# Skritter: Write Japanese — user reviews > 76 indexed App Store user reviews of Skritter by Inkren, Inc., rated 4.70/5 from 168 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/skritter-write-japanese/id1370893674/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/skritter-write-japanese/id1370893674.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 138 · 4★ 16 · 3★ 6 · 2★ 2 · 1★ 6 ## Newest reviews (16 of 76) ### 4/5 — Good. Could be great. *2025-08-12* The subscription model is fair. The srs works well. Writing training is why I got it, and I’ve found it helpful, though not perfect (possible to register clearly wrong writing as correct.). I think I would find it all much more useful, enough to keep a paid subscription going longer, if there were example sentences. Several power word/character, ideally. **Developer response:** Thank you so much for the review and feedback! Let us know if you ever have any questions or additional feedback. You can reach us at team@skritter.com! ### 4/5 — I enjoy learning with thid app *2024-12-13* Its a really nice app to use every day to learn the basics. The repetition really improves the memory. But its not only making memory on high concentration level, its a good app for easy learning without any interruptions. But there is room for more learning tools and different perspectives to learn and connect this material in different ways. **Developer response:** Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback! We'd love to hear more about what would make Skritter a 5-star app for you. If you have the time, let us know at team@skritter.com. ### 4/5 — Excellent, Needs Minor Tweaks *2024-08-19* Overall hands down the best way I’ve found to practice and learn Japanese writing systems. Occasionally, it refuses to recognise my writing even when it’s exactly as the tracing suggests (e.g., it has trouble with my hiragana hi, and for some reason it thinks I’ve done the last stroke of a hiragana fu before I have) - but these are minor niggles in the grand scheme of things. For Kanji, as a new learning, I’ve found it an excellent complement to the “Remembering The Kanji” books - avoiding the need to creating flash cards. **Developer response:** Thanks for the review! If you ever have any other feedback or questions, let us know at team@skritter.com. Happy studies! ### 3/5 — Excellent but missing one critical leaning element *2024-06-23* I am using Skritter paid subscriptions for both Japanese and Chinese. The app is wonderful and I’ve been using it for about 4 months consistently. I have learned Japanese kanji on my own in the past and what really lets you learn a character is its CONTEXT, ie what words in the language actually use this character you’re trying to learn. That’s how you build the associations that help the character stick. There’s always a moment of, “oh! That’s the character that you use the word ___!” Skritter does not do this and it’s the biggest difference from reviewing characters in a kanji book and other flashcard systems out there. In some cases, Skritter provides a sentence using the character, but what the app really needs is just a simple list of two or three of the most commonly used everyday words that use the character. It would be the bomb! Please consider this feature for the future. **Developer response:** Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback! In the future, we plan on adding more ways to learn the words in context. We do not currently have an exact timeline for when we will release this type of content, but it is definitely on our radar as a future improvement. ### 5/5 — Best app I've found to learn kanji *2024-06-13* Each card has three different review options: the meaning, reading, and writing, so can choose what to review depending on what need to practice. The built-in JLPT decks are great. **Developer response:** Thanks for the review! If you ever have any feedback or questions, let us know at team@skritter.com. Happy studies! ### 5/5 — Best way to learn kanji hands down *2024-05-23* I've been using this app since its very early days (2011 I think) and nothing has helped me learn kanji better. It's fun too and even if you don't care about being able to write, this will still set you down the right path **Developer response:** Thanks for the review! If you ever have any other feedback or questions, let us know at team@skritter.com. Happy studies! ### 4/5 — Amazing app with a couple small caveats *2024-05-20* I Really Love this app! I have learned so much in a short amount of time thanks to it. I love that you can pick which decks to learn from and that many popular notebooks are included. I also really enjoy the writing experience, and the testing and time attack options. Tiny tweaks: - please create a streak freeze or other way to restore your streak so that it’s not as easy to lose your streak if you forget to practice one day. - for the review option I would like to be able to re review the words I got wrong within that session, similar to test mode. I’m also not clear why both modes exist but prefer the functionality of test mode. Thank you! **Developer response:** Thank you so much for taking the time to share your feature requests! We are currently working on some exciting updates that will address some of your feature requests. We currently do not have an exact timeline for the release of Skritter 4.0, but it is something to look forward to. You can contact us at team@skritter.com if you ever need us to repair a streak for you. Happy studies! ### 3/5 — Great writing practice. Gamification lacking. *2024-05-04* This is hands down the most impressive app for