# NômCam: Hán Nôm OCR Scanner — Read old script in Vietnamese

> Read old script in Vietnamese (iPhone/iPad app by TUNG MINH PHAN.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/nomcam-han-nom-ocr-scanner/id6814234124 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [TUNG MINH PHAN](https://appshunter.io/developer/6786469274)
- Category: Reference, Education
- Price: Free
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 16.0 · 68 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2026-09-25
- Data updated: 2026-09-29
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/nomcam-han-nom-ocr-scanner/id6814234124/reviews.md

## What is NômCam?

NômCam reads Chữ Nôm and Hán from a photograph. Point it at your family's genealogy book, a gravestone in the cemetery, a royal edict in a communal house or a page of an old book, and it gives you the characters and how to read them in Vietnamese.

WHAT IT READS
Genealogies, gravestones, royal edicts, parallel couplets, temple boards, woodblock books, manuscripts and stele rubbings. Printed, carved and handwritten characters all work; flowing cursive is harder.

READS A WHOLE PAGE
Every column on the page is found automatically and read in order, right to left or left to right, and you can tap the columns yourself to set any order you like. Or switch to Manual and draw the boxes yourself, around one row or one column at a time.

READS THE WHOLE COLUMN AT ONCE
Characters that touch each other are not cut apart and guessed one by one. The whole column is read in a single pass, which is what old woodblock printing and handwriting need.

CHOOSES READINGS THAT MAKE SENSE
Characters and readings are chosen together over the whole line, using a Chữ Nôm dictionary, Vietnamese word evidence and the characters either side, so a line reads as Vietnamese rather than as a list of syllables. Lines in classical Chinese are detected and read in Hán Việt.

HONEST ABOUT WHAT IT IS UNSURE OF
A reading borrowed from a variant or guessed from a sound component is marked, never shown as though it were attested. Characters whose runners up were close are flagged in orange.

YOURS TO CORRECT
Tap any character to see the piece of the photograph it came from, what it means, its other readings and other characters the line's context allows. Choose one and the line is read again around your choice. Every change can be undone, and readings you teach it are remembered.

COPY IT OUT
One tap copies the characters, another copies the readings, ready to paste into your notes, a message or an article.

WORKS ANYWHERE
Reading runs entirely on the device, including in the middle of a cemetery or a village temple with no signal. No account, no tracking, and your photographs never leave your phone. The one exception: a character so rare that no font on your phone can draw it is fetched once as a picture and kept, and you can switch that off in Settings.


## Version history (last 3 releases)

### 1.2 — 2026-09-28

Manual mode. Page finds the text for you; Manual lets you draw the boxes yourself, a row or a column at a time, numbered in the order you draw them. It replaces the Character, Column and Row modes.

What a line means (beta). Under each line of classical Chinese, Translate gives a translation made on your phone by Apple Intelligence where it is available, with the dictionary meaning of each character underneath. It is experimental and can be wrong.

Smoother boxes. Boxes now move at your screen's full refresh rate and can be resized by any corner or edge without selecting them first. When you flatten a photo, a magnifier shows what is under your finger.

Better readings. Lines of classical Chinese are read in Hán Việt more reliably (山 is sơn, not san), red shop signs are no longer mistaken for seals, and a reading you chose on one line no longer carries over into classical Chinese lines where it does not belong.

### 1.1 — 2026-09-27

Reading carved stone. Gravestones and steles cut into marble often came back with no text found. NômCam can now bring the writing out of the stone, either on its own or with the Enhance button.

Correcting what it reads. Tap a character and type in the one you can see, or mark a box that holds no character at all so it is left out of the line.

Adjusting the boxes. On a whole page you can move, resize, add and delete the boxes before reading, for pages the app does not frame well by itself.

Question marks instead of colour. In Settings you can have uncertain characters marked with a question mark, which survives a screenshot or a printout.

Turning and flattening a photo are now buttons, so the app no longer moves your photo on its own.

### 1.0 — 2026-09-23

No release notes.

## Apps similar to NômCam

| App | Rating | Price | Category |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Từ điển Hán Nôm - Phương Viên](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/tu-ien-han-nom-phuong-vien/id6797945286) | — | Free | Reference |
| [Bible Timeline: Bible Map](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/bible-timeline-bible-map/id6762151842) | 4.0 (2) | Free | Reference |
| [CJKV Dict](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/cjkv-dict/id1444344680) | 5.0 (11) | Free | Reference |
| [Kim Hán Nôm](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kim-han-nom/id6738937009) | — | Free | Reference |

## More apps by TUNG MINH PHAN

- [NômKey: Chữ Nôm Keyboard](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/nomkey-chu-nom-keyboard/id6786469272)
- [Body Scan Kids: Healthy Habits](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/body-scan-kids-healthy-habits/id6807935196)

All apps by TUNG MINH PHAN: https://appshunter.io/developer/6786469274

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*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 2026-09-29.*