Download Pleco Chinese Dictionary

My iPhone is always in my pocket and has become an invaluable tool for life in Chengdu. I’ve used it for, managing daily tasks, finding my way in China, and so much more.

As each year passes, it becomes more and more capable, but the truth is that it’s nothing without the apps that I have installed on it. I’ve tried and tested hundreds of apps which which make life in Chengdu easier, and these are the cream of the crop. My essential China apps. Most of these are universal apps that work for both iPhone and iPad, and they’re all free.

Nearly all of the apps listed below are on Android as well, with the exception of the China Air Pollution Index app. #1: Pleco Chinese Dictionary. Pleco – the best Chinese dictionary This is the absolute best Chinese dictionary app you will ever find. There simply is no greater. It’s available for free, with paid add-ons which add dictionaries or features like intelligent flashcards, the unbelievable OCR feature (which I’ve before), and much more. Pleco is easy to use and includes features like color-coded characters which help you remember tones. It’s in simplified and traditional Chinese and its includes everything you really need.

AsiaObscura.com's collection of Chinglish; The Chinese-English, Chinglish Archives ChineseEnglish.com; Chinglish.com Chinese-English dictionary at Archive.is.

If you study Chinese and have an iPhone save your time and skip every other dictionary and go straight to Pleco. The Cracked Egg Las Vegas there. China Air Pollution Index The pollution in Chengdu is no joke, and the air quality data published by the US Consulate in Chengdu is considered the most authoritative.

This app delivers that information in a beautiful interface, for free. I’ve tried half a dozen other apps which report pollution in China (on Android and iOS) and none of them come close to the level of polish in this app.

Ximenes On The Art Of The Crossword Pdf Generator there. It shows current air quality values for all major Chinese cities and gives you the option of displaying Chinese government data, US Consulate data, or both. I have mine set up to show current US Consulate data for Chengdu pollution as it compares to Beijing and Guangzhou. On days that it’s really bad, I think twice about cycling across the city. At one time the pollution level dictated whether or not I wore my mask, but now I wear it whenever I cycle anywhere. Ads appear inside this app, which can be removed by donating a dollar.

I hate ads so donating a dollar was a no-brainer. Weico – the best Weibo client You probably already know that currently dominates China’s social network landscape.

Everyone is on Weibo, and much of the meaningful discussion on China happens here. What you might not know is the official Weibo app is completely outclassed by a third party client called Weico. Weico features a level of polish that you won’t find in the official app. Aside from the app being free, it features a handful of different themes you can select as well as some paid themes. All of the essential Weibo features are here, and Weico features none of the bloat of the actual Weibo website.

Hi Peter, I really couldn’t say. But I am fairly certain that I personally do not know anyone who has that app installed. Before writing this post I consulted with friends on what apps are useful to them in China and the Taxi Book app never come up.

I tried it a year ago (Dieter gave me a promo code to download it for free) and found the location information to be out of date and inaccurate aside from the app itself being very expensive. If the app were free (like every other app on this list) it would perhaps be worth a mention, but my thoughts largely echo the iTunes reviews. Not really a fan, sorry Peter. Hey Greg, The bare-bones Pleco works as a Chinese dictionary, but the add-ons are what make it really excel. Functionality like: intelligent flashcards, OCR, different dictionaries, audio pronunciation (male and female), full-screen handwriting, stroke order diagrams, and the document reader.

I purchased a handful of those but one that I use almost everyday is it he document reader. It allows you to open and translate documents (as the name suggests) but I use it for translating things copied to the clipboard. Here’s an example: I’ll get a text message with a phrase that I can’t understand, so I’ll copy it to the clipboard, open Pleco, and go to the pasteboard reader.

The text that I copied is there, and I can tap on any of the characters to see the definition and pinyin. Best of all, I can add any of these to a vocabulary list for later review, in the form of flashcards are not. Through this method, manually entering Chinese, and scanning characters that I can’t read, I’ve assembled vocabulary lists with thousands of words. This is how I’ve advanced my Chinese over the last 2 years, basically. Hope this helps.

