The Chinese dictionary that gets out of your way
Search it, see it, write it — hear it, say it, type it. A clear answer in a second, no adverts, no subscription, no account needed, and everything works offline. Depth when you want it, never in your face when you don't.
What you get
The app itself is free, and everything below works out of the box unless it says otherwise — including things some apps charge for, like using your own Chinese font. Extras like more dictionaries, more audio and stroke animations, AnkiDroid flashcards and vocab import/export are one‑off in‑app purchases — buy once, not a subscription. See what's available →
One Search Box
Hanzi, pinyin or English all go in the same place — Hanping searches headwords and meanings together.
Learn more →Handwriting
Draw a character you can't type. Over 12,000 simplified and traditional, forgiving of stroke-order mistakes.
Voice
Say the word instead of spelling it. Mandarin and Cantonese, and it can be set up to work offline.
Image Reader
Point it at a menu, a sign or a textbook page and tap any line to look it up. Try it on three of your own photos free; the one-off purchase covers both apps.
Learn more →Document Reader
Open an article, a story or a chapter as plain paragraphs and tap any word without losing your place. Takes .txt, Word and ePub files, or pasted text.
Learn more →One Great Dictionary, Not Fifty
CC-CEDICT is built in, and Hanping searches Wenlin's ABC dictionaries too — so a word CC-CEDICT lacks still comes back with its pinyin, free, rather than "no results".
Learn more →Native Speaker Audio
Real recordings, not synthesis. All single syllables are included, plus a selection of multi-syllable words; the full set of over 4,000 is an in-app purchase.
Example Sentences
Over 7,500 included, each with characters, pinyin and a translation. Playing them back in four AI voices (Mainland or Taiwan Mandarin) is an in-app purchase.
Learn more →Stroke Animations
Watch how a character is actually written, for over 1,000 characters free and over 8,000 more as an in-app purchase.
Learn more →Hanzi Decompositions
See what a character is built from, and which part is telling you how to pronounce it.
Learn more →Stars, Tags and Notes
Star a word, file it under your own tags, add a note, and find it again in history. Cloud backup keeps all of it with your Hanping account, free.
Learn more →No Ads, Works Offline
No adverts and no internet connection required — even voice recognition can be configured to work on a plane.
Still here. Still shipping.
Hanping has been on Android since October 2009 — no other Chinese dictionary has been there longer. It has been built and maintained by the same person for all 17 years, through 10 major versions. Version 7 was a rebuild from scratch, which is why it took four years; the most recent update was October 2026.
Every release since 2010 is written up. Read the release notes →
- v1 2009 Android
- v2 2010 ABC dicts
- v3 2012 Merged search
- v4 2015 Anki
- v5 2016 Stroke animations
- v6 2017 Enhanced tags
- v7 2022 Rebuilt
- v8 2024 Pro free
- v9 2025 iOS
- v10 2026 Readers
- v10.1 2026
Learning Cantonese instead?
Hanping Cantonese pairs the CantoDict dictionary with the same app, with Jyutping and Yale, traditional and simplified characters, and native speaker audio for every syllable.