practicing your pen strokes in kanji. Beautiful design. After using it almost daily for 3 months now the problem is its way to difficult to memorize the advanced kanji the way this is presented. My tips to the developer: When you first learn each kanji it gives you an outline to follow and it’s fairly easy to get a green for success. That’s great but I need that learning stage for at least the first 3-5 times I see that kanji. After that I should get some hints maybe I just don’t have to fill it n a few strokes to get a green. Then as I progress keep removing strokes to make it harder for me to fill in the blanks. Then as I get advanced there’s only one or two strokes to give me a hint. Then ultimately I have to know the entire thing to advance to a master level. Something like that would be way more encouraging 😊 **Developer response:** Thanks for the review and feedback! Our team is currently working on a big project that will improve the learn experience in the future. We do not have an exact release date for these updates, but the learn experience will be improved in the future. You can reach us at team@skritter.com if you ever have any questions or additional feedback. ### 5/5 — Excellent *2024-02-11* Loving the app so far. I know writing the kanji is so helpful in remembering them vs just grinding flashcards. I’m excited to keep using the app. I do have a feature request. Seems like it might be a bit cumbersome to make though. Was wondering if there might be any plan to search for a specific kanji in a deck. Would love to be able to search for the kanji I’m learning on WaniKani and practice writing them here. Great app! **Developer response:** Thanks for the review! If you ever have any other feedback or questions, let us know at team@skritter.com. Happy studies! ### 3/5 — Bro I made a account 2 days ago *2024-02-09, version 3.10.4* It already gave me subscription expire like what pls fix it ### 5/5 — A must for learning to write Japanese *2023-12-18, version 3.10.3* I've been using Skritter to learn Chinese and Japanese writing since 2009, and there's nothing like it. ### 5/5 — 大好き *2023-12-06* Great tool and resource, very easy to use. Definitely worth every penny. **Developer response:** Thank you so much for the raving review! We are so happy that Skritter has helped your language journey. Would it be okay if we use this review in some future campaigns (possibly a social media image or an email)? We only share the review, not the name. You can let us know at team@skritter.com. Happy studies! ### 5/5 — Amazing new updates *2023-12-05* I’ve had Skritter for a long time now and I thought it was good before. But now with the new platform and options for studying, it’s gotten so much better beyond my wildest dreams! My favourite is testing just the words that I get incorrect - so effective. I highly recommend this app. **Developer response:** Thank you so much for the raving review! We are so happy that Skritter has helped your language journey. Would it be okay if we use this review in some future campaigns (possibly a social media image or an email)? We only share the review, not the name. You can let us know at team@skritter.com. Happy studies! ### 4/5 — Practically necessary, however there isn’t an offline mode *2023-09-04, version 3.9.9* This app has been key to passing the N5 and N4. My only gripe is that the app has no offline mode. It seems like I read about it somewhere, but it won’t even load. ### 5/5 — Great for Advanced/Specialist Study *2023-08-04* Renewing my knowledge of kanji is very accessible with Skritter. My motivation has snowballed. **Developer response:** Thank you so much for the raving review! We are so happy that Skritter has helped your language journey. Would it be okay if we use this review in some future campaigns (possibly a social media image or an email)? We only share the review, not the name. You can let us know at team@skritter.com. Happy studies! ### 5/5 — Syncing problems *2023-07-20, version 3.9.7* All was good until I downloaded skitter on iPhone. After I reviewed on ipad, this app automatically synced from the iphone and then all what I had reviewed was gone ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Seems like a scam *2025-06-08* Useless. It doesn’t let you try anything without paying. First give me a sample of performance and quality and then I can decide if it’s worthy the money. It also doesn’t have much textbooks to choose from on their library. Only the basic Genki o Minna no Nihongo. I wish I could have a trisl of how this app works but there’s no way to know. **Developer response:** You can have a 7-day trial. Please contact us at team@skritter.com so that we can assist you. ### 1/5 — WOAH *2024-11-17* I wish I could have tried the app but I got to the subscription page and saw how much it cost. I’m sorry but I don’t think an app, no matter how good it is, justifies spending this much money. Make it cheaper, make it make sense. In the meantime I’ll just use my kanji dictionary. **Developer response:** Please reach out to us at team@skritter.com. We are a pay-to-learn app. Once a subscription expires, you can still review everything you learned during the active subscription. ### 1/5 — Re-subscription issues *2022-11-11, version 3.8.8* A good app to waste money on resubscribe and get nothing in return except for the sections that where already free. ### 1/5 — When you pay the app stop working *2019-04-24* I was using the free version and after I paid the upgrade the app just stop working. The help center has doing nothing to solve the problem. **Developer response:** Hi gothicmad, Please reach out to