Pleco for Android
Free Download!
If you’re using an official Google-approved Android device that supports Google Play, open up Google Play, search for “Pleco” and tap “Pleco Chinese Dictionary” to instantly download the free basic version of Pleco for Android.
You can also install Pleco directly from our own server by typing pleco.com/getandroid in your device’s web browser.
You can buy lots of interesting add-ons to make Pleco more useful, but even the free version stacks up well against any other paid or free Chinese dictionary on Android - it’s a wonderful little app with two great dictionaries, the same fantastic search engine as our full app, lite versions of our flashcard / text reader functions and a fantastically customizable interface. And no ads, we won’t even nag you about buying add-ons.
Major Features
Great dictionaries: the free app comes with two dictionaries - CC-CEDICT and our in-house PLC dictionary - which together cover 130,000 Chinese words and include 20,000 example sentences with Pinyin. We offer 8 more free dictionaries as optional downloads, including a 22,000-entry Cantonese-English dictionary, and 19 other great dictionaries are available as paid upgrades.
Handwriting input: lookup unknown characters by drawing them, with a best-in-class recognition engine.
Live Optical Character Recognizer (OCR): look up Chinese words in the dictionary simply by pointing your device’s camera at them, or by scrolling around a still image.
Screen Reader/OCR: instantly tap-lookup Chinese words in other apps through a floating interface; works on Android 4.1 and later.
Flashcard System: create a card from any dictionary entry with a single button tap, import premade word lists, use advanced techniques like SRS (spaced repetition), and study in a variety of modes including fill-in-the-blanks and tone drills.
Audio Pronunciation: instantly hear male + female native-speaker audio for Chinese dictionary headwords; recordings available for over 34,000 words. (stitched-syllable free, multi-syllable $) Or listen to example sentences with text-to-speech.
Powerful search: look up words by Chinese characters, Pinyin (spaces/tones optional), or a combination, with support for wildcards and full-text search.
Cross-referencing: tap on any Chinese character / word in any dictionary entry to bring up its definition.
Stroke Order Diagrams: animations showing you how to draw each Chinese character; 500 in free app, 28,000 in paid add-on.
Voice Recognition: look up words by speaking them into your device’s microphone.
Document Reader: open a Chinese-language text or PDF file and look up unknown words in the dictionary simply by tapping on them. You can also look up characters on web pages through “Share” and in other documents through the clipboard. (free)
PRC- and Taiwan-friendly: supports traditional and simplified characters (in dictionary definitions, stroke order, search, OCR, and handwriting), and supports Zhuyin (with ruby support) as well as Pinyin for pronunciation display.
Cantonese: display headwords + perform searches in Jyutping/Yale romanization. We also offer Cantonese dictionary and Cantonese audio add-ons.
No ads, No subscriptions: all of our paid add-ons are one-time purchases and we don’t nag you to buy them; we aim to make our app functional and pleasant to use even for people on the free version.
System Requirements
The current version of Pleco for Android is designed to work on devices running Android 9 or later, with 64-bit processors.
Pleco does not require Google Play support at all; you can download our free app from our website and purchase add-ons for it in our own online store, there’s no need to fiddle around with Market Enabler or swapping SIM cards or any of that. And you don’t need a special Chinese-localized Android device, Pleco works great regardless of where you purchased it / what language the operating system is configured to use.
An internet connection (WiFi or cellular) is required to purchase and download add-on dictionaries and other features; once those are downloaded, though, Pleco can run quite happily without any internet connection required.
Transferring from iOS
See this page for instructions on activating a previously-purchased Pleco license for iPhone / iPad on Android.