Yomiwa - Japanese Dictionary Reviews

by OneRenegade

While useful, Yomiwa feels pretty clunky and unpolished. The image translation tool clearly misses quite a few hiragana/kanji, and I can’t find an option to translate from right to left instead of left to right. Viewing inside of the image is also incredibly messy & hard to garner information from. Overall, it helps you get the meaning, but the ease of use on Yomiwa is lacking. Wouldn’t want to pay $9 to have to deal with that.

by Chriskurisu1983

I travel to Japan every 3 months. I use this constantly when I encounter new words. Words also are used in example sentences which helps tremendously. The camera picture function has potential to be stellar, and the developer is working hard to make it better! They are responsive to feedback and ideas. Well worth the paid version!

by Loveactuary

This is the best Kanji dictionary I have ever used. Looking up words is super easy using either romanji or hiragana. The kanji lookup isn’t bad either. Whenever I draw a kanji it does a decent job of figuring out what I’m trying to draw. It also supplies other guesses if the first guess is not what you wanted. The best part by far is the Outlier dictionary which is available for nearly every kanji. It is an additional one-time purchase of $30 but I think it is well worth it (about 30 or so entries are available for free, such as 後). Outlier will break down the kanji into its radical components and show how they explain the original meaning and on-yomi pronunciation. Sometimes the original is far removed from the modern, but even then it is helpful to see the components as I often know how to draw those. At a minimum this is a great reference tool. Add the Outlier dictionary if you are seriously studying kanji and it’s an indispensable study tool (paired with a good kanji textbook such as “Kanji in Context”). I just got to 250 kanji and I wish I had used Outlier from the start.

by Ln342000

Yomiwa was developed by a Japanese and this shows in how it almost always breaks up words and usually identifies names of people and places correctly. The OCR also seems to be built in house, allowing it to be used offline, something few other apps offer. Use Yomiwa if you want to learn Japanese in the most efficient way!

by Stop Autocomplete

Really impressed with improvements. Started copying text on my Mac and looking up on the phone app. Wish there was a desktop/chrome version. Better then google translate for learning.

by Macon County

The Analyzer feature is great for learning Japanese sentence structure. You get daily vocabulary words with links to related Japanese articles. Translate Japanese text from photos or using your camera! Responsive customer service! Unique app which is worth the cost!

by Cnoelm

Can’t open since the latest update. I have an iPhone XS for reference. Super disappointed as I’ve been using Yomiwa for years and have never had this problem. Would love for the developers to get in contact...thanks.

UPDATE: Changed review to 5 stars after deleting app and reinstalling, worked like a charm. If you have a problem opening after updating to the last war iOS, try reinstalling. Yomiwa is worth every penny. I like using it when I read manga and watch Netflix so I can jot down new vocab. So much faster an convenient than just using a regular dictionary 😭🙌🏾

by Rlomure

The dictionary is comprehensive and complete, even including verb conjugation/inflections and kanji radical searches. The OCR works surprisingly well, considering the limits of the technology. Honestly the radical search is so easy to use I’ve never needed the OCR feature, but it’s pretty nice when reading or studying sometimes.

by Ref_mnm

Not crazy about some of the layout, but this was definitely worth buying. Super handy, and the search option actually ties conjugations back to their dictionary form. Not only that, but when you put conjugations in, Yomiwa shows the dictionary form along with (passive), (potential), (wish), etc...

by Inquisitive IPad

I am still finding more ways to use this app and it has proven useful to more quickly decode Kanji when I don’t have time to look them up.

Recently, Yomiwa suffered a quirky error following an update. Reaching out over a weekend, I very quickly received a reply from the developer and worked out a solution. Great support!

by HolyWrath24

I have to give you guys props, I reported the audio bug for kon’nichiwa and the development team fixed the issue in less than a day. If you are looking for an app to help you with your Japanese etc. this is definitely the way to go. Good job guys/gals 👍

by Jaybee Valledor

Seriously, as the title says, Yomiwa is AMAZING and it’s probably the most useful tool I’ve ever used in assisting me with learning new vocabulary, new kanji, and how to use both in application. If you’re studying Japanese and you need an app that’s really gonna help you excel, it’s this one. So many useful features like writing kanji and recognizing it from your handwriting and from a photo you take/upload. Helps me learn new characters and words. 🤟🏼

by LolooKyotoPool

Very good app for Japanese learners and travelers, it has all the features you want for a dictionary + some amazing character recognition. The recognition in live mode can be unstable, but works great on still pictures. I also love the ability to copy the recognized text and to analyze it to get the furiganas, it makes reading of Japanese books much easier.

