Pleco for Android Instruction Manual : Dictionary Reference
When you first open Pleco, you'll be presented with this screen:
The interface changes a little in landscape orientation and on tablets - see Combined Results / Definition for details on that.
Here's a quick description of what each of these buttons does:
Top Row:
Switch Language - tap on this button to toggle between Chinese-to-English and 
English-to-Chinese searches.
Search Field - tap anywhere inside of the Search Field to input a new search query or edit the current search query.
Clear - only visible if there's text in the Search Field; tap on it to clear the Search Field and begin inputting a new search query.
Switch Dictionary - tap on this button to switch between search dictionaries.
Menu - bring up the menu bar to allow you to switch to other sections of Pleco (including history).Second Row:
Handwriting Input - tap on this to input text with our built-in handwriting recognizer. (only if you're purchased that add-on)
Radical Input - tap on this to input text using a radical index, as in a printed Chinese dictionary.
Keyboard - tap on this to input text using your device's keyboard.
Speech Recognition - tap on this to input text by speaking it into your device's microphone. This requires an internet connection and a device running an official Google-endorsed version of Android (since it relies on a Google server to function). Tap-hold on this button to toggle between recognition of Mandarin, Cantonese and English.
OCR - tap on this to look up words using Pleco's Optical Character Recognizer module (only if you've purchased that add-on). Exit that screen with the recognizer paused and the results will be copied back into the Search Field.In the middle of the screen is the Entry List, displaying a list of dictionary entries / search results. Tap on an entry to view its definition in more detail.
Enable "Search for clipboard" under Settings / General / Startup Actions to insert the contents of the pasteboard into the Search Field when Pleco starts up, or "Restore last search" to restore whatever text was there when Pleco exited.
Pleco supports three primary methods of entering words to look up, plus two additional ones that function outside of the main user interface.
Tap on the paintbrush icon to access Pleco's handwriting recognizer. (only available if you've purchased the Handwriting Recognizer add-on module, though you can try it out by tapping on the Handwriting Recognizer item in Add-ons and then on the "Try Handwriting Now" item inside of it)
To enter a Chinese character with handwriting input, simply draw it anywhere in the large gray Drawing Box in the center of the screen. The handwriting recognizer supports cursive and non-cursive handwriting, and is fairly tolerant of stroke order mistakes, though it tends to be more accurate if you draw the character with correct stroke order. If you're not familiar with Chinese character stroke order, here's a quick guide:
You can look up the stroke order for individual characters using Pleco's built-in stroke order diagram feature.
After you finish drawing each stroke, the Results Bar at the bottom of the screen will automatically be updated with the characters that best match what you've drawn so far; the first match will be inserted in the Input Bar (with a blue box around it to indicate that you haven't finished entering it yet). You can scroll the Results Bar to the left to view additional results; just tap and drag it. When you see the correct character in the Results Bar, tap on it to insert it in the Search Field, clear the Drawing Box and begin entering a new character.
If you enable the "Second chars on tap" option under Settings / Dictionary / Input Methods / Handwriting input, when you tap on a character in the Results Bar, the results in it will be replaced by other characters that commonly follow it in words, in descending frequency order. (much like in a standard Chinese IME) Tap on one of those characters to enter it, or begin drawing a new character to start seeing matches for that character.
If the first character in the Results Bar is the correct character, you don't even have to tap on it; instead, simply tap inside of the Drawing Box with two fingers to clear it and begin entering another character. You don't need to do any kind of stretching / dragging gesture, just make sure both fingers are touching the screen inside of the Drawing Box at the same time.
Tapping inside of the Drawing Box with two fingers when it's empty will backspace (erasing the previous character entered); you can also backspace by tapping on the Backspace Button to the left of the Done Button.
If none of the characters in the Results Bar are the correct character, tap on the Backspace Button to erase it and try drawing again. Alternatively, you can tap on inside of the Drawing Box with two fingers twice - once to clear and once to backspace.
Tap on the Undo button at the top right corner of the screen to erase only the last stroke drawn.
See the Handwriting input section of Settings / Dictionary / Input Methods to enable / disable support for simplified, traditional, rare, and Hong Kong characters.
Tap on the puzzle piece icon to input characters using their radicals, as in a printed Chinese dictionary:
Radical input is too complicated a concept to explain in detail here, but basically, you're looking up characters by finding their common component ("radical") - most often located at the left or top of the character - and then counting the number of strokes that appear in the character outside of the radical.
