Midori (Japanese Dictionary) App Reviews

This is by far the best app I have used for a Japanese dictionary; it has replaced all my others. It has extensive search features, including drawing kanji with your finger, and it does NOT need Internet connectivity to be 100% effective. Most of all, it includes an extensive vocabulary, including specialized terms that I have not found in any other e-dictionary (i.e. I am a geologist and have been able to use it to find many terms I have not seem in other dictionaries). I highly recommend this app! It is worth all the money.

Great tool to learn Japanese. It would be better if I can save the bookmarks to iCloud and sync between different devices.

Ive been studying Japanese for over 14yrs and this app is by far better than any other Japanese dictionary app on the market. It has a very versatile search input and does better than the other apps out there. Dont waist your money on the others. Buy this one!

Its so wonderful when an app does everything you hoped, and more, at such high quality. This app is way more than a dictionary. Its a learning environment. I love the flashcards. I love how you can go seamlessly from word, to a particular Kanji character (with the stroke order shown immediately so you dont have to go hunting for it). I LOVE the example sentences. I just keep hitting More at the bottom and they keep appearing! The lists of JPLT vocabulary are very useful for me too, since Im studying on my own, and they give me a good sense of the words I should know. Thank you very much for making this app!

Easily the best Japanese dictionary on the App Store. The new update with pronunciation with a tab and French definitions is so helpful.

Thanks for the fixes. Awesome app as always!

Update 1/1/2015: Getting better and better...love to hear a word now! This is a wonderful study tool on the iPad (iPhone interface not tested) for the serious student. Use in conjunction with class or other books/programs to conquer this language! Very effective use of the 10" display. Written kanji recognition works well for all kanji tested (up to 12 strokes). With practice, you can learn the expected order when faced with an unknown. Use of bookmarks and the flashcard study tool is easy with the ability to set up multiple folders for different study groups. Very well done.

Its, admittedly, not the most beautiful Japanese-English dictionary app; but I think its the best. Simplicity is practical in this case. The "Translate" function is its most powerful feature. Its not really translation, but a massive lookup of every Japanese word the program recognizes in whatever chunk of text is pasted into the tab. Each recognized word is highlighted with a dark red font and its short English definition is provided in a small window. The latest update optionally adds furigana to the pasted text. I find the extremely helpful. Thanks!

This dictionary is the only one I use literally (and I do mean "literally") everyday for my Japanese class and personal study. It has a smooth and simple feel, very easy to navigate through, and it even has stroke order, kanji meanings, and a dictionary for names!! If there are updates in the future, would the creator please consider adding a history of recent items? I find myself often comparing words and their meanings... but I have to type repeatedly to compare. Another thing I would like to suggest is an indicator of how common a word is in everyday usage (jisho.org has a good example). For someone like myself that studies additional vocabulary outside of class, I tend to see any unfamiliar word used in the examples in this dictionary as something to memorize. But as of right now, my priority is to learn the words most commonly used to have a firm grasp of everyday conversation in Japan. I am planning on studying, as well as teaching there in the future, and this addition, especially, will help me focus on what I really need to study to communicate with natives. It isnt possible to express my appreciation for this ap, how much it has helped me throughout my studies.

There should be a history of all what youve looked up to find recent items

I use another dictionary for most things, but this one is the best for when I need to look up a person or place name.

This appears to be a good app so far, but I think if you all would add the readings (kunyomi and onyomi) of each kanji in the compound, that would help people out a ton! Thank you!

My iTouch has the most recent software, but this still hasn’t been updated. But it works fine on my iPad and I use it everyday in Japan. Best Japanese dictionary for the iPad - iTouch, PLEASE update it again!!!

Great app but would be even better if it supported iCloud so I could synchronize all of my devices. Also it tends to crash when Im typing too fast or exporting my bookmarks.

When performing a hand written kanji search, the dictionary seems to take stroke order into account. The problem is, most students may not know the stroke order. For example, try writing the kanji "yama", with various stroke orders. The kanji for yama only appears on the first page, high in the results list, if you get the stroke order exactly correct. This makes using the kanji search for novices extremely difficult. Would love to have an option to ignore stroke order in the handwritten kanji search. Then this app would get five stars

The catch to this app, is its not immediately for beginners. Recommend that one first learn hiragana & katakana. That being said, its one of the best apps Ive seen for studying Japanese. It breaks down words with meanings/sounds/other near words plus goes into detail about any kanji!! It also contains separate lists for words of origin by language and pronouns/verbs/nouns...etc I love app, どもありがとうございます！！！

I feel like life would be strange if I did not have Midori in it. Together with Jisho.org it makes up pretty much 100% of my Japanese reference tools. The more you put in the more you get out. If you are just starting to learn Japanese, I really recommend dishing out the cash for it. My favorite features: --Handwriting recognition: if youre reading or you see a kanji you dont know while walking around in Japan, simply open up Midori and draw it in. Then bookmark it for later. --Bookmarks: Midori has a really nice bookmark capabilities, allowing you to create folders and subfolders. It greatly helped me during my intermediate Japanese lessons in college. I created a folder for each lesson and two subfolders inside of that; one for kanji and one for vocabulary. Thats great in and of itself, but its even better knowing that you can make... --Flashcards: perhaps a little underspoken is Midoris flashcard capabilities. You can make a set of flashcards at any time out of any of your bookmark sets. You can customize it by showing back or front first, hiding readings... Its great for anyone whos going to be tested. --Lists: Midoris got a bunch of handy built in lists, especially for beginners. You can learn hiragana and katana right from within Midori via flashcards, and Im currently using it to study JLPT N2 kanji. The parts of speech lists is great to browse, too. --Notes: You can make notes on anything you look up to remind you of where you found it or why you wanted to remember it. Also for if Midoris definition happens to be a little off, or you want to add another contextual meaning etc. Things that need work: Midoris built-in translator isnt going to translate sentences for you. It mostly plucks the kanji out of the sentence and gives you their readings and meanings. Not so helpful when you dont know the grammar for the sentence. Hopefully theyll implement one that busts Google Translate in the chops. On the plus side, you can copy an entire newspaper article and get a kanji list generated for you that you can make flashcards out of. No kanji stroke practice: This is a little unfair to pin on Midori, as there are very few apps on the market that do this, but I would very much love to see a function that allows you to study kanji by drawing them to see if theyre right, trace them to memorize them, that sort of thing. Midoris already got the handwriting recognition, would need only to incorporate a system that uses it for review and study instead of only searching.

I cant believe all these wonderful updates! They just keep making this great app even better!!

Ive had both imiwa and Japanese but midori is pretty much the only app I use on a daily basis. Layout is nice and clean and its easy to use (and imo looks better overall than the other two). Would be nice to see it on other platforms such as Mac. A minor issue I have with it is that the speed of the speech function is quite fast and cannot be controlled even when I try to change it in the speech accessibility settings. Another thing Id love to see would be an addition of a radicals list similar to what Japanese by Renzo has. For now I guess Ill have to manually make my own but I think it will be a useful tool to others as well.

Worth every penny! User-friendly interface and extensive content, functions, etc. A suitable substitute for a traditional electronic dictionary.