I built a WaniKani-style app for Chinese characters available for IOS and Android – looking for beta testers

WaniKani API And Third-Party Apps
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Hey WaniKani community,

As a long-time WaniKani user, I know firsthand how powerful its approach to learning kanji is. When I started learning Chinese, I naturally looked for something similar available for IOS or Android, but nothing quite hit the mark. So I decided to build it myself.

The app is called Zimo. If you know WaniKani, you’ll feel at home immediately:

  • Structured levels that unlock new characters and vocabulary progressively
  • SRS-based review system
  • Available on both iOS and Android

One thing I deliberately left out is radicals. I never found them particularly helpful when using WaniKani. Instead, I categorized characters by their function: standard single characters, vocabulary, grammar characters, and irregular pronunciation characters. This makes it much easier to understand not just what a character means, but how and when to use it.

Since pronunciation is everything in Chinese, I also added a Pinyin quiz to the review cycle for single characters.

Fair warning: this is an early build. The core SRS loop is fully functional, but some features you’d expect from a mature app are still on the roadmap, most notably example sentences and similar/related characters shown directly on the cards. I know how much those matter for retention (WaniKani’s context sentences are a big part of why it works), and they’re coming. But I’d rather get feedback from experienced SRS learners now than wait another few months.

I’m looking for beta testers who are willing to use the app seriously for 2–3 weeks and share feedback via a short questionnaire. Since you’re already familiar with SRS learning, your feedback would be especially valuable, especially on whether the review intervals feel right and whether the learning progression makes sense.

This is a solo passion project and your input will directly influence the development.

iOS (TestFlight): Join the Zimo Chinese beta - TestFlight - Apple

Android: https://groups.google.com/g/zimo-app-beta-testers

Edit/Update: I have created a Google group to make the access on Android easier. Once you join the group you can access the beta version.

Feel free to reply here or send me an email if you’re interested or have questions. Thanks so much! :folded_hands:

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Are these simplified characters or traditional?

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The current beta version uses simplified characters, but I am planning to add traditional characters as well, so the user can choose based on their preferences. Its currently in the works

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This looks cool! I’ve been wishing for something like this. Where are you pulling the audio from?

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Thanks a lot! Happy to hear, that there is some demand for this kind of app! I have paid a native speaker on fiverr to record the audio for me.

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I’m interested. I tried learning Chinese alongside Japanese for a few months but ended up dropping it to focus on Japanese.

I’ve been thinking about picking it back up and was looking for a good Chinese version of WaniKani to use alongside a learning app like HelloChinese.

How many levels are you planning for the fully functional version of the app? And how do you structure the order of the content (easier hanzi first or more common first?) How may hanzi and vocab words can we expect to learn by the end of the program?

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Thanks a lot, if you are interested you can send me your google play address at contact@zimo-characters.com (if you use android) or use the public link from the post if you use IOS. For Google unfortunately I have to add beta testers manually.

For the first release, the goal is to get you up to around HSK 4 to 5 level, so roughly 1500 - 2000 characters + vocab. The order mixes HSK progression with commonly used characters, which honestly overlap a lot anyway since the most common characters tend to show up early in HSK.

The whole point of the app is pretty simple: teach you the characters that actually come up in real life, talking to natives, getting around in China, understanding everyday content, as efficiently as possible.

Then in case there is demand for more and complex characters (e.g. for business use), I can always add those, since adding characters is one of the easier things when it comes to programming the app.

My girlfriend is from Taiwan and I also let her check if characters and vocab especially in the early levels are being used frequently.

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Great, I’ll try it out. Sounds like exactly what I’m looking for. I’m in the US but since I started dabbling in Chinese I started hearing it everywhere I go. Seems like my local area has a high Chinese population so my main motivation is actually using the language in conversation (compared to Japanese, I haven’t heard a single person speak Japanese in real life so definitely different goals for each language).

I downloaded the iOS app. I’ll probably spend 10-15 minutes a day with the app alongside one HelloChinese lesson per day to put it all together, and I’ll look out for that questionnaire in a few weeks.

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Much appreciated! Right now the beta contains the first 5 levels to test the core SRS loop. If you need more characters let me know. Further updates such as sample sentences etc. are currently in the works

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I like the app so far, I went through level 1 yesterday and did the first follow up review today.

A couple of notes:

  • would be great if you could disable autocorrect. I’m not sure if you can do that behind the scenes in the app or if I have to make the change in my app settings. But autocorrect keeps messing up my pinyin entries. It’s fine with a handful of reviews since I can just retype them if I catch it before I submit the answer, but eventually when reviews pile up to 100+ a day I could see this being a hassle.
  • synonyms. I entered “large” for 大 and it was marked wrong since it expects “big”. Maybe you could add common synonyms to give the user some leeway, or allow us to add our own. Or even an undo feature which would help with both this issue and the autocorrect issue I mentioned earlier
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Thanks for the feedback!

  • I will look into the autocorrect problem. As a long time Wanikani user, I totally understand your point.
  • I have added “large” as a synonym for 大 in the database. When adding more characters I will keep that in mind.
  • Also I am currently working on forgiving typos in reviews as that happened to me a couple of times when testing the app.
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This is a wonderful idea! Thank you so much for sharing, I will totally join the beta <3

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Thanks a lot ! If you are on android let me know and I will add you. Otherwise enjoy and let me know if anything needs to be fixed urgently

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