When you first open radical input, the grid in the center of the screen will display a list of all 214 standard Kangxi radicals, in order of the number of strokes in them - each circled number indicates the number of strokes in the radicals that follow it.
Tap on the appropriate radical and you'll see a list of all of the characters containing that radical, again sorted by their number of strokes; each circled number indicates the number of strokes outside of the radical in the characters that follow it.
Tap on a character to enter it in the Search Field. Tap-hold on it to display a magnified preview of it.
Tap on the Radical Selector at the bottom left corner of the screen to go back to the list of radicals after selecting one.
Tap on the Backspace Button located just to the left of the Done button deletes the last character entered.
Normally, when you select a radical that's specifically traditional or simplified ("speech," for example), Pleco will still show characters from both sets. If you prefer that it only display characters from the same character set, go into the Radical input section of Settings / Dictionary / Input Methods and check the "Character set filter" box. Also on that screen, check "Include Rare" if you want to include characters in the radical table that aren't covered by any of your installed dictionaries.
Tap on the keyboard icon to bring up a standard Android keyboard:
You can enter text here just like in any other Android application; see "Search Types" below for more information on Pinyin / English search formatting. This should work fine with most third-party input methods as well, and on most devices you can switch between them by simply tap-holding on the Search Field and choosing "Input Methods."
When you tap on the "Done" button to view the list of search results, the keyboard will disappear and an extra toolbar will appear at the bottom of the screen:
This toolbar lets you quickly reopen the keyboard with a particular input method, saving you an extra button tap. The icons are the same as in the search bar.
If you prefer that this toolbar not appear (to save some screen space), you can disable it via Settings / Dictionary / Main screen interface / Portrait (or Landscape) orientation / Show quick input bar.
If your device is equipped with a hardware search button (usually magnifying glass icon), you can also press that to open input and to switch between input methods.
You can look up Chinese words in Pleco using characters, Pinyin, or a combination of the two, with the option of using wildcards in place of one or more characters.
English and Pinyin searches can be entered using your device's onscreen keyboard. To enter Chinese characters, use Handwriting or Radical input. You can also enter Chinese characters using a third-party Chinese handwriting IME downloaded from Android Market.
In most cases, Pleco will detect whether a search query is in Chinese or English automatically, but if it does that incorrectly (e.g. for a search like "he" that's both an English word and a Pinyin syllable) you can tap on the Switch Language button at the top left corner of the screen to manually switch between languages.
English searches in Pleco are very straightforward - just enter a word and Pleco will show you the closest possible match. Searches are case- and punctuation-insensitive, and ignore special characters as well; no distinction is made between an e and an é in English-to-Chinese searches.
If you've installed an English-to-Chinese dictionary, Pleco shows you the best match from that dictionary; if you've installed multiple dictionaries, it'll jump you to the dictionary with the best match (or the currently-selected dictionary in the event of a tie).
If you haven't installed an English-to-Chinese dictionary, Pleco searches the installed Chinese-to-English dictionary definitions for the word you entered and lists any entries that match, with the matching portion highlighted in the search result list. It will also switch to matches from those dictionaries if you keep tapping the Switch Dictionary button after you run out of E-C dictionaries to search.
To search for a Chinese word in Pinyin, simply enter the letters in each syllable. You can indicate tones with numbers at the end of words; if you're not familiar with tone numbers, here's a quick guide:
| Number | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | mā | Flat Tone |
| 2 | má | Rising Tone |
| 3 | mǎ | Falling-Rising Tone |
| 4 | mà | Falling Tone |
| 5 | ma | Neutral Tone |
So for 你好 nǐhaǒ, both syllables of which are falling-rising tones, you'd enter "ni3hao3". You can also enter Pinyin without tones, like "nihao" - in that case, Pleco will match any word with those syllables regardless of their tones.
To enter an umlaut (ü, as in nü or lü), you can simply enter a 'u' - Pleco will search for non-umlauted and umlauted 'u's in the same search. If you prefer that it not do this, go into Settings / Dictionary / Search Settings / Input processing and turn off "Combine umlauts"; you can then enter umlauts by using the letter 'v' (which is never used in Pinyin), or (on some devices) by tapping-and-holding on the 'u' key on your device's keyboard and dragging your finger to the 'ü' in the bubble that pops up
By default, Pinyin searches without tones return all matches that start with the letters you entered; "jihu" for example would return not only "ji1hu1" but also "ji1hua4" and "ji2huan4." This lets you see results for many searches without actually having to type in the entire word. If you prefer to only get Pinyin syllables that exactly match what you entered, turn on the "Match syllables exactly" option in Settings / Dictionary / Search Settings / Input processing.
