8 Useful Travel Apps for Traveling in China 2024

For most travelers to China, language is the prior problem for them for Chinese is not easy to learn, and there are only few people can say English. So a good language app seems extremely important. WayGo is a visual translation app; as an offline translator, it can offer instant visual translation of Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters. Users only need to use the camera on the smartphone to highlight the Chinese characters and the app will instantly translate it to English. It’s very helpful to order menu, read important signs and transportation maps.

If you want to learn Chinese, then Pleco is a must! Pleco is a Chinese dictionary which integrates the functions of dictionary, document reader, flashcard system with fullscreen handwriting input and live OCR. This app will not only help you to translate Chinese and communicate with Chinese people better in the travel, it also can help you to learn Chinese.

Offmaps is a very useful app which allows its users to download city maps from all over the world. The most brilliant part of this app is that it uses the internal GPS on your device to track your location. To be specific, it can navigate traveler offline in real time (even when you turn off your data, and this will save you a lot on the roaming fees). It will show your position and even the direction you are pointing on the map. Offmaps will guide you turn by turn until you arrive at the destination, and you won’t need to worry about getting lost anymore.

Subway is becoming more and more popular in China, and it may be the most convenient transportation tool to transfer in big cities where often have traffic jams, like Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Metro China Subway provides the metro information to its users, including riding scheme, the map of the station, subway schedule and food and entertainment nearby the subway station.

This app offers travelers a complete and up to date city guides for over 100 cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Xian, Chengdu, Guilin… It introduces the historic landmarks, local people and most unique landscapes of China. Bars, pubs and good restaurants are also recommended in this app. It’s very useful no matter you are planning a China trip or just want to get to know China better.

Well, air quality in some cities may be poor in certain days, so whether to wear a mask or not is a problem for travelers. This app will tells you the real-time broadcasting air quality information for over 400 cities in China from more than 1800 monitoring stations. The app will shows the air quality information from you nearest monitoring station. It can be accessed by Apple Watch. This app will help your to be more prepared when the air quality is poor.

Trover allows travelers to wander among a collection of geo-tagged traveler photos. Users can post photos of their discoveries, including notes and tips for other travelers. In this app, users can see where the photo was taken. Traveler can use the map to search nearby points of interest, and see pictures and read the notes and tips from other travelers.

If you want to contact with local Chinese people or you tour guide, WeChat is a great app which are very popular in China. It’s also known as Weixin in China, and it has over 300 million registered users in China. WeChat has multiple functions, like group chats and unique meet-and-greet features like “Look Around” and “Shaike”.