# Settings

## Table of Contents

1. Language
2. Fonts
3. Colors
4. Audio
5. External Access
6. Miscellaneous
7. Dictionary Search
8. Search Screen
9. Search Engine
10. Input Methods
11. Dictionary Definition
12. Definition Screen
13. Popup Definition
14. OCR
15. Other
16. Reader
17. Flashcards
18. Dictionary Management
19. Backup / Restore

## Language

Options relating to Pleco’s handling of language variations (Cantonese, Traditional, Zhuyin).

### Characters

Options relating to Pleco’s display of Chinese characters.

Traditional characters - Use traditional instead of simplified characters in dictionary entries and example sentences.

Headword mode - Determines how Pleco displays Chinese-character headwords which have both Simplified and Traditional character variants.

- One Set Only - Display headwords in the currently selected character set only.

- Both Sets - Display headwords in both Traditional and Simplified characters, with the one that’s not currently selected in brackets

- Both w/Dashes - Same as “Both Sets,” but characters that are the same in Simplified and Traditional are replaced by dashes (-) in the bracketed set.

- Mix-size Both - Same as “Both Sets,” but the bracketed character set is displayed in a normal font size if the headword is magnified.

- Mix w/Dashes - Same as “Both w/Dashes,” but the bracketed character set is displayed in a normal font size if the headword is magnified.

Bold headwords - Display Chinese characters in dictionary headwords in boldface.

### Mandarin

Options relating to Pleco’s display of Mandarin pronunciation guides.

Mandarin pronunciation - Determines how Pleco displays the Mandarin pronunciations of characters and words.

- None - Don’t display Mandarin pronunciations at all (so it’s characters-only unless you’ve enabled Cantonese). May cause odd behavior in some parts of Pleco (like flashcard multi-choice tests that prompt you to select pronunciation.

- Pinyin w/Marks - Display Mandarin pronunciations in Pinyin with tone marks above each syllable.

- Pinyin w/Numbers - Display Mandarin pronunciations in Pinyin but with tone numbers (1/2/3/4/5) at the end of syllables instead of tone marks above them.

- Zhuyin - Display Mandarin pronunciations in Zhuyin characters (also known as BoPoMoFo), with tone marks at the end of each syllable.

Show Zhuyin + Pinyin - If you’ve selected one of the Pinyin modes above, this option will appear to allow you to show Zhuyin as well (on the line below the Pinyin). If you’ve selected Zhuyin above then this option will cause Pinyin to show on the line below Zhuyin.

Hide example pronunciation - Hide all pronunciation guides for example sentences, so that you’ll see only characters and English in them even from dictionaries that include Pinyin.

Ruby text - Options for display of Zhuyin readings next to (rather than in a separate line from) characters.

Ruby Zhuyin in definition header - Show Zhuyin pronunciation to the right of characters in dictionary definition headers
Ruby Zhuyin in definition examples - Show Zhuyin pronunciations to the right of characters in dictionary definition examples
Ruby Zhuyin in popup + OCR - Show Zhuyin pronunciations to the right of characters in popup + OCR definitions
Ruby Zhuyin in lists - Show Zhuyin pronunciation to the right of characters in search result lists
Ruby Zhuyin in flashcards - Show Zhuyin pronunciation to the right of characters in flashcards

### Cantonese

Options relating to Pleco’s use of Cantonese.

Enable Cantonese - Display Cantonese text in entries from dictionaries that include Cantonese pronunciations; if any one of the dictionaries with a definition for a particular word includes Cantonese, we’ll show it in the header even if the first dictionary does not. It’ll be shown in search results surrounded by brackets {} and in dictionary entries with its own “JP” or “YL” line; it’s not yet supported at all in flashcards but that should be coming soon.

Cantonese phonetic system - Determines how Pleco displays the Cantonese pronunciations of characters and words.

- Jyutping w/Digits - Jyutping romanization with a regular digit after each syllable to indicate tone.

- JP w/Superscripts - Jyutping romanization with a superscripted digit after each syllable to indicate tone.

- Yale w/Tones - Yale romanization with flat/falling/rising marks and added ’h’es to indicate tones.

- Yale w/Numbers - Yale romanization with a digit after each syllable to indicate tone.

Auto-generate if missing - Automatically generate Cantonese readings for any entries that are missing them. (this will not affect search)

Enable Cantonese Search - Allows you to enter search terms in Cantonese as well as Mandarin.

## Fonts

Options to configure Pleco’s use of fonts + font sizes.

### Custom Fonts

Configure custom Chinese and English fonts in Pleco.

Customize Chinese Font: install a custom Chinese font file. Almost any TrueType Chinese font should work, but you’ll probably want one that has good support for both traditional and simplified characters in order to get text in Pleco to display correctly. Tap on this command, then select the font file to immediately install it. A good free Android-compatible font with comprehensive character set coverage is DroidSansFallbackFull.

If installing a new font causes Pleco to start crashing when you start it up, you can manually delete it by going into the /Android/data/com.pleco.chinesesystem/files/fonts/chinese directory on your SD card and deleting all of the font files inside of it.

Reset Font: clear your previously configured Chinese font file and return to the default system font.

Customize Chinese Bold Font: same as above, for bold Chinese text (in example sentences and headwords, mostly).

