Tomoshi Japanese Dictionary
Say it and write it right
Only for iPhone
Free · Designed for iPhone. Not verified for macOS.
iPhone
A Japanese-English dictionary built for producing Japanese: core lookup offline, pitch accent, example sentences, verb pairs and nuance notes.
Tomoshi is a Japanese-English dictionary built for producing Japanese, not just decoding it. It helps you say it and write it right.
■ Lookup
· Type Japanese, kana, romaji or English; candidates appear as you type
· 210,000+ entries, with English-to-Japanese reverse lookup for when you know the word in English and need the Japanese
· Results follow the spelling you searched, so 「明」 does not surface entries that look unrelated
■ Definitions you can use
· English definitions and part-of-speech tags
· Reading, pitch accent and a pitch-accent curve
· Conjugation table at a glance
· Example sentences with furigana that follows the entry you are reading
■ Help with producing Japanese
· Transitive / intransitive pairs: 「開く／開ける」-style verb pairs shown side by side with matching example sentences
· Near-synonym notes: how similar words differ and which one fits which situation
· Kanji spelling notes: what each spelling of the same word is used for
■ Remember it
· Save any entry to the wordbook and review it on a spaced-repetition schedule
· Listen-only drills: hear the word without seeing it and train your ear to react
· A small red dot appears when words are due; after a session you see your review streak
· Export and import the whole wordbook, or back it up daily to your own iCloud Drive
■ AI explanations
· Paste a whole sentence for a grammar breakdown with furigana; every word in the reading is tappable and leads back to the dictionary
· Expressions the dictionary does not cover are handed to AI, so you are never stuck at "no results"
· When the model is not sure, it says so instead of inventing a plausible-sounding explanation
■ Audio
· Entries, example sentences and whole sentences can be read aloud with cloud-synthesised voices
■ Privacy
· No account; no name, email or phone number collected
· Lookup history, wordbook and review progress stay on your phone (and in your own iCloud backup) — I cannot see them
· No ads, no third-party analytics
· Crash reports are sent by default, can be turned off in Settings, and never include what you searched
· Full policy: tomoshi.app/privacy/en
■ Connectivity
· The first launch downloads the dictionary data once; after that, core lookup works offline
· AI explanations and speech are the two features that need a connection
■ Free
Looking words up is free forever: the complete dictionary data, offline lookup and the error-reporting feature are free now and will stay free. Cloud features such as AI explanations and cloud speech are free to use today, within a daily quota. Every call to them has a real server cost behind it, so they will move to paid to cover that cost. Put simply: the dictionary is free; the cloud services that cost money to run will eventually be paid. I would rather state the rule from day one.
■ Where the data comes from
· Entries are based on JMdict / EDRDG and other open dictionary projects; example sentences partly from Tatoeba
· Verb pairs, nuance notes and reverse lookup are AI-assisted and cross-checked by multiple models
· Pronunciation and pitch accent are human-verified
· Full attribution in the app under Me → Settings → Open-source licences
■ Other platforms
Desktop versions for Windows and macOS are at tomoshi.app, with a select-to-look-up browser extension.
Independent developer · Free · No ads
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
This release rolls up 1.0.16 to 1.0.18:
· English interface. Switch to English and the interface, the What's new page and AI sentence explanations all come in English
· Romaji lookup (English interface or English dictionary pack): type taberu to find 食べる; conjugated forms such as tabeta are recognised too
· Hiragana and katakana cross-lookup: searching たばこ finds entries recorded only as タバコ
· AI-generated content is now labelled consistently: example translations, nuance notes, grammar cards and kanji glosses all say when they were generated by AI, and content generated live in the cloud can be reported
· Error messages are now localised explanations, with technical details in small print
· Fixed: the dictionary-update banner no longer covers the search box on the home screen; the home screen no longer scrolls slightly
· Fixed: kanji spelling cards were missing entirely with the English dictionary pack; senses without a definition now show the English gloss instead of a blank
· Kanji spelling cards no longer list spellings that are not in the headword; entry, grammar and AI cards share one header layout
· The iCloud backup note in the wordbook only appears when iCloud is actually available
The developer, Yuanyi Zhang, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
- User Content
- Search History
- Identifiers
- Diagnostics
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Yuanyi Zhang
- Size
- 19.6 MB
- Category
- Education
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 15.4 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 15.4 or later. - iPod touch
Requires iOS 15.4 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 12.3 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
English and 2 more
- English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese
- Age Rating
13+
- 13+
- Infrequent
Profanity or Crude Humor
Sexual Content or Nudity
- Copyright
- © 2026 Zhang Yuanyi