I use HelloChinese and Pleco too and they've gotten me to a level where I can actually do language exchanges without feeling completely foolish. I really like Pleco because if you see a word out in the wild that you don't recognize, you can just draw it.

When you're ready for language exchanges, HelloTalk has been my most convenient app for that. The built in translation tools are nice.

Also like, learning hanzi can be really intimidating at first but eventually it will start to kinda make sense. There are patterns.