Nihongo is an offline Japanese dictionary, picture-to-text translator, flashcard app, and reading assistant.
Our app helps you learn Japanese naturally, using the words you encounter in daily life—on menus, signs, manga, emails, books, and more. In addition to the dictionary, you can take a picture of Japanese text or paste it from any source. Nihongo will then translate the text, add furigana or romaji, and create flashcards so you can study and steadily build your vocabulary.
Here are the complete features of the app:
DICTIONARY
* Over 200,000 words, 205,000 example sentences, and 6000 kanji entries.
* Every word clearly marked as common, uncommon, or rare.
* Add your own notes to any dictionary entry.
* Quickly identify transitive/intransitive word pairs.
* Audio pronunciations of words and example sentences (Requires Nihongo Pro)
PHOTO LOOKUP (OCR) [Pro]
* Look up words just by taking a picture.
* Uses Google Cloud Vision to provide high-quality text recognition.
* Just tap on a word to look it up.
CLIPPINGS (READING ASSISTANT) [Pro]
* Adds furigana or romaji to text pasted into the app.
* Tap on any word to see its definition without leaving the clipping.
* Flashcard deck automatically created so you can study the new words in a clipping.
* Display text horizontally or vertically.
* Have Nihongo read any clipping out loud.
FLASHCARDS [Pro]
* Flashcards automatically generated from words you lookup in the dictionary or paste into the app.
* Nihongo learns what words you know, and won't bother you again with words you've mastered.
* Built-in kanji flashcard decks up through Middle School.
* Intuitive spaced repetition flashcard system for vocabulary and kanji drawing.
* Level up flashcards by studying every day.
* No penalty for missing a day of study, come back anytime.
SEARCH
* Search using English, Japanese, or romaji.
* Supports searching for conjugated words in both English and Japanese.
* Search for kanji using radicals and stroke counts.
SAFARI EXTENSION [Pro]
* Add furigana or romaji to webpages.
* Tap on words to see definition within Safari.
Nihongo Pro Terms of Use
Read our full Terms of Service at https://nihongo-app.com/terms_of_use.html.
This app is only possible because of the JMDict (edrdg.org) and Tatoeba (tatoeba.org) projects. I highly encourage you to support these incredible projects that make apps like Nihongo possible!
I use Nihongo Pro for Kanji, phrases, and rapid flashcard creation using the dictionary and even OCR of photos of Japanese that I come across. There are a lot of features that are great to have when you are trying to figure things out. This even has the ability to insert furigana on websites in Safari like Rikaichan! The latest update adds helpful context using the Kanji radicals, which I am glad to see! I combine this with his Lessons app derived from Jalup sentence packs for a complete learning suite. This system does a better job of preventing you from being overwhelmed with too many reviews when you fall behind as compared to other learning tools I have tried, which is the key selling point for me honestly, since that is what makes it hard to recover using other flashcard systems where you take off a few weeks and come back to thousands of reviews due. I wish I has this app many years ago. I recommend giving the trial a go to see if this flashcard learning system works for you!
The Best Japanese Dictionary App
Skulthuggery
This is hands down the best Japanese dictionary app on the app store. The free version already comes with many great features such as animated kanji stroke order, tons of example sentences, and conjugation charts for each word, but the paid version takes it to a whole new level, and it’s reasonably priced too. The paid version allows you to take photos of japanese text and paste them into the app, which will then highlight words in the text for you to click on and it will give you their meaning. You can then click on them again to go to their dictionary entry for more information. This feature alone has made my japanese learning experience so much easier and faster. Even better, premium allows you to turn any dictionary entry into a flashcard with the click of a single button, so you don’t have to spend hours writing your own flashcards. Premium also comes with a timed-repetition based review system for your flashcards, similar to Anki, where cards you’re less familiar with are reviewed more frequently, but as you get better at each word they show up less and less. This ensures your flashcard practice is used efficiently by targeting words you’re less familiar with. Premium also comes with the ability to add furigana and clickable dictionary entries to japanese safari webpages. This makes reading practice online much easier. These are only a few of the great features this app has to offer, but there are many more.All in all, i couldn’t rate this app high enough, and if i could give it more than 5 stars i would. It’s also developed by just one guy and despite being a one person project, it is exceptionally well put together. It is the highest of professional quality and you can feel the love and passion he puts into the app, which is why i decided to support him by purchasing the life-time subscription for $50, and it has been well worth it. To end, this app is amazing, if you’re serious about learning Japanese, this is an essential purchase.
