Stop forgetting characters. Zigo shows you how each character is built, so they stop being random strokes to memorize.
Zigo is a Chinese learning app that teaches you to read hanzi by breaking every character into its components. Instead of memorizing strokes, you learn why a character means what it means — and that reasoning is what makes it stick.
氵 means water. 舌 means tongue. A tongue with water is 活 — alive, living. Zigo breaks characters down like this across its whole dictionary, and writes a memory hook for each one you look up.
Live database counts, measured July 2026.
Zigo (heyzigo.com) is a Chinese learning app that teaches characters through their components. You search any character or word, see the pieces it is made of, and get a plain-English explanation of why it means what it means.
Every character page shows its decomposition — for example, 活 "to live" is 氵 (water) plus 舌 (tongue) — what each component contributes, and a short memory hook. Meaning built from parts is easier to recall than memorized strokes, and built-in spaced-repetition review keeps what you have learned from fading.
Yes. Zigo has browsable character lists for all six HSK levels, and every list links to a full breakdown of each character.
Searching the dictionary, browsing HSK lists and reading character breakdowns are free. A paid plan ($8/month or $60/year) unlocks unlimited saved characters and spaced-repetition review.
Yes. The built-in Reader takes a photo of Chinese text, extracts the characters with OCR, and links each one to its component breakdown.