Help & FAQ
Quick fixes for the most common questions.
Tap a section below to jump. Use ⌘F (or your browser's Find) to search this page for keywords like "China", "refund", "handwriting", or "iCloud."
Tap a section below to jump. Use ⌘F (or your browser's Find) to search this page for keywords like "China", "refund", "handwriting", or "iCloud."
Open the Camera tab and point at any sign or menu — if the script is supported, the translation appears in the dark panel at the bottom of the screen. For a two-way conversation, tap the Speak tab and tap the microphone. To type something, use the Translate tab. Saved phrases live in the Saved tab (Pro).
All 118 languages, live camera OCR across 11 scripts, two-way voice translation, on-device offline translation, offline phrase packs, and the full CC-CEDICT Chinese dictionary are free. Pro ($49.99/yr) adds favourites, glossary, learner mode, the Baidu / DeepL / OpenAI engines, Boardroom 3-way speech, document OCR, PDF upload, business mode, and a medical/legal domain pack.
Open Settings → Camera scan language. This is the single most important setting in the app — Tova uses different recognition models for each script family, and feeding the wrong characters into the wrong model returns garbled output. If you're scanning Chinese, pick Chinese. Japanese, Thai, Arabic — pick the script that matches what's on the sign.
The most common cause: your scan language is set to the wrong script. Open Settings → Camera scan language and pick the script that matches what you're scanning (Chinese for 漢字, Japanese for ひらがな or カタカナ, Thai for ไทย, Arabic for العربية, etc.). Tova uses a different recognition model for each script — sending Chinese characters to a Latin-text recognizer will return garbage.
Live OCR is tuned for printed text. For handwriting (handwritten menus, notes, calligraphy), tap the shutter button — Tova switches to a 12-pass recognition ensemble that's much better at handwriting, brush calligraphy, and faded historical text. The same shutter trick works for low-contrast text on brown paper, glare-y laminated menus, and small fonts.
Those scripts are recognised through Apple's VisionKit, which requires a still image. The other scripts (CJK, Devanagari, Latin) run live through a different engine. If you tap the shutter, Tova runs the right engine for the right script automatically — that's why the shutter is the safer bet when you're not sure.
Tova fills in readings as the translation comes back. For rare characters or text you've just OCR'd, the slot stays blank for a moment. Wait for the translation to settle, or tap the shutter to force a full pass. If a particular character is consistently missing a reading, it may be outside the dictionary — please email us so we can add it.
Either camera permission was denied, or another app has the camera open. Open iOS Settings → Tova → Camera and turn it on (Android: Settings → Apps → Tova → Permissions → Camera). If it's still blank, force-quit Tova (swipe up in the app switcher and flick it off the top) and reopen.
Tova auto-detects vertical Chinese and reads top-to-bottom, right-to-left. If a vertical sign isn't being read in the right order, tap the shutter to force a full recognition pass — the document-aware mode handles vertical layouts more reliably than live OCR.
That's Document Mode (Pro). Open Settings → enable Document OCR, then tap the shutter on a multi-column page or upload a PDF from the gallery. Tova reorders columns top-to-bottom, left-to-right, then translates the whole document as one block.
Microphone permission may be off. iOS Settings → Tova → Microphone → enable (Android: Settings → Apps → Tova → Permissions → Microphone). Also check that you're not in silent mode with the mic blocked, that no other app is holding the mic (FaceTime, Voice Memos), and that a Bluetooth headset isn't capturing audio you can't hear.
The Speak tab uses the language you've selected for that side of the conversation. Tap the language chip at the top to switch. If you toggle the Auto pill on, Tova picks the language automatically — but the first utterance after switching languages may still come out wrong because iOS speech recognition only loads one language at a time. Speak again and the second utterance will be correct.
That's the on-device Whisper voice model — about 75 MB, downloaded once. After that, voice transcription runs entirely on your phone with no audio leaving the device. The download takes 10–30 seconds on Wi-Fi. Do this before you fly.
Boardroom Mode (Pro). Enable it in Settings, then in the Speak tab you'll see an Add 3rd chip — tap it, pick the language, and the swap arrow now cycles between all three speakers (A → B → 3rd → A). Each speaker's audio is transcribed in their own language.
iOS doesn't pre-install every voice. Open iOS Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → Voices → tap the language → pick a voice and let it download. Tova will use it the next time you tap Listen. This is an iOS limitation; not specific to Tova.
If you're in Hong Kong or speaking with a Cantonese speaker, pick 廣東話 Cantonese. For mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, and most overseas Chinese diaspora, pick 简体中文 Simplified Chinese (or 繁體中文 Traditional). Mandarin and Cantonese share characters but pronunciation is completely different — picking the right one matters for both speech and listen.
Auto-detect works best on full sentences. For short phrases or single words it can guess wrong (especially confusable Latin pairs like Spanish vs Portuguese). Tap the source language chip at the top of the Translate tab and pick the language manually.
After about 10 seconds, Tova gives up on the network and falls back to on-device translation automatically. If you see "Translation took too long", tap Retry — your network may have hiccupped, or you may have moved between Wi-Fi and cellular mid-request. On-device translation always works but covers a smaller set of language pairs.