There's no need to separate ambiguous syllables like "xian" versus "xi'an" or "chang'an" versus "changan" either - Pleco searches for both possibilities in those cases. You can change this and make it match syllables strictly by disabling "Flexible syllable splits" in Settings / Dictionary / Search Settings / Input processing.
To search for a Chinese word using characters, simply enter those characters using use Handwriting or Radical input or one of your device's built-in Chinese character input methods.
You can use simplified or traditional characters; Pleco will match both regardless of which character set it's currently configured to display.
By default, when you enter a character search for which no dictionary entry is available, Pleco will try to break down the search into smaller words / characters and show you results for those; however, if you turn on "Don't split incomplete" under Settings / Dictionary / Search Settings / Input Processing, it skips this and simply shows you the longest possible match beginning at the start of the word. (search breakdowns are not yet supported in user dictionaries)
Mixed Pinyin / Character Search
You can also search for a Chinese word using a mix of characters and Pinyin. To use this search option, simply enter a character followed by a Pinyin syllable, or a Pinyin syllable followed by a character; for example, you could look up 你好 by entering "你hao" or "ni好". This works just as quickly as a character-only or Pinyin-only search, and can save a lot of time if you're looking up a word where you recognize (and know the Pinyin for) one character but aren't sure about another. And as with regular Pinyin and character searches, you use traditional or simplified characters and can enter Pinyin with or without tones.
Due to technical limitations, you can only mix characters and Pinyin in the first three character positions of a word - i.e., you can enter a character followed by one or more Pinyin syllables, or even a character, a Pinyin syllable, and several more characters, but you cannot enter a character, a Pinyin syllable, another character, and another Pinyin syllable. (or the opposite, Pinyin/character/Pinyin/character)
Mixed Pinyin/character searches use the same indexing system as all-Pinyin or all-character searches, and so should finish just as quickly as those searches do.
Pleco supports two kinds of wildcard searches, single-character and multi-character.
The single-character wildcard is "@" - enter a @ in place of a single character or Pinyin syllable to search for words with any character / syllable in that position. So, for example, you could look up all words with 不 as their second character by entering "@不" as your search, or all words with the form 不...不... by entering "不@不". With Pinyin searches, the @ replaces an entire syllable, and not an individual letter; "qin@yu" for example would search for words with the first syllable "qin" and third syllable "yu", so “qing1chu1yu2lan2” would not be one of the resulting matches since "qing" wouldn't match the first syllable.
The multi-character wildcard is "$" - enter a $ in place of anywhere from 0-3 characters/syllables. So entering "$不" would return any entry in which 不 was the first, second, third, or fourth character, and entering "$yu2" would return any word in which yu2 was the first, second, third, or fourth syllable. You can combine the $ with the @ symbol, so if you wanted to look for all words where 不 was the second character or later, you could do this using the query @$不 (or $@不).
If you find these characters difficult to enter with your device's built-in keyboard, you can pick different characters in Settings / Dictionary / Search Settings / Wildcards.
Pleco includes experimental support for searching for words directly by their Zhuyin pronunciation. (search the internet for "Zhuyin Fuhao" for more information about Zhuyin, also known as BoPoMoFo) However, you'll need to supply your own Zhuyin keyboard - search for Zhuyin keyboards in Android Market and you should see lots of options available. As with Pinyin, Zhuyin searches work with or without tones, using the standard Zhuyin tone characters.
Along with headwords, Pleco can also search the full text of dictionary entries, including both definitions and example sentences. This is available in all of our dictionaries, though at present it only supports English and Chinese character searches (no Pinyin). It works with multi-word phrases as well as single words, and is extremely fast - almost as fast as a regular dictionary search (and actually faster in a few cases).
To perform a full-text search, enter a "#" at the start the word you want to search for. You can change the # to a different character through Settings / Dictionary / Search Settings / Full-text.
So, for example, to search for all dictionary entries that contain the word "wedding" you'd enter "#wedding" in the Search Field. This is a great way to look for vocabulary related to a specific subject (like weddings), to look up obscure words by searching dictionaries in the opposite direction ("#arhat"), to look up common phrases ("#door to door"), or to find usage examples for Chinese words ("#然而"). Note that single-character Chinese searches are not currently supported for database size reasons.
