries from the internet.  If that worked I’d buy it in an instant, but from the initial reviews of version 1.0 and now from my own experience, it implements this very badly. You must type full URLs to download dictionaries on your iPhone.  (The official product site does contain several links in the correct format.) The downloaded files can only be .dict and .idx files or a single .zip file containing them. Anything else you would have to download to your computer, repackage, and make available on a web server in the expected format.  I’ve now had a chance to try this, and indeed it is not ready for prime time.

However, there does seem to be an advantage to using this.  As one of the commenters below points out, dictionaries are downloaded to:

/User/Applications/[HEX_ID_CODE]/Documents/

This means that it seems possible to install dictionaries directly into that folder (with SFTP) without needing to move the WeDictPro.app folder first as described above for the free version. Since the files go in the Documents/ folder of the application, iTunes shouldn’t mess with it. I have tried this and so far it seems to work.  (Note that the default dictionary for WeDictPro, Indonesian, is kept inside the WeDictPro.app folder as before.)

However, messing with it too much I believe helped recreate the crashing problem yet again. Its delicate business.

Note 2:

Sometime with or before WeDictPro version 1.5, an internal FTP server was included, making all of the above pretty much unnecessary.  Just start the WeDict Pro server from Settings -> Dictionaries -> Upload dictionaries while on your LAN WiFi. Then connect with FTP on port 1234 using your preferred FTP client.  Note that dictionaries may not appear in the list until you restart WeDict Pro.