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As the title says, I am looking for an app to learn stroke order and writing chinese characters. Ideally, the software would eventually teach me to draw a character (with my fingers on the touchscreen) based on a given Pinyin, and verifies if I obey the stroke order and the direction of the strokes.

If that app contains about thousand characters it would be enough for the beginning. I find it vain to do this on paper using animations like those available online. Since the chinese language kit on the phone already recognizes drawings of characters (cf. this post), this should be easily implemented and was probably already done.

I am interested in the simplified characters with their official stroke order. Please do not say that this is "off-topic". It is vital for me to learn this. Thank you for sharing your insights.

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5 Answers 5

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I know of two apps:

  1. Pleco with Stroke Order Add-on Pleco is a comprehensive free Chinese app with many paid-for add-ons. IIRC, you can download a free trial of the stroke order.

  2. estroke This is a dedicated paid-for stroke order app. It also pronounces the name of the stroke while drawing the character. I find the interface messy.

PS: Which system do you use? Android or iOS?

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  • Thanks nemu. I am using Android. Because Skritter is expensive, I also looked for alternatives. The one you give (Pleco+Add-on) sounds reasonable and cheaper. I can also recommend the webpage yellowbridge yellowbridge.com/chinese/… It offers stroke order diagrams with learning interface.
    – Christoph Mark
    Mar 26, 2019 at 11:43
  • On Android you can also check Hanping Pro. It's similar to Pleco, but it's Android only and I prefer it to Pleco, it just works better for me.
    – Curiosity
    Jan 24, 2020 at 13:06
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A free option is TOFU Learn which is what I've been using for years. It has the HSK decks already available, and it's simple enough to write your own (and import the pinyin and definitions from CC-EDICT etc.).

I'm unwilling to pay for Skritter (which is undoubtedly better) simply because it's too expensive when there is a perfectly good free alternative. Pricing is hard to find on their website; their legacy page says it's $14.99 per month.

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Have you tried Skritter?

They offer:

Handwriting Recognition
With Skritter you write characters in your browser and get real-time grading.

Which sounds like what you are looking for.

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I take advantage of both Pleco and Skritter. I use Pleco for looking up the meaning of Chinese words and use Skritter to save words then play games with words I've saved before to remember stroke order and components of Chinese characters

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The game 'Chinese Writer' (with the icon of a red lantern and 写 character) is pretty nice. HSK1 characters are all free and if I remember correctly it's around 10 dollars to unlock the others ... even if you do not play the game you still get the stroke order for the simplified -or traditional- characters + an explanation + the name of the stroke. It's pretty neat.

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