Shakyo: Heart Sutra Copying

Now on iPad, with Apple Pencil. A few quiet minutes a day, one character at a time: trace a faint model and finish a real shakyo sheet in your own hand.

Shakyo is the Japanese practice of copying sutras by hand. This app lets you do it on your iPhone or iPad: one large character at a time, tracing a faint model with your finger or Apple Pencil, until the Heart Sutra fills a traditional vertical sheet in your own handwriting.

ONE CHARACTER AT A TIME • A big writing box with a faint model character (0–50% opacity, or hidden) • On iPad, an even bigger box and Apple Pencil support: once you write with Pencil, your finger scrolls instead of drawing (switchable in Settings) • Optional 米 and 田 grid guides • A pen with brush-like thick and thin strokes, in three widths • Back, Rewrite and Undo; leave anytime and pick up at the same character • Optional auto-advance after 1.5 seconds

A REAL SHAKYO SHEET • Vertical columns of 17 characters: title, text, your wish, the date and your name • Pick a traditional wish (family safety, good health, passing an exam…) or write your own • Dates written in kanji, Japanese era style • Pinch to zoom; save or share the sheet as a PNG image

A QUIET DAILY HABIT • A calendar of the days you wrote and your current streak • Sheets finished and characters written • Every finished sheet kept to look back on • An optional daily reminder at a time you choose

PRINT IT, TRACE WITH A REAL BRUSH (PRO) • Export an A4 landscape PDF with faint model characters, print it, and trace with a brush or brush pen • Print or share your finished sheet in A4, too

TEXTS Free: the Heart Sutra in its Japanese shakyo form (with readings), plus Simplified and Traditional Chinese versions. Pro: the Kannon Sutra verses, Shoshinge (with readings), the Mantra of Light, Enmei Jukku Kannon-gyo, Shari Raimon and the Iroha poem; in Chinese, the Great Compassion Dharani, the Diamond Sutra (whole or section by section), the Universal Gate chapter, the Amitabha Sutra, the Medicine Buddha Sutra, the Ksitigarbha Sutra (chapter by chapter), short mantras, the Rebirth Dharani and ten Tang poems; and your own text (up to 1,000 characters).

PRO: ONE-TIME PURCHASE, NO SUBSCRIPTION All texts and poems, your own text, A4 printing and PDF, vermilion and gold inks, natural and navy papers, several sheets in progress, and 3× resolution export. You can try any Pro text free for its first 17 characters. What you write is kept, and you carry on from there if you unlock Pro.

Includes a short guide to shakyo etiquette.

No account, no ads, no tracking. Everything you write stays on your device.

Font: Shakyo Kai, a modified subset of LXGW WenKai (SIL Open Font License 1.1).