Tomoshi Japanese Dictionary

Zhang Yuanyi

About this app

Tomoshi is a Japanese-English dictionary built for producing Japanese, not just decoding it. It helps you say it and write it right.

■ Lookup
· Type Japanese, kana, romaji or English; candidates appear as you type
· 210,000+ entries, with English-to-Japanese reverse lookup for when you know the word in English and need the Japanese
· Results follow the spelling you searched, so 「明」 does not surface entries that look unrelated

■ Definitions you can use
· English definitions and part-of-speech tags
· Reading, pitch accent and a pitch-accent curve
· Conjugation table at a glance
· Example sentences with furigana that follows the entry you are reading

■ Help with producing Japanese
· Transitive / intransitive pairs: 「開く／開ける」-style verb pairs shown side by side with matching example sentences
· Near-synonym notes: how similar words differ and which one fits which situation
· Kanji spelling notes: what each spelling of the same word is used for

■ Remember it
· Save any entry to the wordbook and review it on a spaced-repetition schedule
· Listen-only drills: hear the word without seeing it and train your ear to react
· A small red dot appears when words are due; after a session you see your review streak

■ AI explanations
· Paste a whole sentence for a grammar breakdown with furigana; every word in the reading is tappable and leads back to the dictionary
· Expressions the dictionary does not cover are handed to AI, so you are never stuck at "no results"
· When the model is not sure, it says so instead of inventing a plausible-sounding explanation

■ Audio
· Entries, example sentences and whole sentences can be read aloud with cloud-synthesised voices

■ Privacy
· No account; no name, email or phone number collected
· Lookup history, wordbook and review progress stay on your phone — I cannot see them
· No ads, no third-party analytics
· Crash reports are sent by default, can be turned off in Settings, and never include what you searched
· Full policy: tomoshi.app/privacy/en

■ Connectivity
· The first launch downloads the dictionary data once; after that, core lookup works offline
· AI explanations and speech are the two features that need a connection

■ Free
Looking words up is free forever: the complete dictionary data, offline lookup and the error-reporting feature are free now and will stay free. Cloud features such as AI explanations and cloud speech are free to use today, within a daily quota. Every call to them has a real server cost behind it, so they will move to paid to cover that cost. Put simply: the dictionary is free; the cloud services that cost money to run will eventually be paid. I would rather state the rule from day one.

■ Where the data comes from
· Entries are based on JMdict / EDRDG and other open dictionary projects; example sentences partly from Tatoeba
· Verb pairs, nuance notes and reverse lookup are AI-assisted and cross-checked by multiple models
· Pronunciation and pitch accent are human-verified
· Full attribution in the app under Me → Settings → Open-source licences

■ Other platforms
Desktop versions for Windows and macOS are at tomoshi.app, with a select-to-look-up browser extension. The iOS version is on the App Store.

Independent developer · Free · No ads