Readibu - Chinese novel reader

If you’re one of the people that is at just the right stage to need this, it works really well

….most of the stories don’t even load. I love the concept as someone who speaks Chinese fluently but lacks reading and writing skills. Most Chinese lessons and apps are boring and are aimed at people who are completely new to Chinese. The idea for this app is exactly what I’m looking for, however most of the stories don’t even load and there isn’t as much variety as I’d like. Are the devs still monitoring this app or is it abandoned?

None of the stories load. Will update if they fix.

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!

This app has changed the way I learn and read! I’m no longer dependend on graded readers or the content that comes with other apps, but can now read webnovels that I want to read anyway! I just wish there was a way to delete characters from the word list (if there is one, I haven’t found it). Otherwise it’s perfect!

非常有用，你可以阅读许多小说

I personally like most of its free features although we can only get full access with premium version. I also use Du Chinese and Mmandarin for Chinese reading short stories and novels. However, this app is also underrated app. So I think you don’t have any drawback to download it

This is a great app! The app works smoothly, doing exactly what it is intended to do; however, it does not support Airpods. My Airpods work perfectly fine, but they do not function on this app. I’ve tested it on other Chinese learning apps and the audio is great but whenever I go to Readibu, my phone changes and the audio comes out through the iPhone’s speakers. But overall, beautiful app! This is the only flaw this app has. I wish I could give this review 4.5 stars instead of just 4 if only the App Store had that feature.

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!!

I’ve been trying to find a less tedious way to learn Chinese. This app is great because you can read online webnovels and pressing on the character gives you the meaning of the word. Love it!