Try a different engine. Settings → Translation engine — Pro users can pick between Google (default), DeepL (better for European languages), OpenAI (better for natural phrasing and idioms), and Baidu (best inside China). For business-formal tone (keigo / 您 / vous-form), turn on Business Mode in Settings (Pro).
That's Glossary (Pro). Settings → Glossary → add a term and your preferred translation. Tova applies your glossary after every translation, so the engine output never overrides your pinned terms. Useful for company names, product names, and personal preferences.
Yes. When the network is unreachable, Tova switches to on-device neural translation automatically — Apple Translation on iOS, Google ML Kit on Android. You'll have a smaller set of language pairs available offline (about 20 on iOS, 60 on Android), but translation still works. Everyone can pre-download phrase packs and the full Chinese dictionary for richer offline coverage — free, no subscription needed.
Yes. When Tova detects that Google is blocked (which is common in mainland China), on-device translation kicks in automatically. No setup, no VPN. The first translation may pause briefly while Tova retries the network, but once it's detected the block, every subsequent translation is instant.
Settings → Offline Packs (free for everyone). On iOS the section is called "Apple Translation languages"; on Android it's "Neural translation models." Tap any language to download (~30–50 MB each). Do this on Wi-Fi before you travel.
On Wi-Fi, before you fly: (1) Tap Auto-detect voice once in the Speak tab to download the ~75 MB Whisper model. (2) Settings → Offline Packs → download the languages you'll need (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai are the popular ones for Asia). (3) Pin any phrases you'll definitely need (saved phrases work offline).
Tap the Pro card in Settings, or tap any locked feature (the favourites heart, glossary, etc.). Subscriptions are managed by Apple — you'll see your Apple ID and the price before tapping Subscribe.
Cancellation goes through Apple, not the app. iOS Settings → tap your name at the top → Subscriptions → Tova Translate → Cancel Subscription. You keep access until the end of the current billing period, then it just stops renewing. No fees to cancel.
Apple handles all App Store refunds. Go to reportaproblem.apple.com, sign in with your Apple ID, find the Tova purchase, tap "Request a refund", pick a reason, and submit. Apple typically responds within 24–48 hours.
Yes, as long as both devices are signed in to the same Apple ID. Open Tova on the new device, go to Settings → Restore Purchases, and your subscription will activate within a few seconds.
Tap Restore Purchases in Settings — most pending or interrupted purchases land within a minute. If that doesn't help, force-quit and reopen the app. Apple sometimes takes a few minutes to confirm cards, family approvals, or 2FA prompts. If the issue persists more than a few hours, email us with your Apple Order ID.
A one-time $4.99 purchase that unlocks all Pro features for 7 days from activation. Built for short trips where a year-long subscription doesn't make sense. No auto-renewal — it just expires after 7 days and you can buy another later.
Pro Plus has been retired. There's now a single Pro plan ($49.99/yr) that bundles every paid feature: favourites, glossary, learner mode, the four engines (Google / DeepL / OpenAI / Baidu), Boardroom 3-way speech for trilingual meetings, document OCR for multi-column contracts, PDF upload, business-mode formality, and a medical/legal domain pack. Everything Pro Plus used to offer is now part of Pro at the Pro price. Existing Pro Plus subscribers keep their plan and features unchanged.
No. Voice transcription runs entirely on your phone via OpenAI's Whisper Tiny model, which Tova downloads once on first use. Audio never leaves the device. This is the main reason Tova picked an on-device voice engine over a cloud API.
The backend caches translations briefly to make repeat lookups faster (so the same Chinese sign translated twice doesn't hit the engine twice). It doesn't tie translations to you personally — there's no account, no login, no user ID. Saved favourites stay on your device and (with iCloud enabled) sync to your other devices via your private iCloud Key-Value store.
Tova accesses the camera for live OCR and gallery photos when you pick one to translate. Images are processed by the recognition engine and immediately discarded — Tova doesn't browse, store, or upload your photo library.
Full details at tovatranslate.app/privacy — including the third-party services we use (Apple Translation, Google ML Kit, the translation engine you've selected, and AdMob for free-tier ad serving with EU consent gating).
Sorry about that. Tova ships an anonymous crash reporter, so we'll see the issue automatically and ship a fix. Force-quit and relaunch — most crashes don't repeat. If it crashes every launch, please email [email protected] with your iOS version and what you were doing when it happened.
Sync uses iCloud. Make sure both devices are signed into the same Apple ID, and that iOS Settings → Apple ID → iCloud → Apps using iCloud → Tova is turned on for both. Open Tova while online and the sync runs automatically — it can take a minute on first run.
App language follows iOS (or Android) system settings by default. To override it just for Tova: iOS Settings → Tova → Language, pick whichever you prefer. Tova ships with 14 UI languages.
Live camera OCR is the most battery-intensive feature. Tova auto-pauses the recognition stream after 6 seconds of stillness to save power, but the camera itself still draws current. For long sessions, tap the shutter for one-off captures rather than holding the app on the live view.
Email [email protected] with: (1) what you were trying to do, (2) what happened instead, (3) your iOS / Android version, and (4) a screenshot if you have one. We respond within two business days.
Email us with your question, your device, and a screenshot if you have one. We respond within two business days.
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