Is there any way to add dictionary items to the queue without prioritizing their component characters? Unless I am missing something, it feels like there is no way to add them in unintrusively - my preferred use case is essentially to use them as extra reinforcement on characters, not to have learning the words themselves be a priority.
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This is possible by disabling the “Dictionary item unlocking” setting. (it is disabled by default)
I’m currently deploying an update to make this more clear in the docs:
This setting, when enabled, will also automatically prioritize any related characters within a dictionary item when it is prioritized.
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Followup question: After disabling “dictionary item unlocking,” my lessons queue no longer distinguishes between dictionary items containing unknown characters and ones with characters I know. Is there any way to only learn dictionary items with familiar characters without changing any character priorities? Essentially I want dictionary items to behave identical to native HH words.
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This is not currently possible. Normal HanziHero words have similar prioritization behavior where prioritizing the word also prioritizes any unknown characters.
In this sense, enabling the somewhat awkwardly-named “Dictionary Unlocking” setting is meant to make Dictionary items behave similar to HanziHero words in most respects, including this prioritization behavior.
If you want to keep the “unlocking” behavior but not have the “auto prioritization” behavior (which normal HH words have), do you mind explaining why you want it configured that way? That’ll help us figure out how we can improve this setting to better meet user use-cases! 
It’s because normal HH words aren’t prioritized, they just show up in the lesson queue when the characters are learned. Essentially i’m asking for the ability to add dictionary words without any sort of priority, as if it was just part of a normal content update that adds more words. As for why i want to do this;
I want to add dictionary words in large batches (often just all HSK words that aren’t already in HH) and have them function as extra review once i learn characters - but I don’t want to prioritize dictionary words over normal HH words. If I wanted to achieve this effect with the current options, I would have to manually add the words a few at a time as i learn characters, which is extremely annoying.
TLDR: The fact that you can’t add a dictionary word without prioritizing the word is the problem. I want more words for review without hyperfocusing on dictionary words (and their component characters) specifically, and I also don’t want to learn words that I haven’t learned the characters of.
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Update:
You can now disable the autoprioritization of related characters within Dictionary items. 
Check out the docs for more info.
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