# MARU: Learn Japanese Hiragana — user reviews > 1,221 indexed App Store user reviews of MARU by Overdreamer, LLC, rated 4.90/5 from 17,885 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/maru-learn-japanese-hiragana/id1208009110/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/maru-learn-japanese-hiragana/id1208009110.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 16,894 · 4★ 864 · 3★ 73 · 2★ 21 · 1★ 33 ## What do users think of MARU? Overall sentiment: positive **Pros** - 🚀 Fun way to learn Japanese - 👍 Great for memorizing hiragana and katakana - 👍 User-friendly and simple - 👍 Convenient and easy to use - 👍 Helpful for reinforcing learning - 👍 Affordable lifetime subscription - 👍 Modular and customizable - 👍 Cute and motivating - 👍 Effective for beginners - 👍 Smooth and clean interface - 👍 Helpful for dyslexic learners - 👍 Excellent for daily practice **Cons** - 🐛 Issues with distinguishing similar sounds - 🐛 Lack of writing practice - 🐛 Limited vocabulary - 🐛 Ads can be disruptive for some users **Commonly reported bugs** - App crashes or freezes on some devices - Issues with text size and formatting on certain devices **Most requested features** - Add support for dakuten and handakuten characters - Incorporate kanji learning - Allow selecting specific characters to practice - Add timed mode for quicker recognition - Provide stroke order demonstrations - Include more advanced vocabulary - Add ability to export learned content ## Newest reviews (20 of 1,221) ### 4/5 — Nearly free shows a care for Japanese *2026-08-28, version 2.15* I’m solidly enjoying the process of learning Japanese through this one. You’re able to drill yourself on specific groups of letters. It really helps me learn to recognize the difference between them. It’s nice how the ads work barely notice them!!! ### 5/5 — Love it so much! *2026-08-25, version 2.15* This app is perfect for Japanese beginners! With memorable exercises and fun activities. I definitely recommend this to all children learning! ### 5/5 — 很棒 *2026-08-25, version 2.15* 太棒了 很實用 ### 5/5 — Best app for learning kana! *2026-08-24, version 2.15* Just started my Japanese journey and I’m about a week in with the hiragana section almost complete. This app has been amazing for helping me remember the kana as well as practicing the sounds since I always repeat it out loud. And it’s all free!! You only have to deal with ads every 5 times you get something wrong. Definitely the best app for learning kana!! ### 5/5 — Very helpful *2026-08-22, version 2.15* It’s super good to use for practicing characters w app use it ### 5/5 — Best beginner app for learning kana *2026-08-21, version 2.15* The UI is clean and modern with no ads. Realistic voices, not AI or TTS, grace your ears. You can add how many questions you want, you can choose specifically which characters you want to review (which is my fav feature) and can choose reading or listening questions and more. This app builds a great foundation for your Japanese learning journey. ### 4/5 — I love it but!!!! *2026-08-20, version 2.15* The look the lessons everything is great just missing across device syncing. Pain to have to manually do across devices. I purchased it hoping that would be a PRO feature or something. Either way thank you! for the hard work keep it up. I will change to FIVE stars once we can get Across device syncing. ### 5/5 — ÇOK GÜZEL BİR UYGULAMA *2026-08-19, version 2.15* Ben bu uygulamaya ilk başladığımda ilk önce zorlandım ama sonra bir defter kullanmaya başladım ve işler daha kolay gitti artık hafif bir cümleler kurabiliyorum ve bence bu uygulama mükemmel ve herkese tavsiye ederim 🍥🍡🍙 ### 5/5 — Hiragana Practice *2026-08-16, version 2.15* This app was recommended by my teacher to practice the Japanese alphabet. It’s fun & engaging. I’m able to remember the right hiragana thanks to this app! ### 5/5 — BEST APP FOR HIRAGANA AND KATAKANA *2026-08-16, version 2.15* I learned and memorized 30+ hiragana characters in 1 hour if you really go for it and put some effort you’ll learn in a week ### 5/5 — Great Learning Tool With Non-Invasive Adds *2026-08-16, version 2.15* The app has you master hiragana and katakana, the 2 building block alphabets for Japanese, by little groups at a time. It’s a lot of repetition but it definitely helps hammer home one’s you’re struggling with. An add only plays after you miss 5 identifications and they’re pretty short adds so the better you do, the fewer adds you see. I do wish the add prompted you to practice writing the shapes too as that’s another way that helps with memory. ### 5/5 — I’m picky with language learning apps, this one is awesome *2026-08-14, version 2.15* It’s actually fully free instead of just the first few lessons. Really good for memorizing hiragana but I recommend pairing it with an app for practicing writing. ### 5/5 — Perfect app for hiragana + katakana *2026-08-14, version 2.15* This app helped so much for me to learn hiragana and katakana. Without this app I don’t even think I could read common words like ありがとう ### 5/5 — I love it! *2026-08-12, version 2.15* This is great to help me practice my hiragana! Thankyou so much ### 5/5 — amazing *2026-08-12, version 2.15* i was surprised to see a lot of reviews disliking it ### 5/5 — This app rules. *2026-08-11, version 2.15* こんいちわ！ This app is awesome for practice! It gives you a mix of vocab to spell, sounds to listen to, and symbols to visualize. Having ads play when you get a set amount of answers wrong is a great implementation as well. If you can’t pay for the app, the better you get the less ads you will see. 5/5 stars for sure! ありがとございます！ ### 5/5 — Really useful for quick learning *2026-08-11, version 2.15* Helped me to learn all of hiragana in under 2 days!! ### 5/5 — Learning Slowly *2026-08-10, version 2.15* I love how I am motivated to learn Japanese ### 4/5 — Real katakana words suggestion please! *2026-08-09, version 2.15* I love this app. It has helped me memorize my hiragana alphabet and I'm still working towards the katakana. I just have one suggestion to the developers - that is to use the actual katakana vocabulary in the katakana practice drills. Because it gets very confusing for new learners to distinguish between the use of katakana for animals plus foreign words and the original Japanese words that are supposed to be written in hiragana. Otherwise, thank you for developing this app. I've been using another one to help me with this confusion, so it would be highly appreciated if you could use actual katakana words. Another suggestion would be to be able to listen again on demand to the greetings done by the greeting character. I'm often curious to be able to reread, click on it, and practice what it said. ### 5/5 — The app *2026-08-09, version 2.15* This app is amazing it has help me learn hiragana fast and in a fun and easy way the key is practicing every day for at least 10 minutes will help a lot I recommend it if you want to learn and read Japanese ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Why *2026-07-22, version 2.15* I used to love this app, I’ve had it from when it first came out, the spacing is worse, it’s too bright, it reset my progress, it’s just overall far more annoying that it ever used to be. I’m hoping I can downgrade. ### 1/5 — Total cash grab *2026-07-02, version 2.15* There’s no way this is worth $20. Its just an app that reads characters out loud and then asks you to match that to the answer. It probably took the developers under a day to code it. And it doesn’t even give you a grace period. You do one row of hiragana and then immediately get spammed you with ads and popups to buy the full app. $5 maybe i’d do just for the convenience, but $20 is laughable. You can buy full language programs for that much Save your money and go google free ways to learn this. ### 1/5 — Used to be good *2026-06-14, version 2.15* I used to love this app but now it won’t even open ### 1/5 — Lazy Developers That Do Not Know Japanese (AI Slop) *2025-11-22, version 2.15* Regret paying for the pro version. The developers do not know what the difference between hiragana and katakana are. App seems to have been written with garbage AI Slop. Katakana drills use words that are not imported words and should be written in hiragana. Traches learner wrong words. If the intent was to teach learner yo recognize katakana, use katakana words. This is a mistake that AI would make or the developers doesn't understand the difference between the two writing systems. ### 1/5 — Doesn’t work on iPad *2025-04-24, version 2.15* Just crashes ### 1/5 — You need to change your ad provider *2025-03-01, version 2.15* The ad system Maru uses advertises malware and scammimg apps, preying on less tech-savvy users. ### 1/5 — 繁琐 *2025-02-25, version 2.15* 学好几遍学完一行才能学下一行，平假名片假名还是分开的，所有一共三四十行，这要是能坚持学完就有鬼了 ### 1/5 — won’t even open anymore! *2024-07-01, version 2.13* i used to love this app but it won’t open anymore! everytime i open it, i see the red screen for like 1 second before it closes immediately. i am on the latest update for the app and on the latest ios update as well ### 2/5 — Good App but No Support *2026-04-21, version 2.15* No way to reset drills so if you want to repeat - you can’t. Hope you learn fast. And no one is home in the support department. ### 2/5 — Won’t sync across devices *2026-03-13, version 2.15* Nice app to study Japanese kana but it won’t sync from iPhone to iPad. Developer response to queries is total rubbish ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Fun and helpful! *2026-09-01, version 2.15* I like that this app doesn’t stop me. If I want to keep learning the lessons will keep coming! The pronunciations are very helpful too. ### 5/5 — Amazing!! *2026-08-31, version 2.15* Love it, a super easy and quick way to learn Hiragana. Definitely recommend! ### 5/5 — Best pratice app! *2026-08-31, version 2.15* Super user friendly! ### 5/5 — Why is this actually good *2026-08-31, version 2.15* Damn you Duolingo I’ve found someone else so Spanish or vanish ### 5/5 — MARU helps. *2026-08-31, version 2.15* I’ve been using this app for a couple of months to supplement learning from another app. I’ve found it very helpful for remembering characters, having to write characters with my fingers seems particularly helpful. ### 5/5 — I really love this app *2026-08-30, version 2.15* I can’t tell what grateful I am this app exists ### 5/5 — 很喜欢MARU *2026-08-30, version 2.15* 很喜欢MARU ### 5/5 — Great app! *2026-08-30, version 2.15* Worth the one time purchase, very effective for learning and fun ### 5/5 — шик обязательно для изучения японского *2026-08-26, version 2.15* Очень быстро выучил хирогану благодаря этому приложению, минусов вообще нет вск можно настроить есть карточки хорошее аудиосопровождение спасибо разработчику это большой вклад в изучение японского. ### 5/5 — 👍 *2026-08-26, version 2.15* 👍 --- *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 2026-09-04.*