Read the menu
you can’t read.
Point your camera at Chinese text and pinyin appears above every character, instantly. No signal needed — recognition, readings and meanings all run on your phone.
Android 7.0+ · no account · one-time $7.99 for Pro
Everything happens on the phone.
The recognition model, the Chinese–English dictionary and pinyin conversion are all bundled into the app. That means it works on a plane, in a basement restaurant, and in places a data plan doesn’t reach.
Live pinyin overlay
Readings track the characters as you move, coloured by tone so you can hear the shape of a word before you say it.
Tap to hear and keep
One tap plays the Mandarin audio, shows the meaning, and saves the word to your list for spaced review later.
Simplified and Traditional
Reads 简 and 繁 without a setting to flip, on signs, menus, packaging and screens.
Reader for pasted text
Paste a message, an article or song lyrics. Characters mode annotates every character to tap; Lines mode puts a full pinyin line under each line, for singing along.
The clean reading page
Small print, a cluttered photo, a bad angle — press Read and the text is rebuilt as a plain white page with pinyin above every character and nothing overlapping anything. Pinch to zoom, tap a word to keep it, and if a character was misread, Not right? puts the photo’s own glyph beside the characters it most likely is.
Write it, when you can’t say it
Typing Chinese asks for the reading. Not having the reading is why you opened the app. So write the character with your finger instead — to fix a misread, to put it into the reader, or to find it again in your saved words.
Spaced review, free
Saved words come back on a schedule that adapts to what you find hard. No subscription, no account. Switch the cards around and they ask you to write the character instead of recognising it — with the stroke order a tap away when you are stuck.
Study sheets Pro
A printable PDF reading sheet from wherever you are — the photo you just took, the text you just pasted, or your whole vocabulary list. Or send your words to Anki with meanings attached.
Three taps from stuck to reading.
Point the camera
Hold your phone over the text. Pinyin appears above each character as the camera finds it — nothing to press, no photo to take.
Tap a word you want
A tap plays the audio and shows the English meaning, free and as often as you like. Want to keep it? Tap Save on the reading that pops up and it joins your word list.
Review what you kept
Your saved words come back on a spaced schedule, so the ones you keep forgetting come back sooner. Export them any time.
Reading is free. Pro is for keeping.
Pointing the camera at something is free and unlimited — so is the reader, and so is the clean page. What’s counted is keeping: the photos you read, the words you save. Nothing expires, nothing nags, and Pro lifts every limit for one payment. No subscription, no ads, no account to make.
- Live camera, unlimited
- Audio, meanings and tap-to-save
- The clean reading page
- Spaced review
- Reader for pasted text, no limit
- Write a character instead of typing it
- Search your saved words
- 10 photo reads a day
- 100 saved words
- Your latest 10 photos in the app
- Plain-text export of your words
- Unlimited photo reads
- Unlimited saved words
- Your whole photo library, with quizzes
- Translation that works with no connection
- PDF study sheets and Anki export
- Character anatomy and origin stories
- Dictionary tone palettes
- Free 3-day trial, from Settings
Your content never leaves your phone.
Not a policy written to be technically survivable — a description of how the app is actually built.
No accounts
There is no sign-up, no login and no profile. Nothing to leak, because there is nothing to store.
Nothing you read is sent
Camera frames, photos, saved words and translated text are processed on the device and stay there.
No ads, no trackers
No advertising ID, no third-party analytics SDK in the app, no cross-app tracking. This site sets no cookies either — which is why it isn’t asking you to dismiss a banner.
Usage counts are opt-in
Anonymous counts of which features get used are off unless you switch them on, so we can tell whether the free limits are fair instead of guessing.
Try it on your next menu.
Point it at whatever you like, for as long as you like — the live camera has no limit. Ten photo reads a day for the ones worth keeping, free forever. Pro is there when you want more.
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