Pleco Chinese Dictionary

Name: Pleco Chinese Dictionary
Author: Pleco

3.2.101

Play Protect

Pleco

4.725M+ installs

Download APK

Chinese dictionary with handwriting, OCR, flashcards, audio, Cantonese, and more

Pleco Chinese Dictionary: lookup, OCR and flashcards

By Irfan Rosli

News editor

130,000 words in two bundled dictionaries, CC-CEDICT and PLC
Handwriting input with a free basic recognizer
Camera lookup of text in live view or a still image (paid)
Floating tap-lookup in other apps, with camera OCR as a paid add-on
Flashcards made from dictionary entries, with SRS and tone drills
Stroke order animations: 500 free, 28,000 in the paid add-on

What Pleco does and who it suits

Pleco Chinese Dictionary is a Chinese-English dictionary that also reads documents and runs flashcards. It is aimed at people learning Chinese, and it can be searched by keyboard, pen, voice or camera. The developer says it has been making Chinese dictionary software since 2000.

The free app includes CC-CEDICT and the developer's own PLC dictionary, which together cover 130,000 words and 20,000 example sentences with Pinyin. The other lookup tools are for when you meet a character in another app, a PDF or a photo and want its meaning without retyping it.

Searching the dictionary by characters, Pinyin or sound

Search accepts Chinese characters, Pinyin with or without spaces and tones, or a mix of the two, and supports wildcards and full-text search. Tapping any character or word inside an entry opens its own definition, so you can follow references from one entry to the next. Entries can show traditional or simplified characters, with Zhuyin as well as Pinyin for pronunciation.

Cantonese headwords and searches work in Jyutping and Yale romanization. Eight more dictionaries are free to download, including a 22,000-entry Cantonese-English one, and 19 others are paid upgrades. Voice recognition looks up a word you speak into the microphone.

Looking up characters by drawing, speaking or pointing a camera

Handwriting input lets you draw an unknown character on the screen. The basic recognizer is free, and the enhanced version is a paid add-on. Stroke order animations show how each character is written, with 500 included in the free app and 28,000 in the paid add-on.

Live OCR looks up Chinese words when you point the camera at text, or when you scroll across a still image; it is a paid feature. The floating screen reader lets you tap Chinese in other apps to get a lookup, and the reader is free while its OCR is paid. The developer describes it as useful for getting by in Chinese-speaking places without knowing Chinese.

Reading Chinese documents and web pages

The document reader opens Chinese-language text and PDF files, and you look up unknown words by tapping them. This is a paid feature. In the free app you can look up characters on web pages through the share menu and in other documents by copying text to the clipboard.

Study happens through flashcards, which you can create from any dictionary entry with one tap. They support spaced repetition (SRS), premade word lists, and study modes including fill-in-the-blank and tone drills; the simple version is free and the full-featured one is paid. Headwords have male and female native-speaker audio for more than 34,000 words, with multi-syllable audio as a paid add-on, and example sentences can be read aloud with text-to-speech.

Paid add-ons and moving to a new device

Paid add-ons are optional upgrades, and the free app shows no ads. The developer says add-ons move to a new device like any other paid app and reactivate once you open the free app there.

The developer also says a dictionary bought for a Palm Pilot in 2001 can still be used on a new Android phone without paying an upgrade fee.

What's new

May 14, 2026

• Added updated flashcards for the 2026 HSK 3.0 to Import/Export / Install Premade Cards; these also include about 100 custom definitions to help ensure that the important HSK-relevant senses are surfaced for every word.
• Overhauled our 'experimental OCR' algorithm (Settings/OCR), making it much faster, better at detecting single-character rects, supporting it in live as well as still OCR, and adding an option to bring back the old green overlay interface when it's turned on.
• Bug fixes.

About this APK

The build we hold is Pleco Chinese Dictionary 3.2.101 (APKS split bundle) for Android 9.0 and up.

Version: 3.2.101; 3460
Requires Android: 9.0+

Package ID: com.pleco.chinesesystem
Format: APKS split bundle
Malware scan: Google Play Protect
Permissions: 18 declared · 5 sensitive; Camera
Draw over other apps
Modify files on your device
Read phone status and identity
Read your photos
Signed by: O=Pleco Software
Certificate SHA-256: 780a2a639a3ccb65621e0caccf18fa38c91f6cbf351d453742ebe2a114b09624