# KanjiBox — user reviews > 262 indexed App Store user reviews of KanjiBox by Unknown Genius Software, rated 4.60/5 from 137 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kanjibox/id322311303/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kanjibox/id322311303.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 109 · 4★ 16 · 3★ 4 · 2★ 4 · 1★ 4 ## What do users think of KanjiBox? Overall sentiment: positive **Pros** - 👍 Comprehensive kanji and vocabulary practice - 🚀 Efficient spaced repetition learning - 💡 Customizable study settings - 🚀 Syncs progress across devices - 👍 Integrates with dictionary app - 👍 Gamified learning experience - 👍 Affordable price point **Cons** - 🐛 Occasional crashes or bugs - 👎 Limited grammar practice - 👎 Sensitive kanji writing recognition - 👎 Repetitive kanji/vocabulary selection **Commonly reported bugs** - App crashes when launching at higher JLPT levels - Syncing issues between mobile and web versions - Incorrect kanji/vocabulary definitions in some cases **Most requested features** - Add more grammar and sentence-level practice - Improve kanji writing recognition accuracy - Allow searching for specific kanji or vocabulary - Provide more detailed review of missed questions ## Newest reviews (16 of 262) ### 4/5 — Can’t kanji draw my study sets anymore？ *2026-06-21* I’ve been using this program for many many years. And after a while, I just figured it was abandoned, because it hadn’t been updated in years. But I still continue to use it, with my most favorite feature being able to create my own study sets, then use those study sets in Kanji Draw. So I was excited to see this had been updated recently, and some of the new UI is nice, but it seems now that I no longer have the option to do Kanji draw with my study sets. Honestly, that was the main reason why I used this program. Being able to draw the kanji help me remember them. I really do hope this feature comes back soon. Also, with the kanji draw the current line stroke when you draw is too thin and sometimes hard to see. I preferred it in the old version where the line strokes were thicker. Also, at least on the iPad, I dislike how the draw window slightly gets smaller once you draw your first stroke. I think it tries to fit in some new text once that first stroke is drawn, and it shifts the whole draw window slightly up and a bit smaller. It can be distracting. I think if these issues can be resolved, then this will be a perfect program for studying and learning Japanese ### 5/5 — Revisiting *2024-11-20, version 2.9.9* Downloaded this program years ago…must have gotten distracted. Lots of cool additions. It’s just a great program for learning and reviewing Japanese. Thank you! ### 5/5 — the best app for studying imo *2024-10-07, version 2.9.9* Been using for over 10 years to refresh and retain my Japanese skills. Please add more grammar! ### 5/5 — La meilleure app de toutes *2024-09-10* Ayant fait le tour de beaucoup d’apps d’apprentissage de la langue, celle là est de loin la meilleure, simple et efficace, elle nous prépare le mieux pour le JLPT. Je recommande. ### 4/5 — . *2024-03-23* This app is great, but I wish there was a mode that allows the user to type in the answer for the reading mode. This is much more challenging than multiple choice. ### 5/5 — Excellent to refresh and learn Japanese *2024-02-25* Best app in town, easy to use, always up to date, been around for years, if you learn, want to learn or refresh your knowledge, this is the go to app for learners up to JLPT1. Thanks a lot to the devs for keeping the app around, free and (unless mistaken), without adds!! ### 5/5 — The best app for learning kanji and vocabulary *2024-01-19* This is my first written review. I’m writing it because this is a phenomenal app and I want to support it! If you are learning Japanese kanji, the key strokes are essential for writing and understanding. Not only can you practice strokes for kanji on this app, it has multiple levels of drills aligned to the Japanese language test levels that keep track of where you are in your learning that can sync across all of your devices. I practice on my phone and iPad whenever I have a moment. Even 10 minutes a day and you will see soooo much improvement! HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!!! ### 5/5 — Super! *2023-10-02* Using this app for years now, so working with this app, I do feel a bit of nostalgia every time I open it. Its design is obviously a bit old fashioned and not particularly fancy, but it works extremely well and it's intuitive. You can just use the integrated functions or build your own vocab or kanji sets and study away. You get stats and the algorithm for repetition seems adequate to memorise lessons well, similar to other apps that advertise subscription models. This one, you buy once and you're good to go, which I