When you perform a full-text search, the Switch Language button indicates which language the results are in, NOT which language the current dictionary uses; hence, if you enter an English full-text search, tapping on the Switch Dictionary button will cycle you through both English-to-Chinese and Chinese-to-English dictionaries, but the button icon will remain a "ying" character. Tapping on the Switch Language icon will exit full-text search, as will manually deleting the "#" character at the start of the Search Field or selecting the Full-text Search toolbar/menu command again.
After you enter a search, the results of that search will show up in the Entry List, like this:
If you enter a search using the keyboard, the search results will update live as you type; with handwriting and radical input, they'll appear as soon as you tap "Done," or will appear live if you're on a tablet and have enabled the option to have handwriting / radical input only take up half of the screen.
Tap on a dictionary entry in the Entry List to view its definition in detail. See Entry List Layout for information on how to customize the arrangement of text in each list item. Tap-hold on an entry to bring up a menu with lots of other useful options:
Most of these options are pretty self-explanatory; View Entry does the same thing as tapping on an entry (view its definition in detail), Add to Flashcards adds the dictionary entry to your flashcard database, Play Audio plays an audio recording for the word (if you've installed our Audio Pronunciation add-on module), and Copy Word / Pron to Search Field copy the entry's characters or Pinyin to the Search Field to search for them. Copy Word / Pron / Full Entry to Clipboard copy the entry's characters / Pinyin / full text to the clipboard to paste into another app.
Show In Dictionary is a bit more complicated; tap on it and you'll get to a screen like this:
You're now viewing a list of every entry in the current dictionary, sorted in standard Chinese dictionary order (Pinyin, then characters, grouped by starting character). This is useful for quickly seeing other entries that start with the same character, or for just browsing through the dictionary to see what random interesting words you find. Non-wildcard English-Chinese dictionary searches always display results in this mode, since they're sorted correctly anyway. Press the back button to return to the main dictionary search screen.
By default, when you enter a single-Pinyin-syllable search, or a single-Chinese-character search for a character with more than one pronunciation, Pleco will only display dictionary entries with single-character headwords. This is designed to make it easier for you to find all of the words that begin with a particular character; you simply find the correct character with the correct pronunciation in the Entry List, then tap-hold on it to Show Neighboring Entries or Copy Head to Input, or tap on it and select the "Words" tab (see definition screen below) to view words that start with or contain it. If you'd rather Pleco show you all of the words starting with a single character / syllable, disable the "1-char for 1-char" option in the Result Display page in Settings.
If you search for a rare single character that doesn't have a definition in any other dictionary, Pleco will search for it in its built-in Unihan database (normally only accessible through Character Info) and show you the pronunciation / definition from there if found. It normally skips over / doesn't try to search Unihan otherwise, but if you'd like Unihan to be treated like a regular dictionary, go into Unihan's Manage Dictionaries page and enable the "Use in search" option for it.
To switch between English-to-Chinese and Chinese-to-English search, tap on the "Switch Language" button at the top left corner of the screen.
For most searches, you can simply ignore that button - Pleco will automatically detect if a search is in Chinese or English and switch to the appropriate language mode.
However, for searches that don't contain any Chinese characters or Pinyin tone numbers and could be valid English or valid Pinyin ("he," "wailing," "mama," etc) Pleco will stick with the same language that the previous search was in, so in those cases, if you want to search in the opposite language tap on the Switch Language to do so.
Switch Language is also useful if you simply want to browse through your installed dictionaries / scroll through entries without doing any searching. The Switch Dictionary button generally only switches between dictionaries in the currently-selected language, so if you're currently in Chinese-to-English mode but want to look at / browse through your English-to-Chinese dictionaries, you'll need to tap on the Switch Language button to switch into English-to-Chinese mode before you can do so.
To view results from a different dictionary or dictionary group, tap on the Switch Dictionary button at the bottom left corner of the screen. The icon will come up in a different style depending on whether you're looking at a dictionary or a dictionary group:
(no box) = regular dictionary (inverted box) = dictionary group
(non-inverted box) = inverted full-text dictionary group (searching for English words in the definitions of an English-Chinese dictionary, e.g.)
Dictionary groups will always come up first; the default C and E groups search all installed Chinese and English dictionaries respectively. See the Settings manual for more on dictionary groups.
Which dictionaries this button will switch to depends on whether or not you're currently doing a dictionary search:
Tapping-and-holding on the Switch Dictionary button will pop up a list of all available dictionaries for the current language (or all languages if you're in the middle of a full-text search); select a dictionary from this list to jump to that dictionary. However, if you're in the middle of a search and the selected dictionary does not have any matching search results, Pleco will jump to the next dictionary in the list that does have matching results.
