Look up, read and remember Chinese.
Hanzi Desk brings a Mandarin and Cantonese dictionary, a reader for your own texts and spaced-repetition study together in one native app. Free, offline-first and with no account.
- Price
- Free · no ads
- Requires
- iPhone or iPad, iOS 15.4+
- Dictionaries
- Mandarin and Cantonese
- Offline
- Core dictionaries built in
Dictionary
Search the way you think.
Type characters, pinyin, Jyutping or English. Results start with the most common words and update as you type, and phrases are broken into their parts.
- Simplified and traditional forms, source parts of speech and optional tone colours.
- Listen to Mandarin and Cantonese recordings, labelled by source.
- Handwriting input with ranked character suggestions, and text recognition from a photo.
- Add your own notes to any word.
Characters
See what each character is made of.
Every character shows its readings, most common first, its radical and stroke count, the components it is built from and the characters it appears in.
Watch animated stroke order, then practise writing it yourself with guided strokes.
Etymology
Where the word comes from.
Read a character’s origin from Wiktionary, follow its character family and sound series, and jump between related words, examples and grammar.
On iPad and iPhone Duo, words open beside your search results, and a section sidebar and keyboard shortcuts keep everything a tap away.
Reader
Read your own texts.
Paste Chinese text or import TXT and EPUB files. Tap a word to look it up and save it, show pinyin above new words or words above your HSK level, and follow along as each sentence is read aloud. Chapters, bookmarks and collections keep longer books organised.
Study
Remember what you looked up.
Save words and sentences, then review them with FSRS spaced repetition.
- Meaning, recall, listening, tone, writing and sentence cards.
- Decks, streaks and progress statistics.
- Import an HSK word list; export to CSV, Anki or Pleco.
Good to know
Offline first
CC-CEDICT and CC-Canto are built in for offline search, with example, character and stroke references. Extra dictionaries, fonts and most audio download the first time you use them.
Your words stay yours
No account, advertising or cross-app tracking. Saved words and study history stay on your device, and you can export and restore JSON backups.
Also on the web
Hanzi Desk also runs in your browser at hanzidesk.com, with the same dictionaries and backup format. Dictionary, recording and font credits are in Settings → Licenses & acknowledgements.
Hanzi Desk
Free · iPhone & iPad · iOS 15.4 or later
Support and the privacy policy for Hanzi Desk live on hanzidesk.com. Hanzi Desk support
