Chrome Extensions for Chinese Language Learners
These Chrome extensions can boost your Chinese learning! From dictionaries and dual subtitles to OCR, these tools are designed to make studying easier and more efficient. Each extension is carefully selected for its usefulness, ease of use, and potential to accelerate your language learning.
Annotate
Hanzi Annotator adds pronunciation directly above Chinese characters on any webpage, helping you read Chinese without constantly stopping to look up pronunciations. Choose from Pinyin, Zhuyin, Wade-Giles, IPA, and nine other transcription systems.
Click any character to see its definition, pronunciation, and HSK level. It also supports tone colors and context-aware readings for characters with multiple pronunciations. Everything works offline with no account or additional software required.
Free
Pinyin Annotator is a Chrome extension that puts pinyin or Zhuyin directly above Chinese characters on webpages and video subtitles, including YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, and Bilibili.
FreeDual Subtitles
You may also find our Dual Subtitles resource page helpful.
GlotDojo is a language-learning extension that adds useful study tools to streaming video and websites. For videos, it offers dual subtitles, instant definitions, auto-pause, subtitle replay, adjustable playback speed, keyboard shortcuts, and more.
A major advantage for Chinese learners is its compatibility with Viki and iQIYI, making it especially useful for watching Chinese dramas and other Chinese-language content. It also includes a detailed Chinese dictionary with definitions, character information, example sentences, grammar, HSK levels, and pinyin.
Note: Although GlotDojo supports pinyin through its Chinese lookup tools, it does not display pinyin with video subtitles in the same way Language Reactor does.
Free / Paid
Language Reactor turns Netflix and YouTube into powerful language-learning tools. It adds dual-language subtitles, a popup dictionary, and precise playback controls, making it easier to study Chinese while watching authentic content.
You can also import texts for reading practice, use machine translations, and listen with text-to-speech. See our Language Reactor tutorial on YouTube to learn how to use it.
Free / Paid
Migaku is an immersion-based language-learning tool that works with sites like YouTube and Netflix, adding dual subtitles, word lookups, sentence replay, and study tools that help learners turn Chinese videos into interactive learning material.
Free / Paid
Trancy is an AI-powered language-learning extension that turns videos and webpages into interactive study materials. It adds bilingual subtitles to platforms such as YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, Coursera, Udemy, and TED, along with AI-powered word lookups and grammar explanations.
It also offers listening, dictation, vocabulary, and speaking practice, including shadowing exercises and pronunciation feedback. Trancy is available as a browser extension and on iOS and Android.
See our Trancy tutorial on YouTube to learn how to use it.
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Free / PaidOCR
Copyfish uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to turn Chinese text in images, videos, and hard-coded subtitles into selectable text. This makes it easy to copy sentences for study or use the Zhongwen Popup Dictionary (also on this list) to look up words directly from video subtitles. Not sure how to use it? Watch our Copyfish tutorial.
Free
ZhongLens is a Chinese OCR extension that lets you use your favorite popup dictionary on text that normally cannot be selected, including video subtitles, images, screenshots, games, comics, and other visual content.
With one click or keyboard shortcut, ZhongLens recognizes the Chinese characters on your screen and places selectable text directly over the original content. You can then hover over it with a popup dictionary such as Zhongwen to look up words instantly. This means you can study hard subtitles and other image-based Chinese without constantly taking screenshots, copying text, or manually typing characters into a dictionary.
ZhongLens offers local and cloud OCR, as well as a useful crop mode that lets you scan only the subtitle or text area for faster, more accurate recognition. The free plan includes unlimited local scans and 50 cloud scans.
Note: ZhongLens does not replace your dictionary. It makes otherwise unselectable Chinese text accessible to the popup dictionary you already use.
Free / PaidPopup Dictionaries
Langtern adds a popup dictionary to websites and videos, allowing you to quickly look up unfamiliar words without leaving the content you are viewing.
It currently supports Chinese and English, making it a simple tool for reading and understanding authentic content online.
Free
LiuChan offers instant translation by hovering over Chinese characters, showing meanings on the spot. Also enjoy enjoy text-to-speech in Mandarin, Taiwanese, or Cantonese for pronunciation assistance.
Free
Yomitan Popup Dictionary is a powerful, highly customizable popup dictionary for language learners. Hover over words while browsing to instantly see definitions, pronunciation, and other dictionary information.
It supports 20+ languages, including Chinese, and lets you install multiple dictionaries to suit your needs. Other useful features include native pronunciation audio, built-in word search, offline use, and automatic Anki flashcard creation through AnkiConnect.
Free
Zhongwen: Chinese-English Dictionary is one of the most popular Chinese popup dictionaries for your browser. Simply hover over Chinese text on a webpage to see the English definition and color-coded Pinyin, with support for both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Zhuyin (Bopomofo) is also available.
Beyond quick lookups, Zhongwen includes links to Chinese Grammar Wiki notes and Tatoeba example sentences. You can save vocabulary to a built-in word list, export words for Anki, or add them directly to Skritter.
Free
Zhongzhong: An Improved Chinese Dictionary is a frequently updated Chinese popup dictionary that makes it easy to look up words while browsing the web. Simply hover over Chinese text to see its pronunciation and English meaning without leaving the page.
The extension is quick and easy to use and can be turned on or off with a single click.
FreeVocabulary Tracker
VocabTracker, inspired by LingQ, Readlang, and LWT, turns almost any webpage into a language-learning resource by tracking the vocabulary you encounter. Words are highlighted with different colors based on how well you know them, making it easy to identify new vocabulary as you read.
It supports Chinese and many other languages and includes custom dictionaries, phrases, flashcards, and an SRS system. Your vocabulary can also be exported to CSV for use with Anki or other study tools. An account is required because vocabulary data is stored on VocabTracker's servers.
FreeGeneral Tools
Controls for YouTube gives you more control over skipping forward and backward while watching YouTube videos. You can customize the seek times, making it especially useful for language learners who want to quickly replay words, sentences, or short sections of dialogue.
It also supports keyboard shortcuts and additional seek options for shorter or longer jumps, making it easier to move through a video precisely without constantly dragging the progress bar.
Free
DeepL Translator is known for producing natural-sounding translations and is often considered more accurate than many other translation tools. The browser extension lets you highlight text on a webpage and quickly translate it into your chosen language.
The free version has character limits, while features such as full-page translation, automatic webpage translation, and glossaries require a DeepL Pro subscription.
Free / Paid
Hanzisize lets you selectively enlarge Chinese characters on webpages without increasing the size of English text or other page elements. This can make websites with small Chinese text much easier to read.
The extension also supports several other languages, including Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, Hebrew, and Thai, with simple controls for increasing or decreasing text size.
Free
New Tong Wen Tang converts entire Chinese webpages between Simplified and Traditional Chinese, making it useful for learners who prefer one character set but want to read content written in the other. You can quickly convert a webpage and customize conversion settings to suit your needs. Because Simplified and Traditional Chinese do not always have a one-to-one character correspondence, automatic conversions may occasionally be inaccurate.
Free
YouTube Playback Speed Control makes it easy to speed up or slow down YouTube videos using customizable keyboard shortcuts. By default, press + to increase and - to decrease the playback speed, without opening YouTube's playback menus.
You can customize the shortcuts and choose how much the speed changes with each press. The extension also works with HTML5 videos on other websites, including embedded YouTube videos.
Free