Keep doomscrolling. Just do it in Chinese.

The same swipe, the same half hour before bed — on real clips by Chinese creators, with every sentence written under the video and one tap on any word you don't know.

Every sentence of the clip, under the video
Pinyin over each word, the spoken one boxed
Tap a word for the meaning, tap again to keep it

Out now for iPhone. On Android? Get an invite by email

The demo did not load. Refresh the page to try again.

This is the real thing, running here. Swipe for the next clip, tap any word.

A real person is building this, alone.

I am Ilya. 31 seconds, in my own voice — sound on.

This is my own account, not the app’s: @__litau__. Go and look — I would rather you check who you are paying than take my word for it.

Real messages people send me. Names and faces cut off.

352 likes on one clip · 209 people following along — real numbers from Instagram, no usernames shown.

A person writes that they just want to be sure the app is real and will come out; Ilya answers that he will send them a lifetime code and an invitation. — Someone was afraid it was not real.

A person thanks Ilya for making the app and says they have been waiting for this kind of app. — “Have been waiting for this kind of app.”

A person says they will buy it when they get their salary, and later that today is their payday. — Waiting for payday to buy it.

A person says they will buy it and asks whether they can use it on both their Android and an iPhone. — Already buying, just checking the details.

Not sure about any of this? Write to me and ask. I answer every message myself — on Instagram or at support@litau.app. Ask me anything — that is exactly what these people did.

On Android? Leave your email.

Lilu for Android is in a closed test on Google Play, with the public release planned for October. Leave your email and I will send you an invite to the test and a key to get in.

I use it only to send the invite. Nothing else.

The app itself, not a mockup.

Screens from the app that is on the App Store now. Swipe through.

The feed: a Chinese clip playing, with the full transcript under it, pinyin over every word. — The feed: every sentence under the video.

A word tapped open: the character, its pinyin, its meaning and a Save word button. — Tap a word — meaning, then keep it.

The vocabulary screen listing saved words with the clip each one came from. — Your words, with the clip each came from.

Searching the vocabulary by pinyin, showing every word containing the syllable. — Search by hanzi, pinyin or meaning.

What you actually did, counted honestly.

Same thought. Only one of them gets said out loud.

The Chinese you will actually hear is not in your textbook. Every sentence a course teaches is correct, and almost nobody speaks that way. Lilu starts from the other end: real speech at real speed, inside the habit you already keep every night.

In the lesson

wǒ我 xiǎng想 hē喝 kāfēi咖啡。

I would like to drink coffee.

In a real conversation

yǒudiǎn有点 xiǎng想 hē喝 kāfēi咖啡 le了。

Kind of feel like a coffee now.

Why I am building this.

I am Ilya. I design websites for a living, I work alone, and I was learning Chinese with the same apps as everyone else.

Then I went to China. The apps had prepared me for a language nobody around me was speaking. Too fast, half swallowed, full of things no lesson had ever shown me. The problem was never effort — it was the material.

What moved me forward was watching what Chinese people watch, with some way to stop and ask what a word meant. For Chinese, that tool did not exist.

So I am building it. No team, no investors. What comes next is decided with the people who use it and write to me.

Ilya, designer and the whole team

What one clip gives you.

All of it is in the demo above, working.

yèshì夜市

The whole transcript, not two lines of subtitle

Every sentence of the clip, with its translation, under the video.

xiǎng想

The word that is playing is boxed

A green box follows the audio word by word. Too fast — drop to 0.6x.

shénme什么

Pinyin over every word

Over the word it belongs to, not in one line below. Turn it off when you outgrow it.

le了

Tap a word, get the meaning

What it means here, how it sounds, how hard it is. One more tap keeps it.

yángròu羊肉

Your vocabulary is what you met

The words you ran into, with the sentence you met them in.

duōshao多少

Hear a word in other clips

Search a word, hear it in every other clip. Different voices make it stick.

Where the videos come from.

Real clips by Chinese creators, played through the official YouTube player. Nothing is hosted, downloaded or re-uploaded: every clip carries the creator's name and a link, and the views count for them.

What you pay for is what is built on top: the transcript, the pinyin, the word cards, your vocabulary, the search. Never the video itself.

The creators are from the mainland, so the feed is Mandarin in simplified characters — 学, not 學. That is what is written on the screen, in the transcript and on every word card. Traditional characters are not in the first version.

Why not just a course app — or free Chinese TikTok?

Duolingo, HelloChinese, a textbook are good at what they are good at: characters, tones, the first thousand words. Lilu is the part they leave out.

And free doomscrolling in Chinese already exists — it is half an hour of understanding nothing. Same clips, same swipe. What is missing is the line under the video and the tap that keeps a word.

A course

Lilu

Sentences written to fit a lesson.

Sentences said to a camera by someone who is not teaching you anything.

Studio audio, recorded slowly and clearly.

Street noise, accents, people talking over each other. The real difficulty, from day one.

A fixed list of words in a fixed order.

The words you actually ran into, saved in the sentence you met them in.

You finish the course and freeze in a real conversation.

Your first hour is already spent on speech at full speed, with a safety net.

Read this far? The rest is in the app.

On Android? Get an invite by email

What works today, what comes next.

Written down so you can hold me to it.

Working now

The demo at the top of this page

Everything the demo does: feed, transcript with the karaoke box, pinyin, word cards, your vocabulary, search, 0.6x speed. In a browser, on real clips.

Out now · App Store

The iPhone app

A real clip library instead of the demo's handful, with the same transcription running across all of it, saved words that survive a restart, and a daily goal that actually tracks you.

Closed test · by invite

Android, then spaced repetition and offline

Android is in a closed test on Google Play, with the public release planned for October. After that: words you saved coming back at the right moment, and clips that keep working on a plane.

Questions.

Anything not answered here, write to me. I answer every message myself.

Where do I get it?

On iPhone, from the App Store — the button at the top of this page. On Android, Lilu is in a closed test on Google Play for now: leave your email and I will send you an invite to the test and a key to get in.

Why is Android invite-only?

Google lets a new app into the store only after it has been in a closed test with real people for a while. Until the public release, planned for October, I let people in by hand, one email at a time.

Is this just doomscrolling?

Yes, and that is the whole idea. The habit is already there — half an hour of vertical video most evenings. Lilu does not ask you to swap it for a lesson; it puts the transcript, the pinyin and the word cards inside the same scroll. Nobody keeps a study streak for a year. Everybody keeps scrolling.

Simplified or traditional characters?

Simplified — 学, not 學. The creators in the feed are from the mainland, so that is what is spoken and what is written in every transcript and word card. Traditional characters (Taiwan, Hong Kong) are not in the first version. If that is what you need, write to me first and I will tell you honestly whether Lilu is for you.

Where do the videos come from?

Real clips by Chinese creators, played through the official YouTube player, with the author credited and linked on every clip. Nothing is downloaded, re-hosted or re-uploaded, and the app never sells access to the video: it sells the transcript, the word cards and the vocabulary built around it.

Do I need to know some Chinese already?

No. Zero is a fine starting point: pinyin sits over every word and every sentence has a translation. The more characters you know the faster it goes, but the app is built so that the first clip is watchable on day one.

How is this different from the Japanese scroll apps?

Same instinct, different centre of gravity. Those apps put one or two subtitle lines under the clip. Lilu puts the entire transcript there, word by word, with a box that follows the audio, and lets you search a word across every clip you have watched to hear it in other mouths. And it is built for Chinese, where tones and characters make reading along a different job than in Japanese.