Normally, Pleco includes any demo-version dictionaries you've downloaded in searches along with paid and free dictionaries; you can deactivate these by enabling the "Skip demo dicts" option in the Search Dictionaries screen in Settings, or by tapping on the link to disable demo dictionaries that appears in every demo dictionary entry.
You can enable / disable individual dictionaries for searching or change the order in which they're searched through the Manage Dictionaries panel in Settings.
Pleco can display dictionary entries in both traditional and simplified characters. To switch between them, simply enable / disable the "Traditional characters" option in Settings / General. This does not affect which character set you can search in; Pleco will search for entries by their Simplified and Traditional character versions regardless of what you enter here. You can also toggle between character sets by pressing your device's menu button while viewing a dictionary entry, then tapping "Character Set."
This also switches which character set will appear first in dictionary headwords; normally both sets are displayed but with the inactive one in brackets. If you prefer to only see headwords in the active character set, change "Headword character set" to "One Set Only" in Settings / General.
Pleco includes a built-in history function that automatically remembers the last 1000 dictionary entries viewed and the last 200 searches performed, making it easy to return to a previous dictionary entry or search. To access the history screen, press your device's menu button, then press "History":
Tap on "Dict" to view a list of recently-viewed dictionary entries, "Reader" to view a list of entries recently looked up in the document reader, "OCR" to view a list of entries recently looked up with the OCR system, "Search" to view a list of recently-entered searches, or "Flashcards" to view a list of recently-created flashcards.
Tap on any item to view it, or in the case of "Searches," to copy it to the Search Field.
To clear the contents of a particular history tab, press your device's menu button and tap Clear All. There's also a Dump to Flashcards menu option - select that to automatically generate flashcards for every item in the current history list.
Tap on a dictionary entry in the Entry List to bring up the entire entry in a separate screen:
In landscape orientation, the definition and Entry List are combined in a single view and there's no separate screen - see Combined Results / Definition for details on that.
Here's a quick description of what each of these buttons does:
Top Bar: switches between screens:
Bottom Bar:
- tap on this button to view a definition for the same word in a different dictionary. 
- tap on this button to hear an audio recording of the current dictionary entry's Mandarin pronunciation.
- adds the current dictionary entry to your flashcard database. This icon changes to a 
when an entry has already been added to your flashcard database, and a 
when it's in your database but under a different category than your currently selected default.
- scroll you through your current list of search results. These will turn into simpler 
buttons when you're browsing through a secondary set of search results (those from a popup definition entry that was expanded to fullscreen, e.g.) rather than the main dictionary set of search results.In the middle of the screen is the Definition Field itself, displaying the current dictionary entry's headword / pronunciation / definition.
If you press your device's menu button, you'll see some extra commands there:
Tap on the Switch Dictionary button at the bottom left corner of the screen to view the definition for the exact same headword in a different dictionary. Tapping this button cycles through dictionaries in the order configured in Manage Dictionaries, stopping on any dictionary in which it finds an exact match. If the button is grayed out, it means that no other dictionary besides your current one matched the word.
Pleco searches those other dictionaries for the current entry's Chinese-character headword rather than its Pinyin; however, if multiple entries are found that match that Chinese headword, Pleco will automatically scroll to the one with matching Pinyin (if found). In these cases, you'll see some additional scroll buttons appear at the bottom of the Definition Field:
These indicate that more than one entry in this new dictionary matched the original headword; tap on the new arrows to scroll through the list of matches, while the Prev / Next entry buttons will continue to scroll through the original search result list.
Just as in the dictionary search screen, you can tap-and-hold your finger on this button to pop up a list allowing you to instantly jump to a specific dictionary.
As in the main search screen, you can switch between traditional and simplified characters for definitions and examples by enabling / disabling the "Traditional characters" option in Settings / General. However, in this screen you can also toggle between character sets by pressing your device's menu button, then tapping "Character Set."
This also switches which character set will appear first in dictionary headwords; normally both sets are displayed but with the inactive one in brackets. If you prefer to only see headwords in the active character set, change "Headword character set" to "One Set Only" in Settings / General.
To hear an audio recording for a Chinese word, tap on the Play Audio button at the bottom of the screen. If you haven't yet downloaded our audio pronunciation databases, a prompt will appear here to allow you to do so. Both male and female speakers are available; if you download both, you can configure which one Pleco uses or how it alternates between them in the Audio section of the General page in Settings.
