Kanjiru: Learn to Write Kanji

Hey everyone,

This is Kanjiru, the first Android app I've ever shipped (and yeah, a little proud of it). It was half "build something for a friend," half "see if I can pull it off as a non-developer." It's a kanji learning app I made for a good friend who's learning Japanese ahead of a trip there.

She half-jokingly said she wanted an app that would actually make her write the kanji from memory. I spent the last few months building her one in my spare time, alongside design school. Now it's live.

Kanjiru has all 2,136 Jōyō Kanji, sorted by JLPT level. The core loop: study a character, then draw it from memory on a canvas with a stroke counter. You rate yourself (Good / Medium / Weak) and the app organizes the deck. You can also save your own mnemonics on any card — turns out she uses that one a lot. There's also a streak and a bit of stats to keep things motivating.

Since she's German and most kanji apps are English-only, I built it fully bilingual — German and English, including proper German kanji meanings (which surprisingly few apps offer).

Some stuff I cared about:

• 100% offline — no account, no tracking, no sync

• Local export — your data stays yours

• Free, no subscription, no ads

(If you're curious about the build: Kotlin + Jetpack Compose + Room + Hilt, solo project, no backend at all.)

Also, I'm more designer than developer, but I love tinkering with tech. I know my way around code — mostly web — without being fluent in any one language, so tools like Claude Code open up whole new possibilities for me. Honestly, I wouldn't have shipped this without it — and I have huge respect for devs who write every line themselves.

Would love feedback from makers (on the tech, be gentle) and anyone learning Japanese (on the product).