Readibu - Chinese novel reader

I really enjoy the idea of this app and it works very well. I can already feel my reading comprehension and motivation going way up, it’s amazing for learners. You can import your own materials, and it provides easy to access sites with more, the best of both worlds. However, the audio doesn’t work for me, dictionaries won’t play it back. Also, this is not necessary, but I’d like stronger support for the site Archive of our Own which is an American fanfiction site but with a lot of Chinese language works. In general, though, it’s a highly useful, fun, and well-designed app.

I never write reviews but I was so pleased to find this that I just had to! There are a few features I think would be nice to have which I mention at the end. I speak basic Chinese with my parents but my vocab and reading/writing is abysmal, and I’ve been trying to improve for the past two years through flash cards or finding things to read. My problem was that either the reading material for my reading level was so boring I’d drop it immediately, or if I found an interesting web novel, it would be too advanced to have pinyin or word definitions so I’d also drop that. I love that I can import web novels to this app and have both pinyin and definitions ready at a single tap. I also love that I can save vocab to review for later. For future improvement it would be nice if there was a quick button to toggle between showing/hiding pinyin, instead of needing to open up the menu to do it. Otherwise sometimes I find myself too invested in the story that I cheat and just use pinyin all the way, which doesn’t help my learning. Also it would be nice if the saved vocab section had pinyin over it and another column with the English def so that you don’t need to click into the word to see what you actually saved. Otherwise this is great and keep up the good work!

I’m so glad to have found this app; it is literally a dream for someone who’s interested in learning Chinese through reading web novels. Any feature I could dream of this app having, it has that and more. You can not only pick from the novels inside the app, you can also load links to web novels you find online (and there are links to pretty much any Chinese web novel for free lol) and the app loads it as a reader version. You can read with pinyin or without, and it’s so easy if you don’t know a word—just tap on it. (The app even recognizes idioms.) There’s traditional or simplified, you can star vocab to review, and the app saves your last reading place. I was literally blown away by how perfectly this app met my needs, as someone wanting to learn Chinese through reading. Thank you so much to the developers for taking the time to create this app!!