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 an FSRS 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
· One-tap export to Anki: card backs carry full definitions, furigana on examples and a pitch-accent curve; open the file in AnkiMobile via the Files app, and re-exporting updates the same notes
· Export and import the whole wordbook, or back it up daily to your own iCloud Drive
· Sign in and your wordbook and review progress sync between your phone and desktop, merging changes from each device instead of overwriting them
■ 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
■ Reading
· Public-domain classics from Aozora Bunko, graded by difficulty, with a furigana toggle — tap any word to look it up
■ Audio
· Entries, example sentences and whole sentences can be read aloud with cloud-synthesised voices
■ Privacy
· No account needed for anything; sign in with an email code (no password) only if you want the wordbook to sync across devices — no name or phone number collected
· Lookup history stays on your device — I cannot see it; the wordbook and review progress stay local too (with your own iCloud backup) until you sign in, and deleting your account removes the cloud copy
· 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, which I cover myself for now; if a growing user base pushes server and AI costs beyond what I can carry, they may become paid to balance them. 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
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What's new:
· iPad support: the app no longer runs as an enlarged iPhone app. When the screen is wide enough, the results page uses the same layout as the desktop version, with landscape, Split View and windowed multitasking; narrow windows switch back to the phone layout
· Conjugated forms now tell you their dictionary form: type たべた or 埋まらぬ and the suggestions offer the dictionary-form entry; after searching, a line above the entry explains it (“埋まらぬ” is the negative (nu) of “埋まる”), and the search box keeps what you typed
· The conjugation table is more complete: verbs gain polite forms, the classical negative ず・ぬ and the causative-passive; adjectives gain the polite negative. Forms such as 解けず and 書かずに can be looked up too, and the table follows your text size setting
· Search suggestions are grouped (common words → reverse lookup → grammar → uncommon words), with a category bar at the bottom when the list is long; romaji (e.g. tokoro) now finds grammar too
· Searching also switches to the Japanese spelling: a spelling with simplified or traditional Chinese characters such as ご协力 opens ご協力, with a note and a one-tap way to search what you typed instead
· Review cards can read themselves aloud when flipped (“Read aloud on flip” under “Show answer”, off by default)
· Listening practice shows the auto-flip countdown on “Show answer”; a tap right after the flip is no longer counted as a rating
· Results page: common words sit at the bottom of the candidate list, closer to your thumb; transitive/intransitive pairs list the group's other common spellings; grammar cards get section dividers and colour-coded connection tags, with part-of-speech terms in English in the English interface
· The deck list shows how many words in each deck are mastered; the feedback form's “related entry” defaults to the result you are looking at
· Fixed: review and listening cards showed a keyboard flip hint that does nothing on a phone
· Fixed: a few words with several spellings (such as 叢立ち) showed the wrong reading
Version 1.1.2
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 Linked to You
The following data may be collected and linked to your identity:
Contact Info
User Content
Identifiers
Usage Data
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
Search History
Diagnostics
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
Seller
Yuanyi Zhang
Size
20.6 MB
Category
Education
Compatibility
Requires iOS 15.4 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 15.4 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 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.