Learn Chinese the way your brain remembers it

Hanzijo is an all-in-one app for learning Mandarin Chinese on iPhone and iPad. It follows the nine levels of HSK 3.0 across 502 lessons, from pinyin and tones to HSK 9: 3,088 characters, each with a memory story, 10,940 words with example sentences and 558 grammar points. Alongside the lessons run 266 conversations with shadowing and 144 dictation lessons from real videos. You can switch between Simplified and Traditional characters, study a YouTube video with Chinese subtitles line by line, and review every character, word and grammar point you learn with spaced repetition.

Yes, Hanzijo is free to download on iPhone and iPad. Free users get one new lesson a day, daily reviews, the widgets, the camera scanner, lessons from a pasted video link, the first conversation topic of each level and the first two dictation lessons of each level. Premium ($5.99 a month, $39.99 a year or $149.99 once on the US App Store) removes the daily limit and the ads, opens every lesson, and also unlocks Kanjijo and Hanguljo.

Yes. Hanzijo follows the nine-level HSK 3.0 standard from HSK 1 to the HSK 7–9 band: 3,088 characters, 10,940 words and 558 grammar points in 502 lessons. The HSK 7–9 band alone has 5,578 words, 1,148 characters and 136 grammar points in 185 lessons, plus 90 conversations and 48 dictation lessons.

303 words by the end of HSK 1, 502 by HSK 2, 996 by HSK 3, 1,990 by HSK 4, 3,577 by HSK 5 and 5,362 by HSK 6. The HSK 7–9 band brings the total to 10,940 words, each with example sentences and audio. These totals are cumulative: each level includes the words of the levels before it.

Three ways. A Foundation course before HSK 1 teaches the four tones and the neutral tone with their pitch contours, then the tone changes of 3+3, 不 and 一. Every word and example sentence has audio, and lesson quizzes ask you to match characters with their pinyin. In 266 conversations you say each line out loud while speech recognition checks your pronunciation.

Yes. All 3,088 characters have a memory story built from their parts, along with pinyin, tone, stroke count, radicals, meaning and stroke order. On a character card, tap its radical to see the radical’s own pinyin, meaning and memory hook. Words are taught with example sentences and audio.

Yes. Home screen, lock screen and quiz widgets keep a character or word in front of you all day, and the quiz widget lets you answer without opening the app. The widgets need iOS 17 or later.

266 conversations and 144 dictation lessons. In the conversations you follow each line as it is read aloud, then say it yourself while speech recognition checks your pronunciation. The dictation lessons use 1,289 sentences cut from real Chinese videos: you hear a line and put its phrases back in order.

Not at the moment. Hanzijo runs on iPhone and iPad with iOS 16 or later. The free tools on hanzijo.com, such as the HSK level test and the pinyin trainer, work in any browser, including on Android phones.

A Foundation course teaches pinyin, the four tones, tone changes and the basic strokes, then nine HSK levels bring new characters and words in every lesson, a grammar point in most of them and a short quiz at the end, with conversations and dictation running alongside. Every character, word and grammar point you learn comes back through spaced-repetition review, and the widgets keep words from your lessons in view, so vocabulary, grammar, conversation and dictation sit in one place. Hanzijo is for iPhone and iPad; there is no Android version and no live tutor.

Yes. Point your camera at a menu, a sign or a page and Hanzijo reads the characters on your phone, then shows the words, characters and grammar points the text contains, with pinyin and meaning. The photo is processed on the device and is not uploaded.