Customize English/Pinyin Font: same as above, for non-boldface English and Pinyin text - make sure this font supports Pinyin tone mark characters.

Customize English/Pinyin Bold Font: same as above, for boldface English and Pinyin text - again, make sure this font supports Pinyin tone mark characters.

Force Compatibility Fonts: force Pleco to fall back on uglier but more compatible fonts which may work on better on some devices that render garbled versions of our default ones.

### Font Sizes

Entry headword - Size of magnified characters in headwords at the top of dictionary entries.

Entry body - Size of body text in dictionary entries (everything that’s not in the headword).

Popup definition - Size of all text in the popup dictionary definition “bubble.”

List Chinese headword - Size of Chinese headwords in search result / entry lists.

List English headword - Size of English headwords in search result / entry lists.

List Pinyin - Size of Pinyin/Zhuyin/Cantonese pronunciations in search result / entry lists.

List definition - Size of definitions in search result / entry lists.

Document Reader - Size of text in the document reader.

## Colors

Custom color schemes for Pleco’s UI and for character tones.

### Night Mode

Enable Night Mode - Inverted color scheme (white text on a black background), useful at night or in a dark room or if you simply prefer that look to the default black-on-white.

### Day Mode Interface Colors

Day Mode Color Theme - choose a color theme for Pleco (when Night mode is disabled); along with the default blue theme, there’s an Android–4-style gray theme and a theme for each of the standard Material Design colors.

Toolbar Color - configure the background color of toolbars (applies to both the top and bottom of the screen); only applies when Night Mode is disabled.

Status Bar Color - configure the background color of the system status bar at the very top of the screen; also only applies when Night Mode is disabled, and only on Android 5 (previous versions of Android did not support custom status bar colors).

### Tone Colors

Color headwords by tone - Color Chinese-character headwords in search results / definitions based on their tone.

Color Pinyin/Zhuyin by tone - Color Pinyin/Zhuyin readings in search results / definitions based on their tone.

Color example chars by tone - Color Chinese-character headwords in example sentences based on their tone (in dictionaries that include Pinyin transcriptions for their example sentences).

Color example PY/ZY by tone - Color Pinyin/Zhuyin readings in example sentences based on their tone.

Use Cantonese Tones - Use Cantonese (rather than Mandarin) readings as the basis for tone coloring.

Tone Colors - configure the specific colors used by Pleco to represent each tone (1–5). Note that there are separate options here for day and night mode.

## Audio

Audio-related options.

TTS Speed- select the playback speed for TTS audio; by default this is set to 90%.

### Recorded Audio

Options relating to Pleco’s pre-recorded audio pronunciation add-ons

Preferred gender - Determines which set of recordings to use when playing pre-recorded Mandarin audio.

- Female - Female speaker

- Male - Male speaker

- Alternating - Alternates between male and female speakers each time you play audio.

- Alt (F 1st) - Alternates between male and female speakers, but always begins with a male speaker on each new dictionary entry or flashcard.

- Alt (M 1st) - Alternates between male and female speakers, but always begins with a female speaker on each new dictionary entry or flashcard.

Preferred gender (Cantonese) - same as above, but for Cantonese audio recordings.

Use TTS if no recording - With this option enabled, Pleco will use text-to-speech in place of syllable-by-syllable audio recordings when playing words for which there’s no exact audio recording match.

Use Cantonese in popup / OCR - Use recorded Cantonese instead of Mandarin audio in the popup reader and in the OCR screen.

### Text-to-Speech

Options relating to Pleco’s synthetic text-to-speech system.

System TTS Engine - choose which of the installed text-to-speech engines on your device Pleco should use. Google is the default + recommended option as it does a good job with both Mandarin and Cantonese.

TTS Voice - voice used for text-to-speech playback. “Cycle Voices” cycles between all of your installed voices - you can choose specific voices from the checkboxes below; “System Mandarin” and “System Cantonese” use the system engine chosen above, “Pleco Mandarin (Male)” and “Pleco Mandarin (Female)” use Pleco’s text-to-speech add-ons.

Hide example button - hide the text-to-speech buttons that normally appear next to example sentences.

Enable English - Enable English text-to-speech support for dictionary headwords and example sentences, giving them their own audio play icons.

### Speech-to-Text

Options relating to the built-in Android voice recognition system.

Voice Recognition Language - selects whether the microphone button captures text in Mandarin, Cantonese, or English. Note that you can also configure this by long-pressing the microphone button.

## External Access

Options for Screen Reader / OCR and for Clipboard Monitoring

### Screen Reader + OCR

Enable screen reader + OCR - Add a floating button to your device’s UI which will instantly capture the current screen’s text and bring up a tap-lookup interface for it

Create shortcut - Create an icon on the home screen to enable / disable the screen reader function

Show toggle in menu - Show a toggle for the screen reader feature in the sidebar menu

Trigger with notification - Trigger screen reader via a notification instead of a floating button

Hide while Pleco active - Hide the floating button while Pleco is in the foreground

Bury notification - Bury the screen reader notification at the bottom of the notification list

Show invert/orient in Screen OCR - Show invert/orient buttons at the corners of the Screen OCR window

Hide characters in Screen OCR - Hide recognized characters in Screen OCR

### Clipboard Monitor

Enable clipboard monitoring - Monitor the clipboard while Pleco is running in the background and pop up a definition when it changes (if it contains Chinese text)

Mode - “Open app immediately” pops up the Pleco app with the copied text in the search box, “Show notification” pops up a mini definition in the notification area instead, including support for browsing through previous clipboards and scanning through a long range of text looking up individual words.

Notification mode - “Live” shows a new notification (at the top of the screen, on Android 5 at least) every time the text changes, “Persistent” leaves a persistent notification but doesn’t do anything else when the text changes, “Live + Persistent” shows that floating live notification and also keeps the persistent one behind so you can review it later.

Show ticker - Show the definition in a ticker at the top of the screen

Bury notification - Bury the notification at the bottom of the notification list

Default open definition - Open the definition instead of search results when tapping on the small clipboard notification

Show toggle in menu - Show a toggle for the clipboard monitor feature in the sidebar menu

Create shortcut - Create an icon on the home screen to enable / disable the Pleco Clipboard Monitor function

## Miscellaneous

Other app-wide options

### Sidebar

Rearrange sidebar sections - Rearrange the order of items in Pleco’s sidebar menu to make it easier to get at your most-used sections. (feel free to move “Add-ons” to the bottom, we just want to make sure people know it’s there)

### Startup Search

Search clipboard on startup - Search for the contents of the clipboard when Pleco opens, making it a bit faster to look up words in other applications. (this only happens if the clipboard has been changed since Pleco was last exited)

Only search if Chinese - Only do this if the clipboard contains Chinese characters.

Use clip reader if length > - Set a threshold above which Pleco will look up the clipboard contents in the Reader rather than putting them in the Input Field; this way, you can quickly translate larger blocks of text (text messages, emails, etc).

### Launchers

Create custom launcher shortcuts to access specific Pleco modules from your device’s home screen. If you have a third-party task manager app that allows you to create shortcuts to other apps, Pleco’s modules should show up in the list of available shortcuts to generate in that app (if it doesn’t, let us know and we’ll try to support it in a future update).

Dictionary Launcher - launch the main dictionary search screen.

OCR Launcher- launch OCR.

Reader Launcher - launch the document reader.

Flash Launcher- launch flashcards; this will take you to your flashcard session if you have one in progress or take you to the screen to start a new session if not.

### File Locations

File storage location - configure the location where Pleco’s database files are stored on your SD card. Changing this does not automatically move them, so what you’ll want to do is change this, exit Pleco, kill it in the background via the Android Settings app / Applications, move the files to the new location, and then reopen Pleco. It will always check the two non-“Custom” locations if it can’t find any files in the location you’ve configured, so if you screw this up and specify the wrong directory, move them back there and it should start up again without wanting to re-download its data files. To describe the three possible location choices a little more specifically:

- System Default - Data files go in Android’s default external storage directory. Usually this means the directory /Android/data/com.pleco.chinesesystem/files on your SD card, if you have one, or the built-in flash storage if not. Temporary files (downloads and such) go in the default external cache directory, usually /Android/data/com.pleco.chinesesystem/cache on your SD card.
- /mnt/sdcard- Data files go in /mnt/sdcard/Android/data/com.pleco.chinesesystem/files, and temporary files go in /mnt/sdcard/Android/data/com.pleco.chinesesystem/cache.
- Custom - Data files go in whatever directory you specify, and temporary files go in a “cache” directory inside of that directory. So the data you specify for your custom directory is the location where the folders that were formerly in /Android/data/com.pleco.chinesesystem/files should go - usually “modules,” “bmodules,” and “databases.”

Don’t append times to backups - don’t add the current date+time to the end of the default file name for backup files, useful if you want to overwrite older backup files instead of creating a new one each time.

Force legacy file chooser - Force Pleco to use the old, pre-Android–4.4 file chooser system, which can be useful on devices running forked / non-standard versions of Android with buggy or incompatible file chooser UIs.

### Task Management

Disable auto-off - prevent your device from automatically turning off (from lack of touch input, e.g.) while using any part of Pleco.

Back button behavior - change the behavior of the system back button when navigating between different parts of Pleco.

- Exit from top level - go back to the top level of this particular section of Pleco, then exit Pleco if you continue pressing back from there.
- Back to Dictionary, then exit - as above, but after hitting the top level, if that’s not the main Dictionary search screen, return to that screen and only exit after pressing back from there.
- Backtrack through tabs - after reaching the top level, backtrack through all of the Pleco sections you’ve visited recently.

Use menu button for drawer - use the hardware menu button to open / close the navigation drawer. Note that this may interfere with access to options menus on some devices, and note also that since hardware menu buttons were deprecated in Android 3.0 (way back in 2011) and most manufacturers’ devices no longer include them, they may stop working altogether in a future version of Android.

### Updates

Automatic update check - Automatically check for updated versions of your installed dictionary (and other add-on) databases once a week, and pop up an alert if any are found.

Check for app update - Only available if you downloaded Pleco from our website; this will check with our website to see if a newer version is available.

## Dictionary Search

## Search Screen

### Basic Options

Show flash status - Show an icon in search results indicating whether or not each entry is in flashcards

Smaller search text - shrink the text in the search box so it’ll accommodate more characters.

Show quick input bar - shows a toolbar at the bottom of the Entry List to allow one-button access to your desired text input method.

#### Buttons

Show history button - show a button in the top toolbar to quickly pop up a list of recent searches / jump to one of them.

Show copy button - show a button in the top toolbar to easily copy the current text in the search field to the clipboard.

The remaining three options on this screen only apply when Pleco is in two-panel mode:

Show flashcard button - show a button in the toolbar to add the current word to flashcards; otherwise this can only be done via a long-press or the floating flashcard button.

Show edit button - show a button in the toolbar to create a new user dictionary entry based on the current word (or edit an existing one); this will only show if you’ve created a user dictionary and it supports editing.

Show entry scroll buttons - show buttons to scroll to the next / previous entry - note that they will only appear if there’s enough room in the search bar for them.

### Portrait Orientation

Options when your device is in portrait (tall) orientation.

Two-panel layout - with this option enabled, the definition of the currently-selected dictionary entry will be displayed right on the main screen, rather than in a separate view (as it was in our Palm OS / Windows Mobile software).

Definition location - determines where this definition is located on the screen (top / bottom / left / right).

List:definition size ratio - determines the relative sizes of the list and definition boxes. (1:2 would mean that the definition is twice as large or tall as the list)

#### List Layout

Configured separately for Chinese-to-English and English-to-Chinese dictionary entries.

List layout - Determines which parts of each dictionary entry are included in the list, and how they’re arranged. There are lots of choices here, but they’re described by a simple system. “Head,” “Pron,” and “Defn” refer to the headword, pronunciation (Chinese-English only), and definition respectively. When they appear separated by a space - “Head Pron” for example - that means they appear in the same line of text, separated on that line by a space. When they appear separated by a / - “Head / Defn” for example - that means that they appear on separate lines. So, “Head Pron / Defn” would mean the headword and pronunciation appear together on the first line of each Entry List item, then the definition follows on the next line. “Head / Pron / Defn” would have the headword, pronunciation, and definition all on different lines, and “Head Pron Defn” would have them all appear in a single block.

Maximum # of lines - Determines how many lines of each entry definition are displayed in the list.

### Landscape Orientation

Identical to the options for Portrait Orientation above.

### Other Options

Unknown search - Adds a prompt to the top of any unknown Chinese character search results to create a custom flashcard or user dictionary entry:

- Ignore - Don’t show a prompt at all

- Custom Card - Prompt to create a custom flashcard based on the search characters.

- Custom Entry - Prompt to create a user dictionary entry based on the search characters.

- Custom Entry + Card - Prompt to create a user dictionary which will then also be added to flashcards.

Always save first result - always save the first search result to your recently viewed entry history, even if you don’t tap on it. (normally entries are only saved to history if you tap on them to view them)

## Search Engine

### Input Processing

Intelligent segmentation" - Attempt to break down long strings of text that don’t have matches in the dictionary more intelligently; this hurts performance somewhat, but is helpful if you habitually paste sentences in the search box to look them up (rather than using our document reader).

Flexible Pinyin splits - With this option enabled, Pleco will search for any combination of Pinyin syllables that matches the spelling of your search query, assuming you haven’t entered tones or other marks to specifically split them - “xian” will match both “xian” and “xi’an” and “changan” will match both “chang’an” and “changan.” Disable this option and Pleco will require mid-word syllables beginning with a vowel to have a space, apostrophe, or tone number in front of them, so “xian” would only match “xian.”

Search for umlauts on ’u’s - With this option enabled, Pleco treats Pinyin u and ü as the same character; enter a ‘u’ and you’ll see matches for both. With it disabled, you’ll have to type an actual ü or a v to enter syllables like lü.

Fuzzy English matching - With this option enabled, words that are spelled differently in different dialects of English will match against any spelling variation - “colour” will match “color” and vice versa.

Sort Chinese by Pinyin - with this option enabled, search results will not be sorted by frequency but instead simply by Pinyin + length.

All-caps -> full-width - With this option enabled, capital-letter-only search strings will be interpreted as full-width (= Chinese) characters, useful for Chinese words containing English letters like “ka3la1 OK.”

Jump to appended word - Scroll to the most recently added word in a multi-word breakdown (rather than jumping to the top).

### Dictionary switching

Integrate E-C fulltext - With this option enabled, searches in Pleco for English words will span both English-to-Chinese and Chinese-to-English dictionaries, searching the full text of entries in the latter.

Integrate C-E fulltext - As above, but for Chinese words.

Dict search order - This controls the priority order in which dictionaries / dictionary groups are searched.

- From Current - Begin each search with the currently-selected dictionary or group.

- From First - Begin each search with the first dictionary or group in the search order (as configured in Manage Dictionaries / Dictionary Groups). Note that this will not apply in the popup definition bubble; for that, you’ll want to disable “Sticky Dict Selection” in its own settings screen instead.

- Current Only - Only search for words in the current dictionary and don’t check any others unless you specifically switch into them.

## Input Methods

### Handwriting Input

Options relating to Pleco’s Chinese handwriting input add-on.

#### Character Sets

Common Simplified - Enables recognition of Simplified characters (used in mainland China and Singapore) in the handwriting recognizer.

Rare Simplified - Enables recognition of less common simplified characters, at the expense of more false positives / incorrect results (the more characters Pleco can potentially recognize, the more likely it is to match what you drew to the wrong character).

Common Traditional - Enables recognition of Traditional characters (used in Taiwan and Hong Kong) in the handwriting recognizer.

Rare Traditional - As above, enables recognition of less common traditional characters.

Extra-rare + Hong Kong - Adds support for a few more rare characters + special characters for Hong Kong. (many more characters, including everything in the Unicode CJK Unified + Extension A blocks, are supported with our optional Enhanced Handwriting Recognizer add-on)

Radicals - Adds support for some extra radical-only characters. (only available with our optional Enhanced Handwriting Recognizer add-on)

Cursive - improves the handwriting recognizer’s support for cursive (Chinese) handwriting, at the expense of a few more false matches for non-cursive (stroke-by-stroke). Clearly-drawn cursive characters should be recognized even with this option disabled, but enabling it increases its tolerance for joined strokes.

#### Interface

Use full screen - on by default on smartphones and off by default on tablets; with this option enabled, Pleco will keep the handwriting input box in the bottom half of the screen only and allow you to continue using the regular dictionary search interface in the top half.

Second chars on tap - with this option enabled, when you tap on a character in the list of recognizer results, it replaces that list with a list of the most frequent characters that follow the character you selected, making it easier to enter multi-character words. (this option is always disabled in flashcard fill-in-the-blanks tests)

Stroke thickness - configure how thick the line you draw with your finger appears in the drawing box, from Very Thin to Very Thick.

Disable Clear Gesture - Disable use of the two-finger clear / backspace gesture, useful if you’re using a stylus to draw characters instead of your finger and find that sometimes your hand is recognized as a second finger by mistake.

### Radical Input

Options relating to Pleco’s built-in radical input system.

Use full screen - on by default on smartphones and off by default on tablets; with this option enabled, Pleco will keep the radical input box in the bottom half of the screen only and allow you to continue using the regular dictionary search interface in the top half.

Character set filter - with this option enabled, tapping on a radical that’s specific to Simplified or Traditional characters (i.e., one that always appears differently in the other character set) will only show you characters with the radical in that character set; otherwise, tapping on (for example) the simplified-character speech radical would show you characters that contain both the simplified and traditional versions of that radical.

Include unused chars - include characters in the radical table that aren’t covered by any of your currently-installed dictionaries (though they may still be included in the Unihan database / Char Info screen).

### Keyboard

Disable suggestions - disable the auto-suggest feature on many Android devices’ keyboards, so you won’t end up with Pinyin queries being interpreted as misspelled English.

Alternate method - use an alternate method to do this that works better on phones from some manufacturers; since it can cause problems on others, we leave it off by default, but if the above does not work correctly we recommend turning it on and seeing if that improves matters.

## Dictionary Definition

## Definition Screen

Options relating to Pleco’s dictionary definition display screen.

### Tabs

Rearrange Tabs - change the order of tabs (DICT / STROKE / etc) in the definiton screen, to make your favorites easier to reach.

### Dict tab

Show dict slider - Show a slider bar at the bottom of the definition screen to let you quickly see which dictionaries have definitions available for the current word and jump to the definition for a specific dictionary.

Floating Button - add an easy-to-reach flashcard or audio button to the bottom right corner of the definition screen.

Show example toggles - Show a toggle button next to each dictionary’s header to show / hide inline example sentences (making it easier to quickly scan through)

+ button for each dictionary - Put a flashcard / bookmark add button at the start of every individual dictionary entry, making it easy to create a flashcard or bookmark from a specific entry instead of just creating it from the first entry listed (as happens when you tap on the + button on the top of the screen).

+ button for each example - Put a flashcard / bookmark add button at the end of each example sentence, making it easy to create flashcards or bookmarks from those.

Enlarge Chinese characters - increase the size of Chinese characters relative to English ones in definitions; this is ugly and may cause odd display behavior in a few places, but it can help make Chinese characters easier to read.

Don’t append UNI info - Don’t add information from the Unihan database (shown with a UNI header) to the bottom of the dictionary definition box for single character entries.

Dict hiding - Configure how Pleco hides and shows definitions from specific dictionaries.

- Remember - Remember the hidden status of each dictionary (you can tap on its abbreviation to show / hide it) and restore this when you scroll to a different word.

- Remember + open first - As above, but if this results in every dictionary being hidden, temporarily show the first dictionary so that at least one entry is visible.

- Hide all - Always hide all dictionaries, so that you can show each one by tapping on its abbreviation.

- Hide + open first - As above, but always show the first dictionary listed and only leave the others hidden.

- Show all - Always show all dictionaries, regardless of whether or not you’ve hidden them previously.

### Stroke tab

Stroke order background - Change the background image of stroke order diagrams; you can replace the default blank background with a 2x2 or 3x3 grid or a 2x2 grid with diagonal lines.

Show outline - Show outlines of characters in the stroke order diagram screen.

Fade strokes - Fade strokes from black to gray to provide a faster way to see their order without waiting for the character to animate.

Drawing speed - Control how quickly stroke order diagrams animate, from Very Slow to Very Fast.

### Chars tab

Flatten components - Only show the highest-level component breakdown of a character, not going into deeper components.

Flatten compounds - Only show the compounds that include the current character as a direct component, not as a part of larger component.

Common compounds - Only include characters covered by one of your built-in dictionaries in the compound list.

Use older data - use the old character breakdown data from version 2.x of Pleco.

### Words tab

Limit containing to later chars - Show only words that don’t start with a character in the “Words Containing” section of the “Words” tab.

Don’t filter pronunciation - Disable pronunciation filtering, so that words will show up regardless of whether the character is pronounced the same way in them as it is in the headword.

Sort beginning by frequency - Sort the list of words starting by frequency.

Sort containing by frequency - Sort the list of words containing by frequency.

Prioritize flash in beginning - Put flashcard vocabulary at the top of the list of words starting.

Prioritize flash in containing - Put flashcard vocabulary at the top of the list of words containing.

## Popup Definition

### General

Flip buttons left-to-right - Flip the position of the arrows in the toolbar so that the arrows used to move the highlight are on the left, while those used to resize it are on the right. This puts the move arrows closer to the thumb position for left-handed users, possibly making them easier to operate with one hand.

Flip bars top/bottom - Flip the position of the toolbars on the top / bottom of the screen, so that the arrows used to adjust the current selection are at the top instead of the bottom. (may be a more comfortable finger location for some people)

Sticky dict selection - Remember the last manually-selected dictionary and default to that dictionary when reopening the popup reader / advancing to a new word.

### Audio

Auto-play audio on tap - automatically play audio for any word that you tap on.

Auto-play on advance too - also do this when tapping on the popup definition arrow buttons to move to the next / previous word.

### Flashcards

Unknown word handling - Determines what happens when you tap on the add-to-flashcards button with a string of text selected that’s not in any of Pleco’s dictionaries.

- Ignore - Don’t create the card at all.

- Truncate - Create a card out of the longest matching word at the start of the selection (possibly just a single character)

- Custom Card - Bring up a prompt to create a custom flashcard based on the selection.

- Custom Dict Entry - Bring up a prompt to create a user dictionary entry based on the selection, adding the resulting dictionary entry to flashcards.

### History

Save on selection change - Save the current word to the Reader section of history whenever you move to a new word with the arrow buttons or by adjusting the selection handles, as opposed to the default behavior of only saving it when you tap on a word.

### Hardware Acceleration

Disable hardware acceleration - force the popup reader bubble to be rendered in software instead of hardware, fixing issues on a few devices with buggy graphics drivers.

## OCR

Copy result to clipboard - when exiting OCR, copy the most recent result text to the clipboard so that you can easily paste it into another app.

### Live Video OCR Settings

#### Interface

Tap video to pause - With this option enabled, you can tap anywhere in the video area to pause the recognizer.

(only while held down) - Enable this option too and the recognizer will immediately un-pause when you lift your finger from the screen (though you can drag your finger down while paused to “lock” this and require a tap to unpause).

Tap video to resume - With this option enabled, you can tap anywhere in the video area to resume the recognizer when it’s paused.

Tap video to re-focus - with this option enabled, you can tap anywhere in the video area to re-focus the camera.

Pulse mode - with this option enabled, the OCR system will only run when you press the “Pulse” button (which replaces the pause button), rather than running continuously until paused.

#### Motion Detection

Enable motion detection - Activates our advanced “motion detection” system, which uses input from your device’s motion sensors along with advanced video analysis techniques to detect when the camera (or the thing it’s pointing at) is moving and pause the recognizer when it’s not (avoiding “jitter” when it keeps re-recognizing the same characters).

#### Configure motion detection

##### Basic Settings

Mode - determines how Pleco detects that your device is moving; Motion Sensor uses the built-in acceleration sensor and gyroscope, Video Analysis analyzes the difference between frames of video, and Sensor + Video combines both techniques. In general we recommend keeping this on “Sensor + Video,” but if your hands are very shaky you may find that “Video Analysis” by itself works better, or if you want to save battery life or are in a situation where there’s lots of other movement going on the images you’re looking at (subtitles / street signs, e.g.), “Motion Sensor” by itself might work better.

Delay before pause - determines how long Pleco waits for the device to stop moving before it automatically pauses the recognizer.

Button-only resume - with this option enabled, after automatically pausing the recognizer Pleco won’t un-pause it until you manually tap on the “resume” button.

##### Video Analysis

Video pause threshold - determines the level of video motion below which the recognizer will automatically pause; if you set this to 50%, the recognizer will only pause when the device is moving at half the speed it would pause at with this set to 100%. So in other words, if you find that the recognizer is pausing too much (i.e. while you’re still moving the device), you should increase this setting, while if you find that it’s pausing too little (i.e. not pausing when you’re holding the device steady), you should decrease it.

Video resume threshold - determines the level of video motion above which the recognizer will automatically resume when paused; if you set this to 50%, the device will only have to be moving at half the speed to automatically resume that it would have to be moving at with this set to 100%. So in other words, if you find that the recognizer is resuming too soon (i.e., it starts recognizing again while you’re still pointing at the same word), you should increase this setting, while if you find that it’s resuming too late (i.e., you start moving the device but the recognizer remains paused), you should decrease it.

It’s usually best to keep the Pause and Resume threshold values at the same percentage (both 80%, both 110%, etc); you should only set them to different values if you find that one function is triggering at the correct speed and the other isn’t. If you do change them separately, we recommend that you not set the pause threshold more than 20 percentage points higher than the resume threshold - you might experience strange behavior otherwise.

##### Motion Sensor

Sensor pause threshold - determines the pause threshold for changes to the device’s acceleration, i.e. which direction its velocity is increasing or decreasing in.

Sensor resume threshold - determines the resume threshold for changes to the device’s acceleration.

#### Recognition

Max defn update speed - change this to something other than “None” to limit the speed at which the dictionary definition will update, useful if you find that it changes too frequently.

Auto white-on-black - enable auto-detection of black-on-white and white-on-black text.

Word detect samples - configure how many frames in a row the recognizer has to see the same text before “locking on” to it; increasing this number will make the definition change more slowly / become less “jittery” in general, while decreasing it will make it more responsive.

Word detect match len - configure the number of characters at the start of the word that have to match in order for the system to “lock on”; consider increasing this number if you capture a lot of long words.

Allow multiple lines - turning this on keeps the recognizer from assuming that it’s looking at a single line of text, so that it won’t get mixed up and think that bits of characters it on the next / previous line are part of the characters you’re trying to scan; turning this off can improve performance but requires you to be a bit more exact in positioning the recognizer box in order to avoid garbled output.

#### Orientation

These options are both designed to help accommodate Android devices with very buggy camera drivers - most of the bugs seem to relate to the fact that manufacturers don’t test their devices with the screen orientated in any direction other than the one used by their Camera app, so the screen ends up rotated incorrectly when we try to access it.

Camera orientation - configures how the camera image is rotated relative to the screen. Default rotates it however Android tells us to (i.e., it asks the OS how the camera is rotated relative to the screen and rotates the image accordingly). Default + 90 / 180 / 270 degrees offsets that rotation, useful on some devices on which the camera is actually flipped or reversed from where it’s supposed to be. Camera Natural doesn’t change the camera image rotation at all, it goes with whatever the camera initially defaults to - useful on very buggy devices where the manufacturer never even bothered to implement camera orientation support at all. Always 0/90/180/270 degrees fixes the rotation at a particular angle relative to the display regardless of how the device is oriented.

Alternate video display - changes the way that Pleco draws video to the screen (using a different type of user interface control) - this works around video display issues on a few devices (particularly some Sony Ericsson ones).

#### Flashcard Capture

Options for the automated flashcard capture feature, accessible by tapping on the menu at the top right corner of the screen while using live OCR.

Delay before card add - time after “locking on” to a word that the system waits before adding it to flashcards.

Beep on card add - play a beeping noise whenever the system creates a card.

#### Other Settings

Hide chars when paused - hides all overlay characters (even highlighted ones) when the recognizer is paused.

Hide non-highlighted - hide characters that aren’t highlighted, regardless of whether or not the recognizer is paused.

Macro mode - use macro focus mode on compatible devices. This greatly improves close-up focus, but you need to turn it off (by tapping on the “flower” icon in the toolbar) to look at farther-away objects.

Focus continuously - enable continuous auto-focus mode, avoiding the need to manually tap on the “focus” button. You can also toggle this on and off using the [AF] button in the main OCR interface.

Prefer Pleco autofocus - many Android phones ship with built-in continuous autofocus support, but some of them do it in an extremely buggy way, so if you find that continuous autofocus misbehaves a lot try turning this option on to force your phone to use Pleco’s continuous autofocus algorithm instead.

Disable auto-off in OCR - prevent your device from automatically turning off (from lack of touch input, e.g.) while using OCR.

### Still Image OCR Settings

Auto white-on-black - enable auto-detection of black-on-white and white-on-black text.

Advanced Binarization - use a more advanced (but also much slower) system for detecting the light and dark regions in an image, useful when dealing with images with a lot of shadows / patterned backgrounds / etc.

Allow multiple lines - turning this on keeps the recognizer from assuming that it’s looking at a single line of text, so that it won’t get mixed up and think that bits of characters it on the next / previous line are part of the characters you’re trying to scan; turning this off can improve performance but requires you to be a bit more exact in positioning the recognizer box in order to avoid garbled output.

Disable advanced layout - turning this option on causes our OCR system to use a simpler system to analyze the locations of text on a page, which may improve performance and stability on some older devices (but at the cost of less accurate decoding of complex pages).

## Other

Unknown word handling - Determines what happens when you tap on the add-to-flashcards button with a string of text in the recognition area that’s not in any of Pleco’s dictionaries.

- Ignore - Don’t create the card at all.

- Truncate - Create a card out of the longest matching word at the start of the selection (possibly just a single character)

- Custom Card - Bring up a prompt to create a custom flashcard based on the selection.

- Custom Dict Entry - Bring up a prompt to create a user dictionary entry based on the selection, adding the resulting dictionary entry to flashcards.

Append reader text - Combines output when doing a send to reader (book icon), so that you can gather multiple segments of text in a single document.

### Colors

Basic Overlay Color - color that recognized characters are displayed in by default. (turn on “hide non-highlighted” in Live Video OCR Settings to hide these characters)

Paused Overlay Color - color for those same characters when the recognizer is paused.

Auto-paused Color - color when the recognizer is paused due to lack of movement rather than manually tapping the pause button.

Highlighted Char Color - color that the currently selected characters are displayed in (the ones that you’re seeing a dictionary entry for).

## Reader

Settings relating to Pleco’s document reader module.

Paginate Text - swipe between left-to-right pages of text instead of scrolling down in a continuous box.

Larger margins - expand the size of margins in document reader text files / pasteboard viewing.

Lock to bottom - with this option enabled, the popup definition “bubble” will always remain at the bottom of the screen rather than moving around depending on the text selection location.

Volume buttons scroll - with this option enabled, pressing your device’s volume buttons will scroll to the previous / next page of text.

Dpad buttons scroll - same as above but with direction pad buttons, which on some Android e-readers are also the page turning buttons.

Disable auto-off - enable this to prevent your device from automatically turning off while in the document reader.

Lower contrast - enable this to lower the contrast (less bright white) in the reader for more comfortable reading.

## Flashcards

Configure options relating to Pleco’s flashcard add-on. (this turns into a “Bookmarks” panel if you haven’t bought the flashcard add-on)

### Card Creation

Duplicate (in category) - Configures how Pleco handles duplicate cards that are already in the category you’ve chosen to add them to (by tap-holding on the + button).

- Skip - Do nothing, don’t create a new card or modify any existing one.

- Update text if changed - Update the card’s definition if the current dictionary entry differs from it.

- Remove category - Remove the existing card from the selected category but don’t otherwise modify or delete it.

- Delete card - Completely remove the existing card (and its review history) from your flashcard database.

- Remove + delete if uncategorized - Remove the existing card from the selected category, then check to see if it’s part of any other categories; if not, delete it. (basically turning + into a toggle button)

- Create new card - Create a new card anyway.

- Prompt - Pop up a dialog box asking what you’d like to do.

Duplicate (not in category) - Configures how Pleco handles duplicate cards that are not already in the category you’ve chosen to add them to.

- Skip - Do nothing, don’t create a new card or modify any existing one.

- Update text if changed - Update the card’s definition if the current dictionary entry differs from it.

- Add to category - Add the existing card to the selected category but don’t otherwise modify it. (it’ll remain in its old categories too)

- Add to category + update text - Add the card to selected category and update its definition if the current dictionary entry differs from it.

- Delete card - Completely remove the existing card (and its review history) from your flashcard database.

- Create new card - Create a new card anyway.

- Prompt - Pop up a dialog box asking what you’d like to do.

Enable English-to-Chinese - Enables (somewhat experimental) support for English-to-Chinese flashcards. This will allow you to create flashcards from English-to-Chinese dictionary entries (the button will be disabled otherwise), and adds options to the Import and Export screens to select the language for text-based imports and exports, adds an option to Card Filters to select which language you’d like to study cards in, and adds an option to Search Cards to find cards by their language.

### Categories

Default category - Selects the category which new cards will be added to by default; this affects flashcards created anywhere except by a flashcard import, or by the Organize Cards screen once you’ve gone into a specific category (with those it’s added to that category instead).

Change on tap-hold - with this option enabled, when you tap-hold on the Add Card button to choose a specific category for your new card, the category you select will become the new default category for future card adds.

Always prompt - with this option enabled, the list of categories will come up whenever you even just tap on the Add Card button - no need to tap-hold, every time you create a card you’ll be prompted for which category to add it to.

Multi-level prompt - normally, that tap-hold category prompt will only show you categories at the top level of your category hierarchy (categories that aren’t grouped under any other categories, in other words); enable this option to choose categories at any level instead. (with a slightly more cumbersome interface)

### List Views

List layout - Configure the layout (headword/pronunciation/definition) of flashcard fields in Organize Cards.

Maximum # of lines: - Configure the number of definition lines visible in Organize Cards.

Show card statistics - Add an additional line of statistics to each card, giving you the card’s score, easiness factor, record of correct/incorrect answers, and last reviewed date.

### Maintenance

Compact Database - clean up Pleco’s flashcard database file, saving space and possibly making it run a bit faster if done after deleting a lot of flashcards.

Fix Invisible Categories - fix invisible categories left behind by bugs in earlier versions of Pleco; you’ll know you have some of these if you delete a card from all of the categories that you know it to be in but it still fails to appear in “Uncategorized.”

Erase Database - this button permanently erases your entire flashcard database, allowing you to get a fresh start with a clean new database. (useful if you feel like it’s gotten bloated with too many cards and don’t want to delete cards individually / with a batch command)

## Dictionary Management

[Manage Dictionaries](dict.html#manage-dictionaries] - Configure the order in which dictionaries are searched and enable / disable them in dictionary searches.

[Manage Dictionary Groups](dict.html#manage-dictionary-groups] - Create / configure dictionary groups, which allow you to perform a merged search on a subset of your installed dictionaries rather than all of them.

## Backup / Restore

Backup Settings and/or History - back up Pleco’s settings (all of the options in this screen, including those in Manage Dictionaries / Manage Dictioary Groups) and/or history (including all of the items in the Dict, Reader, OCR, and Search tabs in the History screen, plus the clipboard history in the Clip Reader) to a cross-platform XML file.

Restore from Backup - restore from a previous backup. Only settings actually included the backup file will be overwritten, so if you want to play around with an XML editor you can probably generate a backup file that acts as more of ‘configuration profile’ and distribute it to others to use (e.g. to apply your own custom tone color scheme).

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