Meow Chinese Support

Meow Chinese helps you learn to read the Chinese you already speak. Press the Action Button in any app and that screen freezes into a reading lesson. Try reading it first, then brush a finger across any word to flash its pinyin, hear it, and see what it means. Save the words you want to keep, and they come back as short daily reviews.

Everything runs on your iPhone: text recognition, the dictionary, speech and translation. There's no account and nothing to buy. Meow Chinese needs an iPhone with iOS 26 or later.

Try it first

On the home screen, under Try it, tap Open the sample chat and brush across the text. Or tap Open a screenshot to open any screenshot from Photos.

Set up the Action Button

Do this once, so one press reads whatever is on your screen.

1. Add the shortcut. On the Meow Chinese home screen, tap Add the Show Pinyin shortcut. Choose Shortcuts in the share sheet, then tap Add Shortcut.
2. Put it on the Action Button. Open Settings → Action Button, swipe to Shortcut, and pick Show Pinyin.
3. Allow it the first time. Open any app with Chinese text and press the Action Button. Shortcuts asks whether Show Pinyin can share the screenshot with Meow Chinese. Tap Always Allow.

Meow Chinese then opens with that screen ready to read. To go back to the app you were in, swipe right along the bottom edge of the screen.

No Action Button? Use Back Tap

The Action Button is on iPhone 15 Pro and every iPhone since. On other iPhones, double-tap the back of the phone instead:

1. Add the shortcut as in step 1 above.
2. Open Settings → Accessibility → Touch → Back Tap, choose Double Tap (or Triple Tap), and pick Show Pinyin.
3. Double-tap the back of your iPhone in any app, and tap Always Allow the first time.

Troubleshooting

It asks for permission every time. You probably tapped Allow Once. Next time it asks, tap Always Allow.

"That file isn't an image." The shortcut is missing its Take Screenshot step. Delete Show Pinyin in the Shortcuts app and add it again from the Meow Chinese home screen.

"No Chinese text found." Meow Chinese reads printed Chinese on screen, in simplified or traditional characters. Very small or stylized text can be missed: zoom in on the page and press the Action Button again.

The voice sounds robotic. Download an enhanced Mandarin voice in Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → Voices.

Your privacy

Your screenshots, their text and the words you save never leave your phone. Unless you switch off Share usage with the developer on the home screen, the app sends counts of what you do, like screenshots read and words saved, to help us improve it. The privacy policy has the details.

Contact

Questions, problems or ideas: support@meowchinese.com.