I also use google translate to help with text messages that are hard to read at times or write a chinese email real quick. New Google maps is nice with turn by turn directions even for Chengdu. I also like QQ 音乐 it is on china store but allows for listing to almost any music for free and streams nice over 3g or wifi postagram is another nice app that sends picture postcards back to friends and family in america where the picture pops out and they have a picture of you. Only 99cents a card (includes that postage in that) •. Nimen hao, I would strongly recommend TaxiBook for newbies in China! It’s a great app that will lead you anywhere you want. Specially if you know that Chinese TaxiDrivers hardly speak English (although this is changing) and if you pronounce the name of a hotel/restaurant/street/ in ‘our’ language they will also not understand since the Chinese will transform the name to a Pinyin-version.

We, laowai from Volvo, used (and still use) it a lot! Just to be complete the ‘loading’ of the app could be improved a little! 🙂 Best regards, Patrick. Hi, iOS is where I’m really knowledgeable and can write an authoritative guide, so that’s where I will naturally lean. Most of the apps that I selected for this list are available on Android as well though, so approximately 90% of this article applies to Android users.

Google Maps gets the job done but Apple Maps is superior in China, since the map data is from a Chinese company as mentioned. Google Translate is similarly eclipsed by Pleco and its pasteboard reader in my opinion, although it only translates from English to Chinese. However if you aren’t actively learning Chinese and just want to translate something, Google Translate will work better in that case. I have Apple Maps open in front of me and can’t see any bus icons. How do you get them?

On Google Maps each bus stop is marked and if you click there is route information. This is the Auto Navi populated Apple Maps I am looking at on an iPod Touch4, with the latest iOS – it has a Bank of China outside my 小区 that I have never seen – seems a dated data set, but I’d like to know how to get to the bus information. Hang on – you have to do a query, From: To: and then you can get bus information? Is that right?

Google is quite intuitive by comparison. Yes, I don’t just rely on these to get around. But you would have to concede that Apple has driving information (parking stations and petrol stations) whereas Google provides a better guide for public transport? (I can’t test Apple bus information – says the server is not responding.) •.

Hi Charlie Thanks for going to the trouble of posting those screen shots; they are the same as I got. Google Maps has bus stops and bus routes ON the map itself, that’s what I’m saying, very convenient. Quick and easy to use, just read it. I’m probably badly missing something here – and I am probably wasting your time – but I still don’t see how Apple Maps works. It gives me several ‘routing apps’ options, one of which (Google Maps) I already have loaded.

Is Apple saying “I don’t think we’ll bother, you can get a separate app to look up bus routes.” In fact, “get Google Maps” it says. Apple Maps does not actually give me any bus information at all, does it – I am better off going straight to Google Maps, right? I thought when I pushed the Google Maps option it might give me the information I need – it doesn’t. It just sends me to the Apple Store, for something I already have loaded. For what it is worth I will use anything that gives me the information that I need. The car route works fine in Apple Maps; it gives me a route from point A to B.

I can’t get the pedestrian option to work, and the bus one just takes you to the App Store. I haven’t purchased the full-screen handwriting add-on because I don’t do much manual character input, but that is a great one.

It’s remarkable when a third party developer can beat Apple’s own character input, but Pleco has done it. Anki had such a high reputation that I purchased it on iOS even though the price was really high – I think $14.99? I was disappointed. It has a lot of features but Anki requires a lot of fiddling.

The entire system was frustratingly obtuse compared to Pleco which is a more elegant all-in-one solution. If you go with Anki you’ll be juggling several different apps for vocab list creation and review whereas with Pleco it’s all in one system. In my experience this means more time learning the language and less time wrestling with the tools. I’ve been using 4 of the 5 for a long time now, but haven’t felt the need to pay too much attention to Weibo or it’s relates apps so far, though I’m well aware of it’s overriding popularity in China. WeChat is an awesome app for keeping in touch with Chinese friends, wherever they happen to be.

I’ll have to revisit Pleco after reading this. I’m often translating in google, though it has a habit of being temperamental (usually when you need it the most), so the pasteboard feature in Pleco sounds extremely useful. I’d like to see an English version of Momo!