About this app

The ultimate solution for quickly looking up Chinese words on your smartphone or tablet, no matter what app (or system screens) you are using.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This app is for reading standard text in apps and websites, not for stylized text in images (e.g. Manhua)

The world's first app (on any platform) to combine in-app screen capture with OCR technology.

If you're not satisfied, for any reason, within 30 days you get a full refund, period, no questions asked. We don't want your money if you're not amazingly happy. Simply send us an email.

If you experience any issues (for example, device-specific issues we may not yet be aware of) please send us an email.

When the app is running, there is an always-present "handle" floating over your screen. When you want to look up a Chinese word, place the handle next to the word, and you will see a popup containing the dictionary definition. You can also play the audio, copy to clipboard, add to you starred lists or simply jump to the definition in our dictionary app.

Please note: this app uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology so not always will every character be correctly recognised. However, in supported scenarios you should get at least 99% accuracy.

Works with regular lines of text and most text in images. Not suited for stylised text or text on complex/patterned backgrounds.

A persistent notification allows you to easily hide/show the handle. When the handle is hidden, the status bar icon is also hidden to keep your status bar clean! You can optionally show the notification at device startup and also control hiding/showing the notification from the main app screen.

This works with our Mandarin (free and paid) and Cantonese (paid) dictionary apps.

Typical usage scenarios:

* Instant messaging (e.g. WeChat, Line, Messenger)
* Websites
* Apps only localised to Chinese (so buttons etc are not in your language)
* Photos containing regular text (e.g most menus)
* Maps
* System language is Chinese but is not your native language (great way of learning Chinese!)

Please note: this app does not support vertical text, although we will probably add this in a future update.

Characters supported: 6703 (Simplified), 5401 (Traditional) covering a total 8972 unique characters

Recognition accuracy: 99.5% (Simplified), 98.7% (Traditional) based on various scanned books and newspapers

Important note: If you are using a "lux" app (e.g. Lux Lite, Twilight or 藍色光濾波器) to control the screen colors, this may prevent you from clicking the confirmation button to start screen recording. In this case, you would need to turn off (or uninstall) that "lux" app.


Please report any bugs or suggestions to us via e-mail.

Permissions are explained in our website FAQ: https://hanpingchinese.com/faq/#permissions-popup

New features

• Bug fixes