了解
· to understand
Look up the Chinese you encounter.
Save what matters.
See it again until you know it.
Lantern is a Mandarin dictionary that remembers what you care about and quietly teaches it back to you through your phone's widget. It works offline, has no ads, and is built to grow into Cantonese and the other Chinese languages.
查
Look it up
Characters, pinyin with or without tones, or English. Heard something and not sure how it is spelled? Lantern finds it anyway.
存
Save what matters
Keep the words from your life — a show, a conversation, a menu — in lists, with your own notes. On this phone, or synced across devices if you sign in.
见
See it again
Your words come back to you on a home-screen and lock-screen widget through the day, in the order you choose, until they stick.
A dictionary you can use for years
Free, and it stays free
The whole dictionary, search in every form, Simplified and Traditional, pronunciation, example sentences, saving, lists, notes, and the widget. No ads, no account required.
Study Pro
An optional subscription for people who want to go from meeting words to mastering them: structured review, quizzes built from your own lists, and tools for reading the Chinese around you. Available with the App Store release.
Mandarin first, not Mandarin only
“Chinese” is a family of languages. Lantern is built so that Cantonese, Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka, Shanghainese and others can live alongside Mandarin — with their own words, their own sounds, and the sayings of the people who speak them. Read the mission.