It's nice to see that Yomiwa is being continuously improved and I'm looking forward to future updates! ありがとうございます！

by Dreaming Of Wolves

Granted, I have only used this on screenshots to read text, but google translate has a tough time with bubbly font and Yomiwa scanned every character beautifully. It doesn’t have sentence translation, which is fine. It goes word by word, which actually provides a clearer translation than google translate messing up tenses and other grammar.

I do want to visit Japan one day, and when I do this will absolutely come in handy. Thank you.

by DKJ01

I know Chinese, but am innocent of Japanese, so I downloaded this before heading to Japan for a two-week tour. It served splendidly. I nearly always found what I was looking for, and the available voiceovers supplemented with romaji in many compounds made it useful even though I never mastered kana. I was particularly pleased to find many geographical and historical names. If I ran the zoo, I’d increase the number of proper names and include romaji in head entries, but as it stands this is already worth far more than it costs.

by Vbrown2323

Definitely recommended. The camera is a blessing on the level of sliced bread! As Yomiwa evolves and… The simple functionality is a bit buried but with some direction and searching you can in fact still get to the root of what you are looking for. I am thankful for the developer response and tons of help that enabled me to find the functions that I used so much before. I am glad that they are still there and Yomiwa is once again very useful for me.

by It's Academic Veteran

Yomiwa does an amazing job of Kanji recognition, even for names!! It is essential for serious study - I am using it to read online newspapers and a paperback novel. My reading skill has greatly improved.
The way to use Yomiwa is to do a screen capture to your photo roll, or use Camera+ with image stabilization turned on, and then read in the photo. The live camera is too jittery. The ocr window generally needs to be adjusted to be narrower and the zoom increased somewhat in order to get the best accuracy.
The developer, Vivien, is extremely responsive to feedback and provides bug fixes.

by Fgghbfghghgnhjdfhhdffghfy

Yomiwa is not worth 5 stars , I would give no stars if I could........

First......Yomiwa is good but it keeps freezing and kicking me out, I paid for the one time subscription fee and it keeps asking me to pay again. I probably paid for it twice already and Yomiwa just have too many glitches so it keeps kicking me out. Hopefully this problem gets fixed. And then I can update my review

2nd it keeps asking me to make a nick name for the review and every nickname I use is taken, which leads me to believe I rated the review to low , so I’m trying to give 5 star only to rate the review

by Super Banana It's Cool

I’d like to preface this review by saying this app is an excellent app for its intended purpose. I am a high school student and use Yomiwa for studying. the photo recognition works great and Yomiwa provides a lot of sample sentence to go along with the vocab which I find incredibly helpful. Again, The photo recognition works well focused in on a sheet of paper or on a wall, not outside on a street sign. If you don’t speak Japanese or read it and want to be able to get around, you’re better off with a travel dictionary or something. However as far as research purposes go Yomiwa works great and easily worth the money in exchange for the added convenience.

by Serene And Impatient

Yomiwa is getting 90% of what I'm shooting, which for me includes hand-brushed kanji from maps made hundreds of years ago. Pros:
* you can easily set the scan zone.
* you can freeze the image
* app puts its reading of the kanji next to the image and highlights what it is identifying, so you can tell if it's seeing the image correctly.
* app offers multiple meanings of kanji (essential) and variant versions
* app will isolate several kanji in scan area and you can scroll from one to the next.
* you can copy kanji to your clipboard (which I use to translate from Chinese to get possible alternative meanings or more literal translations).

Kanji will vary because of the brush variances and the artistry of the calligrapher, so this won't be perfect. But my learning the kanji is now much more empowered.

by ハフ 日本人

Learning kanji and reading kanji has been quite the challenge- especially handwritten kanji. However, with Yomiwa- I have been able to decipher and understand the notes from my relatives in Japan.
ありがとうござました！

by Analog656

While I’m learning on duolingo I often look words up here. I like i can do English or hirigana (with romanji keyboard). There’s one feature ask and that would be details on a radical so I can learn the breakdown on the kanji. That would make Yomiwa near perfect IMHO. Thanks!

by Lizy292 🙈🙉🙊

I now happily give Yomiwa 5 stars! I used Yomiwa a lot when I studied abroad in Japan and I still frequently use it whenever messaging my friends or while I am learning the language. Thank you developers for quickly fixing Yomiwa!

by Shinya Dokusho

I love this dictionary, but the latest update as of July 10 has the handwriting input crashing Yomiwa every time I attempt to use it (iPhone 6S with iOS 11.4).

Edit: As promised, the bug is fixed! Many thanks to the this app folks.