Practice Japanese writing with Skritter, whether you have a strong grasp of written Japanese and want to remember the characters better or are a beginner who doesn’t know where to start.
Skritter has existed for more than 10 years, and for a good reason: our learners are amazing! They help us with feedback, which allows us to create what we think is the best Japanese writing app out there!
Japanese writing uses three different scripts; Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Skritter offers all three and you can learn them through our “decks” (similar to a card deck) based on topics and difficulty.
Deck examples:
- Survival Japanese (for traveling in Japan)
- Food and drinks (learn to understand the menus at your favorite Japanese restaurant with delicious sushi, ramen, and other dishes)
- Cultural topics like Samurai Japanese
- More advanced topics like foreign policy
- And many more…
First, you learn a character’s meaning, then practice drawing it and before you know it, you’ll want to learn thousands of characters, and words like these two happy users:
“If I could only keep one app on my iPod, this would be it without a doubt. Skritter will change your life!”
― Wendy Werneth, UN Translator
“Learning to write characters has never been so fun. From writing zero to 2000+ characters in six months!”
― Brian Jackson, Economist
Have questions, problems, or feedback? We would love to hear from you. Reach out to us at team@skritter.com
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Guest accounts enjoy free access to select decks forever! Unlock Review mode, and study anything you want with a premium subscription, which is available for purchase in the app. Big savings offered on 12-month subscriptions!
• One month subscription (automatically renewed until canceled)
• 12-month subscription (automatically renewed until canceled)
Recurring billing, cancel anytime. Within 24 hours before the subscription period ends, you will be charged through your iTunes account. Manage your subscription from your iTunes App Store settings where you can turn off auto-renewal at any time. Any unused portion of a free trial period, if offered, will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription to that publication, where applicable.
Privacy Policy: https://skritter.com/legal
Terms of Use: https://docs.skritter.com/article/133-terms-of-use
I use Skritter and WaniKani for vocabulary and kanji study. They compliment each other perfectly if your goal is to be able to actually write Japanese. Honestly, it helps so much with memorization too. I almost never get any characters confused that look alike because I’m able to differentiate at a “radical” level and wrote memorization comes into play. Having said that, I use Skritter for vocab only since learning just the kanji characters isn’t necessary because of the vocab practice. I keep both WaniKani and Skritter “levels” synched so if I learn 5 words in WaniKani, then I learn the same ones in Skritter the same day. I try and learn 10 vocab a day in WK and then all of the kanji/radicals immediately so it ends up being more than 10 in WK sometimes but never more than 10 in Skritter(remember only vocab for Skritter). It just becomes too overwhelming for me in Skritter if more than 10 is done(gotta get grammar in there too). I’m not trying to break records for fastest completion speed. I expect I’ll be done with WK in roughly two years. Then I’ll move on to something else likely and Skritter will be apart of it.
Developer Response
Skritter and WaniKani is a fantastic combo. Thanks for the review and we wish you all the best on your Japanese language journey. Happy skrittering!
Great for that extra reinforcement
Fu22z
I don’t know if it’s the best learning approach for a brand new Japanese learner but I have found it to be very helpful. A lot of people just focus on reading comprehension and memorizing kanji readings, but the ability to write kanji really adds to my confidence that I actually “know” the kanji and don’t need to rely on seeing it to recognize it. The app does what I need it to do but it could really shine with a few additional features. - Number of upcoming reviews would be helpful to make sure you pace yourself - My words tab could be enhanced with color coding, or some way to identify leeches/problematic cards Overall I enjoy the app and have been using it daily as a part of my studies
Developer Response
Thanks for the review and the feedback! We'll be sure to pass the feature requests along and keep working to make our apps better and better! Happy skrittering!
A pretty great studying resource, but..
bloopynoise
I really wish that instead of unlocking more lessons through a subscription, you could do a one-time payment. There’s just no way for me to justify paying $8/month for an app, even if it’s as good for studying as this is. Aside from that, I appreciate the selection of free lessons that are available. I think for a completely free selection, there’s a good amount to get someone started. The settings for recognizing text (snapping to strokes vs free strokes) are a huge deal for me and I appreciate the ability to change them without hassle. The stroke recognition + free stroke writing (instead of snapping), with hirigana katakana and some kanji all in the same app is exactly what I was looking for, and this one functions smoother than other similar ones I’ve used. This would be a perfect app if there simply was a one-time full unlock purchase for some of the later lessons (mainly the more advanced ones, such as ones for the N5-N1 etc) instead of a monthly subscription. I wouldn’t be opposed to paying if it was a one-time fee to unlock all current lessons/future lessons, or even paying by the lesson (i.e. pay $1 per set).
Developer Response
Thanks for your feedback! We currently do not plan on offering lifetime subscriptions, as our current plans give us the opportunity to continuously improve the app. We are a pay to learn app, so you can still review everything your have previously learned even after your subscription expires.
Excellent but missing one critical leaning element
Blingdingo
I am using Skritter paid subscriptions for both Japanese and Chinese. The app is wonderful and I’ve been using it for about 4 months consistently. I have learned Japanese kanji on my own in the past and what really lets you learn a character is its CONTEXT, ie what words in the language actually use this character you’re trying to learn. That’s how you build the associations that help the character stick. There’s always a moment of, “oh! That’s the character that you use the word ___!” Skritter does not do this and it’s the biggest difference from reviewing characters in a kanji book and other flashcard systems out there. In some cases, Skritter provides a sentence using the character, but what the app really needs is just a simple list of two or three of the most commonly used everyday words that use the character. It would be the bomb! Please consider this feature for the future.
Developer Response
Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback! In the future, we plan on adding more ways to learn the words in context. We do not currently have an exact timeline for when we will release this type of content, but it is definitely on our radar as a future improvement.
- Fixed YouTube "Error 153" for in-app videos
- Fixed UI layout issues with vocab screen buttons
- Fixed broken "Back to Browse" links on empty searches
- General bug fixes and improvements
Version 3.13.10
The developer, Inkren, Inc., indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
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Information
Seller
Inkren, Inc.
Size
113.9 MB
Category
Education
Compatibility
Requires iOS 14.0 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 14.0 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 14.0 or later.
iPod touch Requires iOS 14.0 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 11.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
