Dicto

A fast, offline desktop dictionary for Windows and Linux built in Rust. Reads MDX/MDD dictionary files — the same format used by GoldenDict, MDict, and most popular dictionary packs.

Features

• Minimal, native UI — built on GPUI (the engine behind Zed), renders at 120 fps with no Electron overhead
• Instant search — suggestions appear as you type, results load in milliseconds
• Faithful rendering — full HTML output with per-dictionary CSS so each dict looks exactly as its author intended
• Multi-dictionary — load as many MDX files as you like, enable/disable/reorder them without restarting
• Built-in dictionary download — download dictionaries from within the app (Settings → Download tab, or on first launch)

Installation

Linux

Download — look for:

File	Description
dicto-*-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz	Generic Linux binary

Extract the archive and run the binary.

Arch Linux (AUR)

Install from AUR using your preferred helper (e.g. yay, paru, pikaur):

# Build from source
yay -S dicto

# Or install pre-built binary
yay -S dicto-bin

Or manually:

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/dicto.git
cd dicto
makepkg -si

Windows

Download — look for:

File	Description
dicto-*-windows-x86_64-installer.exe	Installer
dicto-*-windows-x86_64-portable.zip	Portable (no install needed)

Requires Visual C++ Redistributable (VC_redist.x64.exe)

From source

cargo build --release --package dicto
# binary at target/release/dicto

Runtime dependencies: gtk3, alsa-lib, libxkbcommon, lzo

Dictionary setup

Option 1 — Download from the app: Open Settings (⚙) → Download tab, pick a dictionary, and click Download. WordNet 3.1 (English, 155k+ words) is included. Dictionaries are installed to ~/.config/dicto/dicts/<id>/ and indexed automatically.

Option 2 — Drop files manually: Place .mdx (and optional .mdd) files into:

~/.config/dicto/dicts/

Dicto auto-discovers them on next launch. No config editing needed.
Enable, disable, and reorder dictionaries from the settings dialog (⚙ button).

Supported formats

Format	Status
MDX v2 (UTF-8, UTF-16)	✓ Full support
MDX v1	✓ Full support
MDD resource containers	✓ Images, audio, CSS
Encryption level 0, 2	✓ Supported

Architecture

The workspace has two crates:

• mdict-rs (library) — MDX/MDD parser, redb indexer, query pipeline, settings
• dicto (binary) — GPUI desktop app

References

• mdict-analysis — MDX/MDD format specification