Pleco Software

Latest News

  • Chinese History: A New Manual, Seventh Edition

    We’re proud to announce the release of the new Seventh Edition of Endymion Wilkinson’s Chinese History: A New Manual, published exclusively as an electronic edition by Pleco. In addition to being available in our iOS and Android apps – with a 50% discount for people who purchased the previous edition through us – it’s also …Read More »

Key Features

  • OCR

    Look up unknown Chinese words ‘live’ using your device’s camera, or tap-lookup words in a still image.

  • Handwriting

    Look up words by drawing them on the screen; very accurate and tolerant of stroke order mistakes.

  • Dictionaries

    Huge and growing collection of licensed dictionary databases, including titles from Oxford, Longman, FLTRP, and many other major publishers.

  • Audio

    Recordings from two different native speakers for 34,000 Mandarin words, with speech synthesizer (for sentences) and Cantonese support as well.

  • Flashcards

    Insanely powerful / customizable system, making it extremely easy to add new flashcards from dictionary entries or import pre-made vocabulary lists.

  • Document Reader

    Look up words in a document simply by tapping on them; supports TXT/EPUB/DOC/PDF files and web pages on iOS, TXT/PDF files on Android.

  • Screen Reader

    Android-only; look up Chinese words in any app on your device by tapping on a floating button.

  • Incredibly Fast

    We use a custom-built database engine so fast that it can search and process results from a dozen different dictionaries before you’ve finished lifting your finger off the screen.

  • Well-Supported

    We’ve been in business for 20 years, and offer free compatibility updates whenever possible; we have users who bought the Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary from us for Palm Pilot in 2001 and are still able to use that same purchase on their brand-new iPhone or Samsung Galaxy in 2020 without ever having had to pay an upgrade fee.