Hanzi Pen

Learn Chinese characters by writing them.

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Frequently asked

My progress isn't syncing between my iPhone and iPad.

Open the Profile tab and look at the iCloud sync status row at the top. It will tell you exactly what's wrong — usually you're either signed out of iCloud, or iCloud is blocked for the app under Settings → [your name] → iCloud → See All → Hanzi Pen.

How is a character "mastered"?

A character moves to the Mastered bucket once your recall score is at least 0.9 (a moving average over your last several reviews) and the SRS interval has stretched past 21 days. That typically takes around 5–7 consistent "Good" or "Easy" grades.

Why does the example sentence pinyin look slightly different from my textbook?

Hanzi Pen applies tone sandhi (一 / 不 rules) and groups syllables for true compound words ("妈妈" → "māma") but space-separates the rest. Different textbooks handle this differently; both forms are accepted.

Can I export my data?

All your data lives in your iCloud private database and is automatically backed up there. Native export isn't built in yet — feel free to open an issue if you'd like a JSON export feature.

Privacy

Hanzi Pen doesn't collect any personal data. Read the full Privacy Policy for the details.

Open data sources

Hanzi Pen ships with offline dictionaries and stroke graphics from these open projects:

CC-CEDICT — word entries (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Tatoeba — example sentences (CC-BY 2.0 FR)
Make-Me-a-Hanzi — stroke graphics (LGPL / Arphic Public License)
chinese-lexicon — definitions and etymology (ISC)
Dong Chinese — etymology prose (CC BY-SA 4.0)