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Pleco Chinese Dictionary — Addictive Chinese learning app with great dictionaries

Android Pleco
4.6 GP
6,380,554+
Google Play

Screenshots

Description

Been using Pleco Chinese Dictionary for a couple months now. It’s basically an all-in-one app for learning Chinese – it’s got dictionaries, flashcards, handwriting recognition, and more. Pretty solid if you’re into language learning.

Here’s what you can do: lookup words, read example sentences, practice writing characters, and even take pictures of text to translate. There’s also a cool feature where you can draw characters on the screen to look them up. Took me a while to figure that one out but it’s super useful.

Look, if you’re studying Chinese, you’ll probably love this app. It’s not perfect – there’s some ads if you don’t pay – but overall it does the job really well. Worth checking out for sure.

Editor Opinion

So here's my honest take on Pleco. I've tested a bunch of Chinese learning apps and this one's definitely one of the best. The dictionaries are super comprehensive, with tons of words and example sentences. And the handwriting recognition works great too, way better than some other apps I've tried. The only downside is the ads can get annoying if you don't pay for the upgrade. But overall, it's a really polished, feature-packed app that makes learning Chinese way easier. I'd recommend it to anyone serious about studying the language.

Manya Lyalya
Author Manya Lyalya Editor, Grand Screen

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Tons of great dictionaries and learning resources
  • Handwriting recognition is super accurate and helpful
  • Free to download, don't have to pay to access core features
  • Graphics and UI are clean and easy to navigate

Cons

  • Ads can be annoying if you don't pay for the upgrade
  • Some of the advanced features are hidden and not pretty intuitive
  • Might be overwhelming for complete beginners

Specifications

Updated 08.06.2025
Age Rating Everyone
Developer Pleco
Package Name com.pleco.chinesesystem

Ratings

92
Google Play
4.6/5
44,004 reviews
Generally Favorable
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User Reviews

Mike Ash worth Oct 15, 2025

Absolutely amazing. Every word is read slowly by Chinese speakers. For the majority of words there are example sentences which can be read out in an artificial voice. you can...

Jean Despres Oct 15, 2025

Excellent in many ways, but.... I bought the flashcard add-on recently, and still haven't been able to figure it out, in spite of hours deep diving into the very, very,...

Mark Reynolds Oct 15, 2025

I've been a Pleco user for more than a decade. The updated OCR is different, and after using it for a few weeks I can confidently say it's worse than...

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