us at team@skritter.com so we resolve the issue you're running into! I was unfortunately unable to find anything in our inbox containing your username (gothicmad). I'm hoping we've already resolved the issue for you and your email contained a different username. If not, it sounds like your email didn't reach us successfully. We can also manually credit your account with subscription time to make up for any downtime (plus some extra for the inconvenience)! ### 2/5 — Pacing needs to be fixed *2026-07-02, version 3.13.10* After going through most of the katakana lessons at a reasonable pace (about 5 characters per lesson), the app wants you to learn 43 words in one sitting for the final lesson. Bizarre. It then assigns over 150 cards for a review session, versus the usual 15-30ish. Overall a decent app but the poor pacing is a real issue that seems like the devs could easily fix ### 2/5 — A little disappointed *2025-07-18* I used Skritter many years ago, and love the idea of a self-contained SRS that tests written recall. I’m a little surprised that it does not seem to have been improved at all since I last used it. I’m only about 100 kanji in this time around, and have already found errors on common kanji. This is supposed to be a mature app, so errors in stroke count or order are totally unacceptable. I also find it a bit shocking that no features have been added since the old days. I cannot search for kanji or vocab in the app. I cannot add words through the app. This is a very outdated system, which is surprising given the high price. **Developer response:** Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback! We are sorry to hear that you are disappointed. We are currently working on some major Skritter 4.0 updates, so some exciting things are coming in the future! ### 2/5 — Poor design for iPad *2023-06-27* The character input area is enormous on an iPad, to the point that it makes it extremely difficult to input strokes accurately. I don’t write letters four inches high, why would I want to learn to write kanji that way? It seems like it would be bad for retention as well, as you’re engaging gross motor skills versus fine. **Developer response:** Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback! I'll pass it on to the rest of the team. If you ever have any questions, you can reach us at team@skritter.com. ### 2/5 — Lacking dark mode, no auto-add? *2022-10-17, version 3.8.8* Great, but desperately needs a dark mode. Please! This app is blinding me. Wish I could study more in the evening without needing to invert colors through accessibility settings. Also, bring back the ability to auto-add words to the review queue from the decks. Not everyone wants to “learn” them first. Just introduce them automatically in review mode and allow us to set daily limits between 1 and 100. Can be a totally optional feature and not enabled by default. This old (original?) way of doing things was way better IMO for some language-learners. Happy to change my rating if I had these features. **Developer response:** Thanks for the feedback! Our team is currently testing dark mode internally, but there are still some improvements that need to be made before it is officially released. These improvements could still take some time, so we do not have an anticipated release date. You can contact us at team@skritter.com if you have any questions. Happy studies! ### 2/5 — It keeps rotating *2022-04-17, version 3.7.4* The app keeps annoyingly rotating between portrait and landscape even when the screen is locked. Which way are you suppose to use it? ### 2/5 — Doesn’t support connection from Russia *2020-05-06* Switched to Finland ip (vpn) to check everything works fine. The old app has no restrictions and works smoothly using my real ip. New interface looks much better and modern, but I will switch to it only after problem with connection is resolved. **Developer response:** This is due to a Russian government order which blocks certain IP ranges. There's unfortunately nothing we can do about this as it's out of our control, but as you mentioned using a VPN would work as solution to bypass the problem. Thanks for your review and sorry for the inconvenience. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Meilleur app pour le japonais *2026-02-20* J’ai appris le japonais vraiment facilement grâce a cette app , je suis passé de 8 de moyenne à 15 franchement je recommande vraiment **Developer response:** Thank you so much for the 5-star review, and for taking the time to share your feedback! If you ever have any questions, you can reach us at team@skritter.com! ### 5/5 — The most I pay for any app *2025-12-26* This is the most expensive app I pay for … and I like it! I’m probably a corner case in terms of a user, as I’m fluent in Japanese and can read regular novels, write business emails etc without problem. However, ask me to write the same kanji by hand… and I turn into elementary level. Since I can already read the N1 kanji, this has been a super effective way to add handwriting. Highly recommended. **Developer response:** Thank you so much for the 5-star review, and for taking the time to share your feedback! If you ever have any questions, you can reach us at team@skritter.com! ### 5/5 — Perfect for improving reading and writing *2025-11-19* Have been using this app with premium on and off for several years now. I notice that when I’m not using it me retention of new vocabulary is worse, my reading is worse and obviously my writing is terrible. But when I’ve got a good streak going I find that I can write without even looking things up. And even if you’re someone who doesn’t think you’ll ever need to write, it’s still super useful. Just the practice of writing the kanji in the correct stroke order deepens your understanding of them and the radicals which comprise them making it easier to distinguish between similar appearing kanji (e.g. 