Mǎmǎhūhū is the app blocker that fights back in Chinese.
Pick the apps you lose time on. The next time you reach for one, a wild Chinese word appears. Beat it in a quick, Pokémon-style battle and the app opens. Every reach for your feed becomes a minute of Mandarin.
HOW A BATTLE WORKS
• Every word is a creature. Its colour and antenna show its tone, so you see how a word sounds before you say it.
• Pick your move: SAY it out loud, pick what it MEANS, LISTEN and choose what you heard, or USE it in a phrase.
• Words fight back. Disguises, tone shifts and swaps check that you really know a word, not just recognise it.
• Choose how long a battle is: one quick question, or up to four.
• Won already? Keep fighting for extra minutes.
• No time right now? You can skip three times a day.
YOUR HANZIDEX
• Words team up into phrases. A phrase waits in an egg until you've met all its words, then hatches into a dragon you can battle.
• Families show which characters share a part, and where that part comes from.
• Many characters show what they're made of: 好 is a woman 女 and a child 子.
• Still know a word after a week away? You've caught it.
YOUR WEEKLY RECEIPT
Every Sunday, a receipt for your week: what you paid in scrolling, and what you got back in Chinese. Fights won, words met, phrases hatched.
REAL CHINESE, FROM ZERO
• Start with the four tones, or take a quick placement that finds your level.
• Words grow into the sentences people actually say: 你好, 吃了吗？, 没有, 马马虎虎. Not textbook lines.
• Ten areas take you from your first word to everyday life: greetings, talking about yourself, numbers and money, food, family, time, your day, and finding your way around.
• Your own name, country and city go into the sentences, so the first things you learn to say are about you.
• Words you know come back for a fight just before you'd forget them.
BUILT ON SCREEN TIME
Mǎmǎhūhū uses Apple's Screen Time to put a battle in front of the apps you choose. Apple keeps your app usage private: Mǎmǎhūhū can't see what you do in those apps. Change which apps are gated any time in Settings, and pick how long a win keeps them open, from 5 minutes to 6 hours.
YOUR ACCOUNT
Sign in with Apple, Google or email. Your profile and progress sync to your account, so they stay with you on a new phone; you can turn sync off in Profile. You can delete your account and its data from Profile.
When you answer out loud, Apple's speech recognition turns what you say into Chinese characters to check your answer. Nothing is recorded or kept.
Tell us what to build next: post ideas and bugs on the What's next board in the app, and vote on what others posted.
Why the name? 马马虎虎 (mǎmǎhūhū) means "so-so". Literally, "horse horse tiger tiger". It's what you'll say when someone asks how your Chinese is going, until it isn't true anymore.
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