Pleco for iPhone / iPad
Free Download!
Go to the App Store to instantly download the free basic version of Pleco for iPhone / iPad; you can add on more advanced features / dictionaries from right inside of the app, but the basic version is an excellent little dictionary in its own right, and includes the same wonderful search engine as our more advanced software.
Major Features
Amazing dictionaries - We offer two free built-in dictionaries: the popular open-source CC-CEDICT, with over 110,000 frequently-updated entries, and our own PLC dictionary, with 125,000 entries, parts of speech, and over 25,000 example sentences (with Pinyin). More than two dozen other dictionaries are available as free and paid add-ons, including licensed titles from well-known publishers like Oxford, Longman, FLTRP, Tuttle, SLPH, and Commercial Press.
Powerful merged search - look up words by Chinese characters, Pinyin (spaces / tones optional), or English, with support for wildcards and full-text search. And no need to tediously flip between all of those dictionaries to find a word - just type in your search term and instantly get a combined, frequency-sorted result list.
Links and cross-references - easily look up character components, break down words into individual characters, look up lists of words containing a particular character, and search across all dictionaries for example sentences containing a word.
Gorgeous typography - see it for yourself in our screenshots - we think we’re one of the best-looking Chinese dictionaries around. Alternate Kai/Song/Xing-style Chinese fonts are also available.
PRC/HK/Taiwan-friendly - every part of Pleco supports both traditional and simplified, headword readings can be shown in Pinyin and Zhuyin, and some dictionaries even support Cantonese. (note: stroke order diagrams do support traditional characters, but use PRC order)
Audio - Hear Mandarin and Cantonese for words and example sentences using iOS’ free built-in text-to-speech system. We also offer add-ons with native-speaker Mandarin recordings and higher-quality Mandarin TTS.
Document Reader - bring in text from the clipboard and tap on words in it to instantly look them up. Upgrade adds support for tap-lookups in text, HTML, DOC, DOCX, PDF, and EPUB files. We also offer graded readings.
OCR - look up words simply by pointing your device’s camera at them, or by tapping on them in a still image.
Fullscreen handwriting - use your device’s whole screen instead of just a little box. Extremely accurate and highly tolerant of stroke order mistakes. (enhanced $)
Flashcards - create a card from any dictionary entry with a single button tap, import premade word lists, use advanced memorization techniques like SRS, and study in a variety of modes including fill-in-the-blanks handwriting and tone drills.
Stroke Order Diagrams - animations showing you how to draw each character; 500 characters for free, 28,000 in paid version.
User dictionaries - create new dictionary entries right on your device as you encounter new words.
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
Pleco for iOS should work on any model of iPhone or iPad running iOS 15.6 or later.
Pleco is a “Universal” app and works in full-screen resolution on the iPad; we’ve even enhanced the user interface for iPad in a few places, it really makes our document reader function sing.
You don’t need a special Chinese-version iPhone / iPod, 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 Android
See this page for instructions on migrating a previously-purchased Pleco license for Android to the iPhone version of Pleco.