Pleco

Pleco is a free and excellent tool. This application boasts a powerful Chinese character recognition engine and integrates functions such as a Chinese-English dictionary, document reader, and flashcards, making it easy for users to learn Chinese. With Pleco, users can directly draw Chinese characters on the screen, and the app will automatically recognize and look up their meanings. Its extensive vocabulary coverage, including numerous example sentences with pinyin, helps users progress in their language learning. In addition to the core dictionary, you can also download Chinese dialect dictionaries, including a large collection of Cantonese-English dictionaries, to further expand your vocabulary.

Features:

Great dictionaries: the free app comes with two dictionaries - CC-CEDICT and our in-house PLC dictionary - which together cover 130,000 Chinese words and include 20,000 example sentences with Pinyin. We offer 8 more free dictionaries as optional downloads, including a 22,000-entry Cantonese-English dictionary, and 19 other great dictionaries are available as paid upgrades. ($)

Handwriting input: lookup unknown characters by drawing them, with a best-in-class recognition engine. (basic version free, enhanced version $)

Live Optical Character Recognizer (OCR): look up Chinese words in the dictionary simply by pointing your device's camera at them, or by scrolling around a still image. ($)

Screen Reader/OCR: instantly tap-lookup Chinese words in other apps through a floating interface; works on Android 4.1 and later. (reader free, OCR $)

Flashcard System: create a card from any dictionary entry with a single button tap, import premade word lists, use advanced techniques like SRS (spaced repetition), and study in a variety of modes including fill-in-the-blanks and tone drills. (simple version free, full-featured $)

Audio Pronunciation: instantly hear male + female native-speaker audio for Chinese dictionary headwords; recordings available for over 34,000 words. (stitched-syllable free, multi-syllable $) Or listen to example sentences with text-to-speech (system TTS free, enhanced $).

Powerful search: look up words by Chinese characters, Pinyin (spaces/tones optional), or a combination, with support for wildcards and full-text search.

Cross-referencing: tap on any Chinese character / word in any dictionary entry to bring up its definition.

Stroke Order Diagrams: animations showing you how to draw each Chinese character; 500 in free app, 28,000 in paid add-on.

Voice Recognition: look up words by speaking them into your device's microphone.

Document Reader: open a Chinese-language text or PDF file and look up unknown words in the dictionary simply by tapping on them. ($) You can also look up characters on web pages through "Share" and in other documents through the clipboard. (free)

PRC- and Taiwan-friendly: supports traditional and simplified characters (in dictionary definitions, stroke order, search, OCR, and handwriting), and supports Zhuyin (with ruby support) as well as Pinyin for pronunciation display.

Cantonese: display headwords + perform searches in Jyutping/Yale romanization. We also offer Cantonese dictionary and Cantonese audio add-ons. (some $)

No ads: we won't even nag you about buying add-ons.

Benefits:

It includes very good free dictionaries (up to 10 through additional downloads) and many more via in-app payments.

Users can draw kanji they do not recognize for the app to recognize them.

The app includes an OCR recognition system to recognize the words that users need to understand.

It includes audio pronunciation of more than 34,000 words.

Supports traditional and simplified characters, Zhuyin and Pinyin.

It includes videos with animations to learn to trace each Chinese character.

Changelog:

- Updated to new, neural-network paid TTS

- On Android 14 and later, made Screen OCR use Accessibility rather than Media Projection

- Fixed speech recognizer doing English instead of Chinese

- Fixed a bug that flipped paused New OCR images upside-down

- Fixed Screen OCR bar position bugs

- Fixed foldable screen bugs

- Fixed a bug that could cause ebooks to lose place when rotating screen

- Made "Pleco" system selection menu command use reader if length

Conclusion:

Another very useful feature of Pleco is its ability to read characters out loud. Choose a masculine or feminine voice, and the app can read more than 30,000 different words. But it's not limited to single words, select texts to have the app read entire sentences. Pleco is an excellent learning app for anyone studying Chinese and can be a real lifesaver for anyone traveling to China.