Chinese Learning Apps I've heard good things about:
Pleco - a great dictionary app. The free Clip Reader area is a reading tool where you can paste any text in. There's also one time payment add ons that can be purchased depending on one's needs.
Readibu - a reader app for Chinese specifically, has better translations than Lingq. Free version is fine for reading. Most online pages can be imported into Readibu if you paste the URL into the 'search' for reading material area. So if you want to use Readibu to read webnovels or news articles, that is possible. If not, try Pleco's Clip Reader tool instead to paste in text from online.
SuperChinese (in app store it's the monkey icon) - I've seen people recommend this instead of duolingo and lingodeer, they have lessons with grammar and vocabulary up to HSK 6 from what I've heard. If anyone knows what HSK level they teach up to, please feel free to add that to this post.
Dot Languages (in app store it's the polar bear icon) - an app with graded reader articles by HSK level. Recommended for HSK focused vocabulary, and providing good reading materials.
Hanly: Chinese Decoded - a free app for learning some of the most common hanzi. I have looked at it and it has similar information to some beginner hanzi reference books, certainly enough to get started learning. Hanzi taught with radicals, which is useful.
Skritter - an app for learning hanzi, recommended for Chinese as much as WaniKani is for Japanese, teaches a LOT of hanzi. Comparable to bigger hanzi reference books that exist (and Skritter has more hanzi than some popular hanzi reference books I've seen which only include the HSK hanzi).
Youtube - searching "Chinese lessons," "Chinese comprehensible input," "Chinese listening," "Chinese learning podcast" and other variations will help you find a LOT of channels that teach Chinese. You can look at this Mandarin Input Media google spreadsheet for browsing the CI Lessons youtube channels and some other Chinese materials on youtube. The spreadsheet does not include everything, there's so much on youtube! Youtube also has cartoons, podcasts, shows, and audiobooks. Try out Mandarin search terms in youtube too!
Special Mentions (not apps, but useful websites that you can use on your phone if you want):
HeavenlyPath.notion.site - an excellent site for looking up reading material recommendations by difficulty. Their Comprehensive Reading Guide - from Beginner to Native Novels article is an excellent guide for learning how to read, what tools can be helpful, and what Graded Reader resources exist. If you want to start reading webnovels, I highly recommend exploring that site and it's guides.
Vidioma.com - if you struggle to find material on youtube to study with, this site shares youtube Chinese Comprehensible Input Lessons, categorizes it by difficulty, and tracks your study time. So you can just open up this site, click 'beginner' videos and start watching. Or 'intermediate' or whatever level suits you. It may also help you if you find being on youtube directly distracts you, and you end up watching other stuff that isn't for learning Chinese. Vidioma was made by someone learning Chinese, and his goal is to make a free site for Chinese like the Dreaming Spanish, so learners can just log on and watch CI Lessons to learn and see their progress go up. Maybe it will motivate some people. I find the site useful for finding new stuff at a level I understand, since I don't have to sort through Youtube on my own and guess of the difficulty of a given video on Vidioma.com.
If you're a Total Beginner, and want to start studying primarily with apps, I recommend SuperChinese and Vidioma.com at first.
I recommend some other Structured Resource like a textbook or course (from a Library or eLibrary) if you'd like to use physical resources primarily.
If you like learning primarily by listening, ChinesePod101/Innovative Languages Chinese is a good course to start with (that's the name of the course on Hoopla if you want to check them out from the library for free - Innovative Languages owns LanguagePod101).
If you want to learn primarily with reading, reference Heavenly Path's Comprehensive Reading Guide.
On my Beginning to Learn Mandarin - Resources post, I went over exactly what I used toward the bottom after the purple text "Want to copy what I did?" I studied primarily to read, so the resources I used skew that way. And I used a smattering of different things, you do not need to do the same.
For more details about picking learning resources, read below the cut.
