Hey Product Hunt 👋 I'm Dion, and I make Pocket Pinyin.

I'm learning Mandarin, and I don't read characters yet. My teacher sends an Anki deck after every lesson, and every flashcard app I tried put the characters front and center and the pinyin somewhere small, if at all. I wanted the opposite: pinyin first, characters when I'm ready.

Here's how it works:

• Every card, list and search result leads with pinyin. Hide the characters until you answer, hear every word, and turn on tone colors if they help.

• Import the .apkg your teacher sends, from Files, Mail or the share sheet. Each deck becomes a lesson; words you already have are merged, and importing again never resets your progress.

• Or start with the library: 23 sets and 1,000+ words, each with an example sentence.

• FSRS spaced repetition brings each word back just before you'd forget it. A few minutes a day, with a reminder only on days something is due.

• Search the way you type: "ni hao", "nǐ hǎo" and "ni3 hao3" all find the same word.

It also works fully offline. Another app I tried kept flipping between online and offline mode on the subway and broke my practice every time. Here, studying, audio and search all run on your device, and sync just catches up once you're back online.

It's a native app for iPhone, iPad and Mac, built in SwiftUI with no third-party code: no ads, no account, no tracking. Your words sync through your own iCloud.

Pricing, up front: the download, importing your own decks, studying, your progress and six sets (HSK 1 and five everyday topics) are free, with no limits. Plus is optional and deliberately cheap: $4.99 a year or $14.99 once. It adds sets on any topic, made on your device with Apple Intelligence (the pinyin comes from Apple's Chinese dictionary, not the model), and the rest of the library, including HSK 2 and 3.

Two things I'd love to hear: what are you learning Mandarin for, and does pinyin-first match how you study?