User friendly
I’ve been using this app for about 15 years, downloaded it when it first came out for a fee and so glad it is free now.
It’s got a very user friendly interface, ability to bookmark (basically set labels) to vocabulary and kanji that you want to categorise and revise. It’s got kanji lists arranged by JLPT levels as well as school grades and frequency in societal use. The flashcard function allows you to test yourself, using the app’s preinstalled kanji lists and also using the bookmarks that you compile yourself. The ability to search kanji by drawing them is a real timesaver.
My only wish for this app is for an ability to test yourself using the “random” sequence setting and be able to mark whether you got each card correct or incorrect. You are able to mark for correct/incorrect on the “spaced repetition” setting but not with the other settings.
It’s got a very user friendly interface, ability to bookmark (basically set labels) to vocabulary and kanji that you want to categorise and revise. It’s got kanji lists arranged by JLPT levels as well as school grades and frequency in societal use. The flashcard function allows you to test yourself, using the app’s preinstalled kanji lists and also using the bookmarks that you compile yourself. The ability to search kanji by drawing them is a real timesaver.
My only wish for this app is for an ability to test yourself using the “random” sequence setting and be able to mark whether you got each card correct or incorrect. You are able to mark for correct/incorrect on the “spaced repetition” setting but not with the other settings.
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Part of my daily routine
I bought this app around 10 years ago, and have used it every day since. It is an invaluable resource. It contains animations on how to draw kanji, related words, lists of tenses and conjugations and lots of other things.
The only thing to bear in mind is the translate feature. This is very good from a literal technical and translation perspective (highlighting and linking things to take you to the relevant entry), but won’t give you how something would be interpreted when spoken/written. You’ll need to use something else for that. This doesn’t overshadow how good the rest of the features are however. Highly recommended!
The only thing to bear in mind is the translate feature. This is very good from a literal technical and translation perspective (highlighting and linking things to take you to the relevant entry), but won’t give you how something would be interpreted when spoken/written. You’ll need to use something else for that. This doesn’t overshadow how good the rest of the features are however. Highly recommended!
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Spoken Content Broken
Update: The fact that the app’s spoken content still hasn’t been updated in 2025 is incredibly frustrating. Listening to spoken content is important for learning pitch accent, unfortunately the Midori app still uses the oldest version of Japanese iOS voices for all spoken content. So I’ve stopped using the app.
Old review: Good app. I wish the app would use the iPhone’s “Spoken Content” settings. When you highlight a sentence and tap “Speak” within the app, the app will unfortunately use “Kyoko”, a very old Japanese speech voice setting and doesn’t recognize the iPhone’s internal speech settings (my iPhone 14 Pro uses female Siri for Spoken Content but the app doesn’t recognize it).
Old review: Good app. I wish the app would use the iPhone’s “Spoken Content” settings. When you highlight a sentence and tap “Speak” within the app, the app will unfortunately use “Kyoko”, a very old Japanese speech voice setting and doesn’t recognize the iPhone’s internal speech settings (my iPhone 14 Pro uses female Siri for Spoken Content but the app doesn’t recognize it).
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13 years
I've been using this app for 13 years, and it is hands-down the best Japanese dictionary app available. The ONLY thing I wish was different is that it would save your data when changing to a new device.
The best and still going strong
I’ve been using Midori for as long as I can remember owning a smartphone - I remember having it on my iPhone 3GS. It’s always been solid and slowly improves with time, with solid features being added like the new photo capture recognition mode, that is flawless. Midori is the best all-rounder Japanese dictionary out there.
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Kanji Stroking Limitations
Following up on my Aug 24 review, please look to a competing app Shirabe Jisho to see how it’s done. Their stroking function is beautifully laid out. When your kanji look up can’t come up with the character I need, I don’t bother with the radical lookup anymore. I go straight to Shirabe. Much easier.
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Good
Good app. I wish the app would use the iPhone’s “Spoken Content” settings. When you highlight a sentence and tap “speak” within the app, the app will unfortunately use Kyoko, a very old Japanese speech voice setting and doesn’t recognize the iPhone’s internal speech settings (my iPhone 14 Pro uses female Siri for Spoken Content but the app doesn’t use it).
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Wish the camera could do vertical text
Can’t use it for novels/etc
Invaluable for learning
This app is amazing for learning Japanese! It's a dictionary at its core but it's so much more. You can save words into custom folders, look words and kanji up using your camera, or even draw character in. My favourite way of using this is to take pictures of vocab and kanji in the grammar book I'm learning from (Tobira Beginning Japanese), and save them into folders by Lesson, Then, the app makes you flash cards of the content and there is even SRS if that's your thing.
One thing to note: I saw reviews here that there is no audio to listen to how words are pronounced. I don't know if this is a new feature since, but the way to listen to a word is to double-tap on the word and a small menu pops up with the option to listen. This is very easy to miss so not the best usability (I found this by accident), so just something to look out for. The app has a lot of features and you need to explore to get familiar/find them all, so a bit of a learning curve. But it's completely free and packed with features so can't really fault it!
One thing to note: I saw reviews here that there is no audio to listen to how words are pronounced. I don't know if this is a new feature since, but the way to listen to a word is to double-tap on the word and a small menu pops up with the option to listen. This is very easy to miss so not the best usability (I found this by accident), so just something to look out for. The app has a lot of features and you need to explore to get familiar/find them all, so a bit of a learning curve. But it's completely free and packed with features so can't really fault it!
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Camera Function is a significant upgrade
I have been using Midori for years but have to say that the “scan/photo” function that I have been using more recently has transformed its effectiveness
Amazing
Must have for traveling!
Should be a 5 star app
Just don’t know how to invoke audio pronunciation. Other than that thank you for the developers’ hardwork.
Longtime companion
I’ve been using Midori for over a decade now, and love the new camera feature (hopefully it can read vertical text soon).
Feature request: It would be nice to be able to search a list and bookmark/export the results. I can paste a list into the Translate section, but cannot bulk save/export the definitions.
Feature request: It would be nice to be able to search a list and bookmark/export the results. I can paste a list into the Translate section, but cannot bulk save/export the definitions.
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The best iOS JP dictionary!
Took me from beginner to studying for JLPT N1. A million times better than using anki all the time, fast to look up words, you can save to lists and your saved words are highlighted later in kanji word listings. All around amazing.
Best Japanese dictionary app on iOS!
Been using this dictionary app for years, definitely the best dictionary on iOS.
This dictionary has no pronunciation
This dictionary has no pronunciation, not at all, so you find a word and you still don’t know how to read it
wish list for study lists
the intersection of 2 bookmark lists would be terrific as an export CVS file,
e.g.,
adverb
okurigana
or
adverb
jukugo
or
adverb
kana-only
...
merci
e.g.,
adverb
okurigana
or
adverb
jukugo
or
adverb
kana-only
...
merci
a truly magnificient app
i've been using this app for longer than i can remember (well over 10 years) and it has been wonderful and rock solid every time i've used it. the ruby text enhanced translation mode is a super power for anyone wanting to learn japanese and the kanji writing system. i give it 5 stars but it really deserves 5 hearts.
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Junk
Wow! Beyond disappointed, I can’t believe they can get away with charging money for this. I look up 信用 and the only answer is the name of a credit union! 突然 produces no answer even if I try totsuzen. This is junk don’t waste your money. No stars
Good but with some errors
This is a very extensive dictionary! However there are some issues: when I was looking up the verb nagusameru, it did not show up, even though it is a valid verb. In general it can sometimes not display all the possible words for a given definition (like not listing oyatsu as a word for snack) so it definitely needs some work.
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