Works well for reading manga
Reachfh99
I am using this to read manga for learning Japanese. I do a screen capture and load it into the app, which recognizes text. I can then look up words. On the whole, it works quite well, and is the best I have found. It ends up getting about 80% of the text recognized by OCR, particularly good for kanji. The dictionary is good as well. Things that are not working as well as I would like: * It tends to translate word by word (or short phrase), which makes it miss some phrases * The missing 20% of the text that it can’t recognize for OCR, sometimes inexplicably, which exacerbates the problem above of not correctly translating a phrase. * The number of clicks required to read page after page is high. It would be nice if this use case was streamlined. I generally pair it with DeepL for whole sentence translation. That is pretty amazing, but doesn’t do OCR. It would be great to be able to make it easier to e.g. copy all the text found, or do some deeper integration.
Developer Response
Thanks for taking the time to write up the detailed feedback, this is really useful. FWIW I'm working on a whole new text parser, which should help with a lot of the recognition problems you're having. Full-text OCR is also definitely on my short-list of features to add. Thanks!
The Perfect App
DarkRedAngel247
This is the best app I have ever used in my life. Have tried other OCR apps to use on manga and they are complicated to use/don’t work well. I love how I can just click on any word and with a tap of a button able to the add the image so I can see where that vocabulary word is coming from/get context. It’s also easy to transfer decks from iPhone to iPad if you are unable to sync. Press share and then email it to yourself as if you click on export it’s in a format only Anki can read. You can even reorder vocabulary so if you accidentally deleted a word just re add it back it and click on the i button by the deck name. I’ve never happy I got the lifetime while it was 50% off. Worth every penny.
Major Features
* iPhone Duo Support - Nihongo adapts as you fold and unfold your iPhone Duo, making the most of both displays.
* Two Column Reading Mode - Read Clippings and use Photo Lookup with dictionary definitions beside your text or photo. Requires iOS 27.1 or later.
Other Improvements
* Add labels to handwriting suggestions to distinguish similar hiragana, katakana, and kanji characters.
* Replace the retired OCR.space option with improved on-device Photo Lookup, including vertical Japanese text on iOS 26 and later.
* Add a monthly newsletter from Nihongo's creator. Join from Settings for app news and upcoming features.
* Improve the app icon’s appearance in Dark Mode.
Bug Fixes
* Fix kanji reading examples to show spellings containing the kanji you’re viewing.
* Fix Dutch, Spanish, French, and German translations.
* Fix word flashcard text shrinking after the first card appears.
* Fix flashcard content being obscured when Reduce Transparency is enabled on iOS 26.
* Fix the appearance of Done buttons when editing notes or completing flashcard sessions on iOS 26 and later.
* Fix some kanji elements appearing blank in kanji breakdowns.
* Fix kanji-element headings being hidden behind navigation buttons in iPad popovers.
* Fix incorrect word counts and a possible crash when navigating highlighted words in Clippings.
* Fix Photo Lookup failing to open images supplied by Shortcuts.
* Fix the tab bar disappearing when switching tabs as a flashcard session opens.
* Fix clipped letters in flashcard editor note previews.
* Fix the radical keyboard appearing empty after resizing an iPad window.
Version 1.36
The developer, Serpenti Sei Japan, 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:
Purchases
Location
Usage Data
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
Serpenti Sei Japan LLC
Size
516.4 MB
Category
Reference
Compatibility
Requires iOS 18.6 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 18.6 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 18.6 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 15.6 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
Apple Vision Requires visionOS 2.6 or later.
Languages
English and 7 more
English, Dutch, French, German, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese
