Finally. Chinese characters make sense.

Reviewed before you forget.

Save a character and it enters spaced repetition. Each card shows the breakdown alongside the prompt, so the reasoning gets rehearsed too, not just the shape.

Zigo is a Chinese learning app that teaches characters through their components. You search any character or word, see the pieces it is made of, and get a plain-English explanation of why it means what it means.

Zigo is built on a principle shared by the Heisig method and Outlier Linguistics: mnemonics stick when they are grounded in the components a character is actually made of, not in arbitrary stories. Every character page shows that decomposition (活 "to live" is 氵 water plus 舌 tongue), explains what each component contributes, and gives you a memory hook anchored in those parts. Built-in spaced repetition then brings each character back right before you would forget it, which is what turns understanding into long-term memory.

Yes. Zigo has browsable character lists for all six HSK levels, and every list links to a full breakdown of each character.

Everything in Zigo is free with your first 20 words: searching the dictionary, browsing HSK lists, reading character breakdowns, stroke writing, spaced-repetition review, and the Zigo Reader, which turns any photo of Chinese into tappable text. A paid plan ($8/month or $60/year) removes the cap: unlimited saved characters and multiple decks, so you can keep every word you meet.

Yes. Snap a page from a textbook, a story, or a message thread, and the built-in Zigo Reader extracts the characters, adds pinyin, and links each one to its component breakdown, so you can read and study your own materials. The Reader is free on every account.