Discover, understand, save, and remember Chinese words: every definition, example, and grammar note in your own language. All in one modern reader, fully offline.
Made with care by a student of Chinese, with 15+ years building apps.
Coming soon to the App Store & Google Play
The most advanced Chinese OCR in a reader app, and it runs entirely on your device. Drag the handle to compare what's there with what Zimu reads: words segmented, characters recognized in both simplified and traditional, pinyin generated, in real time.
Recognition runs on-device. Segmentation and pinyin appear in real time.
Look up characters, words, and phrases right where you need them. No app-switching, no copy-paste, no losing your place.
Cards that show up right before you'd forget. Save words as you read, tag them however suits you. Zimu builds the deck for you, and brings each word back just before it slips. A focused drilling mode for when you want to push, filters for when you want to narrow in.
Ten themes, light and dark, tuned for long reading sessions on a couch, on a plane, or at 1 a.m. before bed. Pick one to try below; the whole site (and the screenshot) follows.
Pair any two with system light and dark, and Zimu remembers.
Save a word on your iPhone. Pick up the review on your iPad. Notebook, flashcards, and review schedules all stay in sync automatically.
Not just the interface: definitions, explanations, example sentences, and grammar notes, all localized. Nine languages today, more on the way.
Auto-cycles. Tap a language to pause and explore.
Zimu started from a recurring problem: I could read most of a passage, but a few unknown words would stop me cold. The fix usually meant leaving the page, open a dictionary, guess at pinyin, scroll, copy, paste, lose my place.
I wanted one place to scan, look up, save, and review, without breaking the rhythm of reading. Zimu is that place. Built for the way I actually study, with the hope it works for you too.
Chinese learners have spent a long time copy-pasting between dictionary apps, translators, and notes. Zimu rolls those steps into one place.
Zimu is launching on iOS first, with Android following soon after. Join the waitlist and we'll email you the day each one is ready.
Yes, all of it. OCR, dictionary, segmentation, pinyin, stroke order, translation, notebook, and flashcards all work without a network. iCloud sync is the only thing that needs the internet.
Save the words you want to remember as you read, tag them however suits you, and Zimu takes it from there. Reviews use a modern spaced-repetition schedule so each word comes back right before you'd forget it. There's a focused drilling mode for when you want to push, and filters so you can review just one tag, or a saved set of them.
Sentence-level translation runs entirely on your device using Apple's on-device language models. It's a hint, not a crutch, designed to keep you reading rather than replace the reading.
If you've used Pleco or another dictionary app, Zimu will feel familiar (tap-to-look-up, a word list, flashcards), but it's built around reading. Camera OCR is built in rather than an add-on, word segmentation is neural instead of dictionary-greedy, pinyin is resolved in context, and the whole dictionary (definitions, examples, and grammar) comes in your own language. And you can bring your existing list over with a Pleco import.
Yes, import a Pleco export (.txt or .xml), and back up or restore your whole notebook as a file. Both directions are covered.
Both. The OCR is trained on both; the dictionary maps traditional variants back to their simplified entries automatically.
Coming soon to iOS & Android. The lookups, notes, and review are all built in.
Coming soon to the App Store & Google Play
