Support
Niàn is an iPhone app for quick lookups of Chinese text in front of you — a page, a menu, a label, a sign. Point the camera at it, tap the line you want, and each line gets a reading card with only as much help as you have asked for.
The MODE key
Every capture starts at the bottom rung. Each press of MODE moves up one:
- NIAN 1 — pīnyīn over the words past your fluency line, and nowhere else.
- NIAN 2 — a reading under every word, with meanings on the harder ones.
- ALL — a meaning under every word, in the sentence's own order.
- TRANSLATE — the full sentence in English.
Pressing MODE past the top wraps back to the bottom, so cycling through to see what a rung looks like costs nothing.
Common questions
Why do some words show pīnyīn and others don't? That is the bottom rung doing its job. Niàn keeps one fluency number, estimated from how far up the ladder you tend to go, and annotates only the words beyond it. Climbing on a capture tells it the default was too thin; getting through one without climbing lets it settle higher. If you would rather set it yourself, the fluency slider is in Settings.
How do I read only part of the page? Tap a line to read that line, or drag a box to read a region. On a crowded page that is the difference between one card and thirty.
Can I look closer at a character? Yes. Once a frame is frozen, pinch, zoom, and rotate the page under the cards — the reading you already have stays put.
Nothing is recognised. Niàn needs the text reasonably in focus and roughly upright. Move closer so the characters fill more of the frame, use the lens keys (0.7×, 1×, 5×) to frame text that is far away or very small, and turn on the flashlight key in dim light. Then capture again.
The camera doesn't start. Niàn needs camera access. Check Settings → Privacy & Security → Camera, or Settings → Niàn, and make sure access is allowed.
Do I need an account or a connection? No. There is no account, and recognition and lookups run on the device. See the privacy policy.
What does it cost? Niàn is a one-time purchase, with no subscription and no ads. The App Store listing has the current price for your region.
Which languages? Simplified Chinese text, read into English. Traditional characters aren't supported in this version. Niàn is an iPhone app and requires iOS 26.5 or later.
Contact
Bugs, questions, and feature requests all go to the same place: ben@tangentialtechnologies.com. Niàn is made by one person, so replies aren't instant — but every message is read. Including your iPhone model, iOS version, and what you were pointing the camera at makes problems much easier to track down.