Support: Frequently Asked Questions

StoryLens is a reading companion tool that turns any Chinese storybook into an interactive learning experience. Take a photo of a page, and StoryLens instantly recognizes every Chinese character, adds pinyin pronunciation guides above each one, provides English translations, and reads the text aloud in native Mandarin. It works with both simplified and traditional Chinese.

StoryLens is designed for anyone who wants to read Chinese storybooks — parents reading bedtime stories with their children, heritage language families maintaining Mandarin at home, homeschool educators and Mandarin tutors looking for engaging reading material, and adult learners building reading fluency through real stories rather than textbook exercises.

Every new account starts with a 7-day free trial of StoryLens Standard — full access, no credit card required. When the trial ends, you'll move to the Free plan automatically: you keep access to up to 2 stories you've captured and 2 stories shared with you. You can upgrade to StoryLens Standard ($4.99/month) anytime to unlock unlimited stories and full sharing features, and cancel anytime.

Note — StoryLens Standard on iOS is currently available for free for a limited time.

Share individual stories or entire collections with friends and family. You can grant view-only or full editing access, and revoke access at any time.

Open the story you'd like to share, tap the ⋯ (three-dot) menu at the top right, and choose Share. Enter the email address of a friend, family member, or teacher, choose their permission level — Can View or Can Edit — and send the invite. They'll get real-time access, and any edits sync instantly for everyone. You can change permissions or revoke access at any time, and you can share entire collections the same way.

StoryLens currently focuses on Mandarin and we fully support both Simplified and Traditional Chinese characters. Read-aloud audio is available in multiple voice options. To toggle between different voices and dialects (e.g. Cantonese), within any story companion tap the ... (three-dot) menu and select Voice to choose a different voice/dialect. If you don't see your preferred dialect, let us know at [email protected].

You can delete your account anytime from Settings → Account → Delete Account. This permanently removes your account, your captured stories, and your sharing connections. Stories you've shared with others will no longer be accessible to other readers unless you transfer ownership first.

If you run into any trouble, email us at [email protected] from the address on your account and we're happy to help.

StoryLens works best with printed Chinese storybooks — children's picture books, graded readers, and similar materials. This works surprisingly well for creative fonts and more free-form picture books with Chinese characters.

StoryLens provides high-quality character extraction, pinyin, and translations. You can also manually edit any pages to fine-tune accuracy.

StoryLens uses a local-first architecture, so stories you've already captured and opened on your device are available offline. You'll need an internet connection to capture new pages and to share with collaborators.

Yes. Your stories are synced securely. Each story is its own private document — you choose exactly who to share it with and at what permission level.

Google Translate gives you a block English translation of text you type or paste in. StoryLens is purpose-built for storybooks — it recognizes characters directly from a photo of the page, shows pinyin above each individual character so you learn pronunciation as you read, preserves the original page layout, reads aloud in natural Mandarin, and lets you save and organize your story library. Snap the story once and it's ready to read forever. It's the difference between a translation tool and a reading companion.