The basic free audio set contains recordings only for single Mandarin syllables; multi-syllable words are played by stringing those single-syllable recordings together. Basic tone sandhi transformations, like how two third tones turn into a second tone plus a third tone when read, are factored in, but the overall effect is still a little slow / artificial-sounding.
We also offer paid "Extended Audio" add-ons that feature exact recordings for approximately 33,000 common multi-syllable words. The extended audio data files are quite large (around 200 MB each), but give you a more exact pronunciation for each word as a native speaker would actually pronounce it.
Tapping on the Play Audio button when audio is already playing will interrupt that playback and begin playing the new audio immediately.
Tap on any Chinese character in any Pleco dictionary entry to bring up a popup window with that character's definition (or the definition for the surrounding word):
By default, tapping on a character in the dictionary headword at the top of the screen will always bring up the definition for just that character; this makes it easy to quickly get a definition for the individual characters that make up a word. Tapping on any other character in the definition will check to see if that character is part of a larger word and bring up the definition for that whole word if so.
The popup definition remembers which dictionary you used in it last and defaults to that dictionary the next time you open it; you can make it always use the first dictionary in Manage Dictionaries by turning off "Sticky dict selection" in Settings / Popup Definition. Tap on the Switch Dictionary icon at the bottom right corner of the definition bubble to change dictionaries. The up and down buttons to the right of the definition (when visible) scroll through multiple matching entries in the same dictionary.
The buttons at the top of the screen let you do perform various actions on the current text selection:
- copies the currently-selected text to the clipboard, making it easy to paste it into another app (or another part of Pleco).
- hear an audio recording of the current dictionary entry's Mandarin pronunciation.
- adds the currently-selected dictionary entry to your flashcard database.
- drops back to the main dictionary search screen and performs a new search for the selected text. Enable "Search btn open input" under Settings / General / Popup Definition to open up the handwriting / keyboard input bar at the same time you do this.
- brings up a definition for the selected text on a separate screen.The arrow buttons at the bottom of the screen allow you to reposition or expand / shrink the current text selection:
- shrinks the length of the selection by one character. You can use this if you want to look up definitions for the individual characters that make up a word instead of looking up the whole word. If the selection is already only one character long, this moves it one character to the left.
- expands the length of the selection by one character. If no longer word can be found, however, the definition displayed will remain the same.
- moves the selection to the left, selecting the longest word that ends with the character immediately before the current selection.
- moves the selection to the right, selecting the longest word that begins with the character immediately after the current selection.The other four tabs in the dictionary entry screen all provide various pieces of information related to a single Chinese character. The top of each tab includes a bar to select which character you'd like to see information on.
Tap on the "字Info" tab to bring up this screen:
This screen gives you access to a lot of additional information about the character. Information in this screen is taken from the Unihan database - see the Unihan reference for a detailed description of each field. ("Frequency" is rated from 1 to 5, 1 being highest)
You can customize which piece of information are shown on this screen in three ways:
A wide variety of information is available, from stroke counts to alternate pronunciations / variants to references in various printed dictionaries. Some less common database fields require you to download the (free) "Unihan Character DB (Extended)" add-on from the "Free" section of the Add-ons tab before you can view them.
Tap on the "Stroke" tab to bring up this screen (only accessible if you've purchased the Stroke Order Diagrams add-on):
This screen lets you review the correct stroke order for the selected character. The character's radical and stroke count are shown at the bottom corner of the screen.
Tap on the Play 
button to view an animation of the character's stroke order. While animating, the Play button will be replaced by a Pause 
button - tap on that to stop playback. Tap on the Back 
and Forward 
buttons to step through the character one stroke at a time. Tap on the Start 
and End 
buttons to go to the first / last strokes.
You can change the speed of the stroke animation, add / remove an outline version of the character around the strokes, or change the background image behind the character in Settings / Dictionary / Definition screen interface / Stroke Order Diagrams.
Tap on the "Chars" tab to bring up this screen (only accessible if you've purchased the Stroke Order Diagrams add-on):
This slightly-experimental screen lets you view a list of a character's component parts (radicals etc) and a list of other characters that contain it as a component. (the data set we licensed for the Stroke Order Diagrams feature also contains this information, so while we're still working to integrate it into our software more carefully we thought we'd at least make it available in some form now)
The "Components" section lists the radicals / characters / other parts that make up the character. Some of these parts lack definitions but we're working to add them for a future release.
The "Compounds" section lists other characters that contain this characters as a component; some of them lack definitions because they're quite rare.
Tap on any of these characters to see more detailed definitions / other info for them (beginning with their own "Chars" tab).
Tap on the "Words" tab to bring up this screen:
This screen lists all of the dictionary entries that begin with or contain the selected character.
Tap on the "Starting" tab at the bottom of the screen to view a list of all the words that begin with the selected character, the "Containing" tab to list words that contain but don't start with the selected character, and the "Both" tab to list words that begin with or contain the selected character. Tap on any of the listed dictionary entries to bring it up in full on a separate screen.
Tap on the Switch Dictionary button at the bottom left corner of the screen to view matching entries from different dictionaries.
By default, characters in dictionary headwords (both here and in the search interface) are colored based on the tone with which they're normally pronounced; red for first tone (flat), green for second tone (rising), blue for third tone (falling-rising), purple for fourth tone (falling), and gray for the "neutral" fifth tone. This feature can be disabled or the specific colors reconfigured in the Tone Colors panel on the General page in Settings.
Just as on a web page, you can tap on any hyperlinked (blue-underlined) word in a dictionary to bring up a definition for the linked word. Hyperlinks can also be added to the end of entries to invoke additional commands (see below).
Pleco supports a wide variety of interface customizations in order to adapt it to your particular usage style / preferences.
When you rotate your device into landscape (wide rather than tall) orientation, the main dictionary interface changes to look like this:
If you prefer that Pleco stick with the same layout in both orientations, or if you like this layout so much that you want to be able to access it in portrait (tall) orientation too, you can reconfigure this in Settings / Dictionary / Main screen interface / Interface layout.
All of the items in this screen should be recognizable from the separate search / definition screens, we've simply combined them and rearranged them a bit.
The Entry List and Definition Field work in pretty much the same way they do in the separate search / definition screens; just as in the separate definition screen, you can tap on any character in a dictionary entry to bring up its definition in the Popup Definition bubble / access Character Info / etc. In the Entry List, instead of bringing up a separate screen, tapping on a definition will bring it up immediately on the same screen in the Definition Field; the same tap-hold menu options are still available, though.
Normally, the Entry List expands to take up the whole screen when inputting a new search (via the keyboard or transparent handwriting input); if you prefer that it stay where it is and the definition remain visible, enable "Keep definition visible" in Settings / Dictionary / Main screen interface / Interface layout.
The Handwriting and Radical screen layouts also change a bit in landscape orientation, but work exactly the same way - the toolbars just show up on the side of the screen instead of the bottom.
The layout / font sizes of dictionary entries in the Entry List can be reconfigured through the Entry List panels in Settings; you can pretty much put them in any order / arrangement you want, smashing everything together on one line or giving the headword / Pinyin / definition each their own lines.
There's no explicit option to enable left-handed support in Pleco, but there are a few settings options designed to make life a bit easier for left-handed users:
We welcome feedback on other parts of the software which could be made more lefty-friendly; just send us a note (through our website's contact form or the Send Feedback button in Settings) - we'll be glad to hear from you.
Turn on "Enable night mode" in Settings / General to switch Pleco's interface into Night Mode:
This displays (almost) every screen with a black instead of a white background, useful both for nighttime viewing and for power-saving on some types of phone display.
Many of the colors in our user interface are fully customizable; you can change them in Settings / General / Interface colors.
Pleco includes a powerful system for creating, editing, and importing new dictionary entries right on your device; you can add a new dictionary entry and have it immediately start coming up in searches / the document reader / etc.
Because they share a lot of the same code, the Pleco user dictionary system is closely integrated with the flashcard system, and is only accessible if you've purchased the full Flashcard System add-on; otherwise, the following options will be hidden and inaccessible.
All of the following functions are done through the Manage Dictionaries screen, accessible via Settings / Dictionary.
Creating a New User Dictionary
To create a new user dictionary, just go into Manage Dictionaries, tap on the "Add User" button at the top of the screen, and tap "Create New." Enter a name for it, and tap "Done" to finish creating the dictionary. Make sure you've selected the correct language for your dictionary at the top of the screen before tapping on that button; "Chinese" for a Chinese-to-English dictionary or "English" for an English-to-Chinese one.
To alter the new dictionary's icon abbreviation or change its name / copyright, tap on the newly-created dictionary in the list of dictionaries, then tap on the field next to "Abbreviation" to edit the abbreviation or tap on one of the "Short Name" / "Full Name" / "Menu Name" / "Copyright" boxes to edit the contents of those.
