See pinyin over any app on iPhone

Can an iPhone app show pinyin over other apps?

Not as a live overlay. An iPhone doesn’t let one app draw on top of another, so no app can lay pinyin over WeChat or Safari as you scroll, which is why you may have read that it can’t be done. BeChinese gets you the same thing with one press: a shortcut takes a screenshot of the app you’re in and opens it in BeChinese’s Lens, frozen exactly as it was, with the pinyin of every word one brush away.

It’s for reading Chinese yourself, not translating it: the pinyin stays out of the way until you ask for it, and the words you look up come back as short reviews until you can read them on your own.

How it works

The pinyin stays hidden until you brush across the words, so you can try reading first.
Brush across characters, and the pinyin appears over the words under your finger, a whole word at a time, colored by tone.
Lift your finger, and the words are read aloud. A card shows what the word means.
Pinch to zoom in on small text. The pinyin redraws at the bigger size.
Swipe sideways to go through your other screenshots. To go back to the app you were in, swipe right along the bottom edge of the screen.

Which apps it works in

Any app you can take a screenshot of, because the Lens reads the screenshot, not the app: WeChat, Instagram, Safari, Chrome, Xiaohongshu (RedNote), Weibo, LINE, WhatsApp, Douyin and TikTok captions, games, Notes. Simplified and traditional characters both work. A post or video on 小红书, TikTok, Instagram, X or YouTube you can also share to BeChinese. For Chinese on paper, like menus and signs, use the camera instead.

Menus, signs and other Chinese on paper

On Scan, the app’s first tab, tap Read from camera and point your iPhone at the Chinese in front of you. Tap or brush the characters you don’t know: their pinyin appears over them, they’re read aloud, and a card shows what they mean, with a button to save the word. Show all pinyin, at the bottom left, puts every word’s pinyin on the picture at once. Take a photo to keep the page and read the rest in the Lens. On iPhones with Camera Control, one press opens the camera. More in the pinyin camera.

Set it up once

Get BeChinese from the App Store with the button above.
Open BeChinese and sign in. On Home, tap Set up on the Set up Action Button card: it adds the Show Pinyin shortcut to Shortcuts in a couple of taps.
In Settings, open Action Button, choose Shortcut, then Show Pinyin.
The first time you press it, Shortcuts asks to share the screenshot with BeChinese. Tap Always Allow.

No Action Button? It’s on the iPhone 15 Pro and every iPhone since. On other iPhones, Show Pinyin goes in Control Center: open Control Center in any app and tap Show Pinyin. Control Center closes, and a moment later BeChinese opens with that screen. Support has the steps.

What you need