8 Great Japanese Dictionary Apps to Help You Understand What You Hear & Read

To help you avoid the anxiety, paralysis by analysis, and decision fatigue associated with so many choices, I have waded through dozens of Japanese dictionary sites and apps to choose just the essential few that I think are best suited to mastering the Japanese language.

The Best Japanese Dictionary Apps for iOS & Android

Nihongo

The Nihongo iOS app was developed by Chris Vasselli, a software developer (formerly of Box, Subspace, and IBM) and Japanese learner who has really thought the user experience through. He has managed to overcome many of the problems with competing Japanese dictionary apps and continues to improve and adapt the app based on user feedback.

I especially like:

• The focus on using the app to work through authentic Japanese content.

• The auto-creation of flashcards based on words you’ve looked up.

• The ability to add photos to definitions/flashcards (an idea he says was inspired by my book Master Japanese).

• The prominent display of Common, Uncommon, or Rare next to terms so you know the usage and relative utility of a new word.

• The cool Safari extension that adds furigana to kanji on web pages.

• The “Clippings” feature which allows you to easily read and study authentic content.

• The “Contained in Clippings” feature on relevant dictionary entries so you can refer back to the source.

• The nifty in-app kanji handwriting keyboard for cases when you don’t know how a character is pronounced (and therefore can’t use roumaji input).

If you are studying Japanese and use an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch), I highly recommend checking the app out. I don’t get a single penny (or yen!) from recommending it; I just love the app and want to support Chris’ ongoing effort to make the best Japanese dictionary app and self-study tool possible.

Japanese

Though not the most creatively named app, Japanese is elegant, powerful, and easy to use. It’s free, available on iOS and Android, and comes packed with a number of excellent features I love:

• A clean, modern, intuitive interface.

• Japanese handwriting input.

• Text Reader tool for pasting in content from blogs, emails, text messages, etc.

• Built-in spaced repetition flashcards.

• Custom bookmark folders.

• Vocab lists by topic, JLPT level, and more.

• Kanji breakdowns for compound words, with the meanings and readings of each individual kanji shown.

• Conjugations charts for verbs and adjectives.

• Fast search.

• 180,000 dictionary entries and 58,000 example sentences.

The Best Online Japanese Dictionaries

Jisho

Jisho is a powerful online dictionary created by Kim Ahlström, Miwa Ahlström, and Andrew Plummer. In addition to helping you look up words, kanji, and example sentences, the developers wanted to create a tool that helps you understand authentic Japanese content, texts, and grammar patterns.

Here are some of my favorite features:

• The ability to search using English, roumaji, or Japanese.

• The ability to draw in kanji that you don’t know how to pronounce or type.

• The ability to look up kanji using radicals.

• The ability to look up words using voice-to-text.

• The autoconversion of Japanese years into the Gregorian calendar equivalent (e.g. 昭和五十五 is 1980).

• The autoconversion of Japanese numbers (e.g. 一千万 is 10,000,000).

• The use of hashtags to filter search results (e.g. add #verb to show only verb search results or #jlpt-n2 to show only kanji from the N2 level of the JLPT exam).

Incidentally, the word ji-sho (辞書) means "dictionary" in Japanese.

ALC’s Eijirou on the Web

Eijirou (英辞郎) is an online dictionary provided by ALC (アルク), a popular English language education website in Japan. This was the dictionary of choice used by my fellow translators when I worked for the Japanese government as it includes lots of phrases, collocations, and technical terms not found in other dictionaries. If you can’t find a word using the other dictionaries listed on this page, chances are that you will find it here.

Weblio

Weblio is a free online Japanese-English (和英辞典) and English-Japanese (英和辞典) dictionary. Though designed for Japanese people learning English, it's quite useful for Japanese learners, too.

Each entry includes:

• Detailed definitions

• Example usage and sample sentences

In addition to the site, there are also companion apps for iOS and Android.

Goo Jisho

Goo Jisho (goo辞書) is an online monolingual Japanese dictionary for those wanting to look up Japanese words in Japanese. This will be a bit tough for beginners and intermediate learners, but I encourage you to try making the transition as you get into the upper-intermediate to advanced level of your learning journey.

goo辞書 is actually not just one dictionary but six!

1. A Japanese dictionary (国語辞書)

2. An English-Japanese and Japanese-English dictionary (英和・和英辞書)

3. A 4-character idiom dictionary (四字熟語)

4. A kanji dictionary (漢字辞典)

5. A technical glossary (専門用語集)

6. A thesaurus (類語辞書)

The Best Desktop Japanese Dictionary Apps

Built-in macOS Dictionary

Many Mac users don’t realize that they already have access to excellent foreign language dictionaries right out of the box. You just have to enable them in settings:

1. Open the “Dictionary” (辞書) app. It’s in your Apps folder.

2. Click “Dictionary” (辞書) in the menu and then “Preferences…” (環境設定).

3. Check the box next to “ウィズダム英和辞典 / ウィズダム和英辞典 (Japanese-English)”.

Though intended for native speakers of Japanese, the Japanese-English dictionary includes a great deal of detail not usually included in English-Japanese dictionaries that Japanese learners can benefit from.

You can then search for terms within the dictionary or use the following two ways to look up Japanese words you encounter in any native MacOS apps (e.g. Safari, Mail, Messages, etc.):

1. Highlight a word and type: ⌘+Control+D.

2. Highlight a word and tap with three fingers on the Trackpad (Note that this option must be enabled first in Settings. Click on “Trackpad” then check the box next to “Loop up & data detectors”.)

Tagaini Jisho

Though the design is a bit dated, Tagaini Jisho (free for both Mac and Windows) has a number of useful features:

• Powerful search filters for vocabulary, kanji, parts-of-speech, JLPT level, etc.

• Kanji stroke order animations.

• Custom tags and notes for entries.

• Flashcards.

• Print-friendly templates for foldable pocket booklets perfect for offline study.

Hungry for more Japanese resources?

My book Master Japanese: How to Learn Japanese Anywhere in the World shows you exactly how to learn Japanese using my Anywhere Immersion Method, and includes hundreds of John-tested, John-approved Japanese learning resources.