Installing an Old User Dictionary
To install a previously backed-up user dictionary, or one downloaded from the internet, copy that dictionary's database file to your device's SD card, go into Manage Dictionaries, tap on the "Add User" button at the top of the screen, tap "Add Existing," and select your user dictionary database file.
With old dictionaries transferred over from Palm OS or Windows Mobile, the database format may need to be upgraded to optimize performance; see below for how to do that.
This slightly experimental feature will add a full-text index for English words in dictionary definition, making them searchable in full-text searches - useful if you want to use English to look up words in your user-created C-E dictionary.
Locking a user dictionary prevents accidental editing, useful for dictionaries you're distributing publicly, and also speeds up scrolling / browsing through the dictionary a bit due to some extra indexes it generates.
To lock a user dictionary database, go into Manage Dictionaries, tap on its name, scroll down and tap on "Lock Database." (this may take a minute or two with larger dictionaries) Tap on "Unlock Database" to lock it again.
Dictionaries created with versions of Pleco on Palm OS or Windows Mobile prior to 2.0.4 need to be updated to the latest version of our database format to perform well; they're not really usable at all in the document reader otherwise.
To upgrade a user dictionary database, go into Manage Dictionaries, tap on its name, scroll down and tap on "Upgrade Format." (this may take several minutes or more with larger dictionaries) The option won't appear if the dictionary has already been upgraded.
Importing Entries from a Text File
To import lots of entries at once, e.g. from an existing dictionary data file or wordlist found on the internet, use the Import Entries function to import them from a text file. Create a new user dictionary database (if you don't already have one) in Manage Dictionaries, tap on its name, scroll down and tap on "Import Entries" to bring up the import screen.
Tap on Choose File and select a text file to import entries from. The format is exactly the same as in flashcard import files, i.e., headword<tab>Pinyin<tab>definition for Chinese-to-English dictionaries or headword<tab>definition for English-to-Chinese, except without the // category headers.
Choose the text encoding for the file - the system used to encode Chinese characters in it - in Text Encoding; UTF-8 is the most common encoding, and files that use other encodings will likely tell you so on the website that you download them from. Unsafe mode speeds up the import but at the cost of potentially corrupting your database if the import is interrupted while it's running (e.g. if a phone call comes in), so we only recommend using it in a newly-created dictionary that you don't mind losing / having to re-create.
Undo Last Import removes any dictionary entries added during the previous import - this includes flashcard imports too if you import flashcards with the "Store in user dict" option enabled.
Tap on Begin Import to start importing dictionary entries - this may take a while, and you won't be able to do anything else with Pleco while it's running, so we recommend waiting to do it until you've got a lot of time on your hands.
Exporting Entries to a Text File
You can export the entire contents of a user dictionary to a text file using the Export Entries command. Tap on the dictionary's name in Manage Dictionaries, scroll down and tap on "Export Entries" to bring up the export screen.
Choose a Text Encoding - UTF-8 is the most widely used and in most cases the best choice - then tap on Begin Export to enter a file name and start exporting the file. (this is usually much faster than an import)
The resulting text file can be copied off of your device by a USB connection to your computer, as an email attachment, or by any other method (Dropbox, e.g.) for copying files off of your device.
To back up a user dictionary database - much faster than exporting / importing it - go into Manage Dictionaries, tap on its name, scroll down and tap on "Backup Database," and choose a file name / location to back it up to.
To add a new user dictionary entry, create a user dictionary (if you haven't already), then go into its Manage Dicts profile screen, tap "Browse all dictionary entries," and tap "New Entry" to bring up the New Entry screen:
You'll also see a direct option to jump to this screen if you enter a dictionary search in the main screen and no exact results are found. Also, if you go into the popup reader Settings and set "Unknown word handling" to "Custom Dict Entry," you can create a new user dictionary entry from an unknown word in a reader document by tapping on the + button.
On this screen, tap on one of the edit fields (Simplified Character Headword / Traditional Character Headword / Pinyin Pronunciation / Definition) to edit the text of that part of the entry in a separate screen. Tap on Dictionary to change which dictionary the new entry will be created in (if you have more than one user dictionary installed), or tap Switch Language to change which language pair the new entry will use (English-Chinese or Chinese-English).
Tap-hold on an existing user dictionary entry and select "Edit Entry" to bring up the Edit Entry screen:
As in New Entry, tap on one of the fields to edit it in a separate screen. Tap on New Entry to leave this entry unchanged and create a new user dictionary entry.
Tap-hold on an existing user dictionary entry and select "Delete Entry" to delete it; you can also delete it from the Edit Entry screen above.
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