Foundations hub
Pinyin, the four tones plus the neutral tone, radicals and stroke basics — a guided start before HSK 1.
Hanzijo is a free iOS app that takes you from your first tone to HSK 9 — characters, words, grammar, speaking and listening, all in one path built around how memory actually works.
Most people who start learning Chinese quit at the same wall: they can recognise a few hundred characters but can’t remember them, can’t hear the tones, and can’t follow a real sentence. The problem usually isn’t effort — it’s that the tools are scattered. One app for flashcards, another for grammar, a podcast for listening, a notebook for tones. Nothing connects, so nothing sticks.
Hanzijo was built to fix that. Everything a learner needs lives in one place and feeds one spaced-repetition engine, so every review reinforces everything else — the character you met in a lesson comes back in a conversation, a dictation clip and your lock screen. The design is deliberately calm: no lives, no punishing streaks, because durable learning comes from consistency, not anxiety.
All four tones plus the neutral tone are colour-coded everywhere and paired with native audio, and a dedicated tone trainer drills the pairs your ear still mixes up.
Every character and every word has a mnemonic built from its radicals and components — the layer most apps skip.
266 conversations, 108 dictation lessons cut from real videos, any video you paste in, and an on-device OCR scanner for the menus and signs around you.
Home, lock screen and quiz widgets turn the dozens of times you glance at your phone into tiny, effortless reviews.
Twenty-six tools that take you from your first tone to HSK 9 — characters, speaking, listening, reading real Chinese, and remembering it for good. Tap a group to explore.
Pinyin, the four tones plus the neutral tone, radicals and stroke basics — a guided start before HSK 1.
3,088 characters with pinyin, colour-coded tones and stroke order, organised level by level.
10,940 words across the reformed HSK 1–9, each with native audio and example sentences.
558 grammar points — 了, 把, 是…的, 比 and the rest — with examples and quizzes that make you use them.
A memory hook for every character and every word, built from its radicals and components.
Hear it, pick the tone. Minimal-pair drills that retrain your ear for the sounds English doesn’t have.
Graded HSK-style reading passages and listening practice with native audio.
266 real-life dialogues from HSK 1 to HSK 9 with play-along audio, the key points explained, and a quiz after every scene.
Say each line out loud — speech recognition checks your pronunciation and shows what to retry.
108 lessons and 962 sentences cut from real Chinese videos, HSK 1–9: listen, rebuild each sentence, replay and slow down.
Paste a link to any Chinese video: every spoken line is split into words with pinyin, ready to save.
Realistic, timed practice exams with skill-by-skill review of what you got wrong.
Meaning, pinyin, tone and listening questions that check you can recall it, not just recognise it.
Point your camera at menus, signs, packaging or books — pinyin and meaning for every word, fully on-device.
Type or paste any sentence: Hanzijo splits it into words, adds pinyin and detects the grammar patterns inside.
A character or word on your lock screen all day — learning without opening the app.
Your words on the home screen, one tap away from their lesson.
Answer a quick question right on your home screen. Thirty seconds, many times a day.
Every item grows from seed to ancient tree, reviewed right before you would forget it — from 4 hours to 30 days.
Reminders when reviews are due that respect your sleep — never between 10 pm and 8 am.
Build your own decks from lessons, scans and videos, star favourites, and quiz yourself on any collection.
See what you know, what is due and how your streak is growing, at a glance.
A step-by-step roadmap inside the app, from zero to HSK 9, so you always know what comes next.
Progress is encrypted and synced across devices; lessons and reviews keep working offline.
A calm interface in light or dark, with colour themes to make it yours.
A single Premium unlocks Hanzijo, Kanjijo (Japanese) and Hanguljo (Korean).
Free to download on iPhone. Start today, at your own pace.
Download Hanzijo FreeEvery part of the app feeds the same review engine, so nothing you learn is left behind.
Hanzijo is free to download, and the free plan always keeps full access to all core learning content — you never hit a wall that stops you studying.
Premium removes the limits for learners who want to move faster — and the same Premium account also unlocks Kanjijo (Japanese) and Hanguljo (Korean).
Hanzijo is part of a small family of calm, focused language apps from the same team, built on the same method:
Yes. Hanzijo is free to download on iPhone and the free plan keeps full access to the core learning content. Premium is optional and also unlocks the sister apps Kanjijo and Hanguljo.
All nine levels of the reformed HSK (HSK 3.0): 502 lessons with 3,088 hanzi, 10,940 words and 558 grammar points, plus HSK mock tests and a Foundations hub for complete beginners.
Yes. There are 266 conversation lessons with play-along audio and shadowing (speech recognition checks your pronunciation), 108 dictation lessons cut from real Chinese videos, reading and listening tracks, and Learn From a Video for any video you choose.
Simplified characters, the standard used by the HSK and in mainland China. When you learn from a video, Hanzijo prefers simplified subtitles automatically.
Yes — a lock screen widget, a home screen widget and an interactive quiz widget, so you can review Chinese without opening the app.
Learning more than Chinese? Our sister apps use the same method - free:
日 Kanjijo - Learn Japanese (JLPT N5–N1)한 Hanguljo - Learn Korean (TOPIK 1–6)One Premium account unlocks all three apps.