think is preferable, because you're expected to work with other material, books, classes to go along and actually learn Japanese. This is a companion to help, it doesn't do the work for you. ### 5/5 — Excellent app *2023-05-20* Nice to see it’s still getting some updates! ### 5/5 — Great App. Please add kanji sets by grade level too *2021-10-12* Really great app. No frills but solid functionality. It allows you to drill kanji, vocab, readings, etc. A nice surprise for me has been the KanjiDraw add-on. Forcing yourself to recall (rather than just recognize) kanji really reinforces the learnings. You’re forced to notice minute details between kanji as well as the actual radicals and components themselves. And the writing hints decrease as you get a kanji repeatedly right. Only thing I wish is that the kanji were also natively grouped by grade level rather than just JLPT level. I would love to be able to learn a set of kanji by each grade level without having to create a custom set. There doesn’t seem to be any shared sets that group them like this either. ### 5/5 — Replaces all your other apps *2021-02-18* Seriously, this app is like replacing every other app you currently have/use for learning Japanese besides maybe HumanJapanese and JapaneseApp (dictionary). You won't need Anki, Skritter, Memrise, Duolingo, Bunpo, Drops, StickyStudy, WaniKani, Goi, MindSnacks, iKnow!, iKanji, Scribe, or any other app that claims to teach Japanese. It does nearly everything, does it well, and it does it without a subscription! Only things missing are a proper dictionary so get Japanese App, and some simple early explanations, so get Human Japanese. Treat youself to the best Japanese learning app there is!! ### 5/5 — What a treasure! *2020-11-06* Thank you very much for this amazing box! :) I use it every day and it is so comfortable! Obviously, efforts to build this app were incredible. ### 5/5 — Awesome! *2020-10-08, version 2.9.3* This app may not have all the flash and pizazz of a more polished app, but it covers everything I needed to pass both N3 and N2 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. That makes it perfect! ### 4/5 — Solid app! Recommend *2020-08-25* Great! Fantastic Kanji and amazing question/tests!!! Recommend!!! Only thing I get frustrated with is I select N2 and still tests me on kanji like 六 or basic level kanji...I wish I didn’t have to skip through those super easy questions sometimes...I selected N2! Now gimme N2 Kanji!!! But good solid app! ### 5/5 — Nice *2020-08-10* Nice ### 4/5 — Excellent App *2020-05-14* This is a fantastic app for foreigners to learn and practice Kanji and vocabs. I would like to have the feature of Auto scroll in study set since scrolling over 5000 vocabs is painful. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Crashes *2023-08-17, version 2.9.7* This app crashes every time I launch it. ### 1/5 — Often crashes for weeks at a time. *2023-03-05* -KanjiBox is great…when it’s working. -Has crashed for at least three months already in 2023. -I sent crash report to developers but they did not fix anything (although they did reply). -Also crashed for several month a few years ago (around 2020 I believe). **Developer response:** Sorry for the frustration and on/off fixes… It took a while, but I was finally able to rewrite the app to better support recent iOS updates. All crashing problems should now be addressed! ### 1/5 — You changed it *2016-10-22, version 2.8.1* Change it back please ### 1/5 — Fix the bug!!! *2015-08-17, version 2.7.5* At any level above 4, the "Quiz" mode hangs. ### 1/5 — Can't open since last update *2015-06-13, version 2.7.4* App keeps opening and then crashing within a second or so. ### 1/5 — No hiragana *2011-10-25, version 2.1* Liars, there's no hiragana setting! And you have to pay extra for the drawing features. 30day trial or purchase. Only $0.99 but still, you have to pay extra. ### 2/5 — Needs a few things *2017-10-28* I wish the in-app dictionary was more expansive. It'd be nice if we could make our own entries in sets in order to drill expressions, etc. Also, when drilling, I REALLY wish it would cycle through each word one time before showing repeats. I don't want to drill the same word 6-7 times while never seeing others a single time unless I drill for 20 minutes. ### 2/5 — Crashes and unstable on OS 3.0 *2009-07-19* When it works, I really like it. However, it freezes, crashes and is unstable on 3.0..... Most I got out of it was 4 min before it locked up. Once it is fixed, will most likely become one of my favoutite Japanese apps ### 3/5 — Liked the old version better *2026-06-16* My use case is specific, but not uncommon, and the old KanjiBox did it well. The old version allowed me to do kanji drawing drills based on reading+meaning hints and using my own study sets. I can now do none of this. On kanji draw I