締める and 諦める, or the characters in 輸入 vs 車輪). Relation to this my recognition speed for reading is drastically improved which makes reading Japanese subtitles whilst immersing in Japanese content online soooo much easier. I also find that remembering new vocabulary involving kanji I’ve studied on the app then becomes much easier. E.g. if I can recognise 動 (movement) and 行 (carrying out, also going) then it makes more sense in some way that 行動 action/behaviour/conduct. Because of this app I’m constantly impressing my Japanese teacher with my knowledge of kanji despite my overall less than impressive Japanese. I highly recommend using this app on an iPad/tablet with an pencil/stylus as well as this extra layer of familiarity and simulating real life is much more grounding than just using your index finger on a tiny phone screen. My one complaint is that there is no way to search for vocabulary Within decks. I.e. say I come across a new word whilst watching a YouTube video and I want to learn the kanji. I know it’s a fairly basic word and so I know it should be in the pre-made Core 6k deck I downloaded. There is no search function within the deck (for as yet unknown words) so I would have to manually go through and find it - which I don’t wanna do in a 6000 word deck… so i end up just having to make my own hodge-podge messy deck of random vocab. I also think the SRS algorithm could perhaps use some fine tuning re: writing vs reading/definition cards. The writing card is obviously harder and easier to forget as it contains multiple steps so I feel like I definitely need to review it more frequently, and find myself having to mark it wrong more often than the others (but maybe this is just me being dumb haha). Realistically, these are just a minor QOL things and otherwise this app is incredible. Another feature which I’m not even sure is possible but I think would be really cool would be to include in the progress section on a writing card an amalgamation of all the previous attempts (raw squigs), so you can see how your handwriting is tracking overall. But as I said I suspect this is impossible lol. Anyway.. TLDR: this app is great and is helpful in so many more ways than you would expect. 100% recommend for anyone learning Japanese. Thanks so much Skritter team for this wonderful tool! **Developer response:** Thanks for the 5-star review! We are so happy to hear that Skritter has helped you, and we really appreciate your detailed feedback. I have passed your feedback on to the development team. We will most likely have a search function within the decks once Skritter 4.0 is released. If you ever have any feedback or questions, let us know at team@skritter.com. Happy studies! ### 5/5 — Perfect! *2025-10-23* Super fun, easy to use, and based on learning theory, asking you the characters just as you’re about to forget them. **Developer response:** Thank you so much for the 5-star review! Let us know if you ever have any questions or feedback. You can reach us at team@skritter.com! ### 5/5 — Love it *2025-08-12, version 3.13.3* Im interested to subscribe when i have enough money.. its expensive :”) ### 5/5 — 🔥🔥🔥 *2025-02-23, version 3.11.8* 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 ### 5/5 — Güzel uygulama *2025-02-01, version 3.11.8* Japonca öğrenenlere tavsiye ederim. ### 5/5 — I really like it *2024-08-19* The app has a lot of pre made decks and spoken content. I use the Genki decks so I can learn the vocabulary before going through the chapter, it really eases my stress to know the building blocks before I have to put them together. The whole character rendering is quite addicting so I like to swipe a lot 🥹 **Developer response:** Thanks for the review! If you ever have any other feedback or questions, let us know at team@skritter.com. Happy studies! ### 5/5 — Very time efficient! *2024-07-26* Aside from the fact that my stroke order and handwriting was completely transformed by this app, the app is also just really smooth. I seem to be able to get through words much quicker than with other apps, making this app my most time efficient way to improve my writing skills. Just for example, this morning I got through 75 reviews in only 15 minutes! **Developer response:** Thanks for the review! We are so happy to hear that Skritter has helped transform your handwriting. If you ever have any feedback or questions, let us know at team@skritter.com. Happy studies! ### 5/5 — Great app, but could use some minor improvements, especially for Japanese *2024-07-21* I enjoy both Chinese and Japanese versions of the app and use them religiously 😀 I have a feature request though: for words with many characters, it would be nice to have multiple boxes on the screen at the same time (one per character), rather than inputting each character into the same box. This might only work for iPad users in horizontal orientation, but it would probably be effective so users can see the whole word they just wrote. It also feels more natural to write while moving my hand to the right for each subsequent character. **Developer response:** Thanks for the review and for taking the time to share your feedback! I'll pass your feedback on to the development team. If you ever have any other feedback or questions, let us know at team@skritter.com. Happy studies! --- *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 2026-08-27.*