get only readings as a hint, which is a real challenge for kanji with overlapping readings (esp those with only one or two onyomi). And I am forced to use the N1-N5 system now. I cannot do kanji draw from custom study sets. A real bummer as this was my go-to app, but now I’ll have to look for a new one. **Developer response:** The new version is a complete rewrite, and some of the old features will be progressively reimplemented in the upcoming versions… ### 3/5 — great app, questionable support *2023-07-02* probably the best flashcard program specifically for learning japanese both in terms of ease of use and user freedom. the dev also doesn’t try to nickle and dime you or use any cancerous ‘freemium’ design patterns which is enough of a rarity these days that it is worth pointing out and applauding. i’d like to give this a 5 star review but currently one of the best features, the ability to quickly create custom kanji & vocab sets seems to be broken and has been for some time and i am under the impression the developer has moved on from this project for all intents and purposes ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — The best Japanese learning app! *2026-06-28* I thought this app had long since been abandoned by the dev but I still found it useful and kept it on my phone since I was also afraid it might disappear someday. The go my surprise it suddenly got an update and got such better and every update now makes it run even better and get even more useful. Thanks dev for not giving up on this one! ### 5/5 — Actually really useful! *2026-06-21* Great value for money, responsive developer, funny asides, what’s not to like. Used it myself and now using it in a class to teach some Philippino guys. They love it too. ### 5/5 — Wonderful tool *2026-06-20* I've been using this app on and off for almost a full year now. I picked up the original site back on Facebook when I was I Japan. Amazing tool to practice reading with. ### 5/5 — Great App for Studying for the JLPT *2026-06-20* I try to do at least one kanji, vocab, and reading quiz per day, and it's motivating to see the progress bar for each advance. The statistics in this app are really good for evaluating how well you know things. I prefer this to Anki for a number of reasons: you aren't punished for being unable to review every day, the multiple-choice format is more honest than self-grading yourself, and this app is really really good at making the multiple-choice answers really REALLY tricky, which makes it extra good practice for the JLPT. The developer has made a lot of updates recently to better optimize the UI for phones. You can sync your progress so you can have multiple copies of the app on different devices. The developer is also really quick to respond if you find and report a bug. ### 5/5 — Great App for Studying for the JLPT *2026-06-20* The developer has made a lot of updates recently to better optimize the UI for phones. You can sync your progress, so you can have multiple copies of the app on different devices. The developer is also really quick to respond if you find and report a bug. I try to do at least one Kanji, Vocab, and Reading quiz per day, and it’s motivating to see the progress for each advance. The statistics in this app are really good for evaluating how well you know things. I prefer this to Anki for a number of reasons: you aren’t punished for being unable to review every day, the multiple choice format is more honest than self-grading yourself, and this app is really REALLY good at making the multiple choice answers very tricky (which makes it extra good practice for the JLPT). ### 5/5 — Fantastic *2026-06-20, version 3.0.37* I’m about to move to Japan and this, along with Duolingo, has been paramount in my progress! ### 5/5 — Challenging *2026-06-02* Great to use a tool to help study kanji ### 5/5 — Good *2026-05-29* I’ve preferred this app over other alternatives for years. I’m glad to see it being developed again. ### 5/5 — Still supported after all these years!!! *2026-05-20* I’ve graduated from college with the Japanese major, but I have still been using this app and the website to keep up with my language abilities and study higher level kanji for probably 15 years now. I just reopened the app on a whim because I was recommending it to someone else and there’s a surprise update?!?! It looks amazing now, thanks for all your hard work over the years! ### 5/5 — Love it! *2025-05-15* I've been using this app for the better part of a decade to help study or refresh my knowledge on kanji and vocab. I really like the example sentences - you can click on any word after answering the question and get a bunch of examples and usually every part of the example is broken down in case there's words you can read or don't know. 皆さん、頑張れ！！！ --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-07.*