Quick start
Watch this first
A short tour of what happens in your first ten minutes — setting up, installing the app, and your child’s first read. The written steps below cover the same ground if you’d rather read than watch.
Want the whole picture rather than the first steps? Watch the full 15-minute walkthrough →
Zen Reader is used by four different kinds of people, and they each need a different first ten minutes. Find yourself below.
Not sure which you are? If you signed Zen Reader up on this website, you are the Family Manager. If someone in your household sent you an invitation, you are a Parent or a Reader — the invitation email says which. If a family you teach for invited you, you are a Teacher.
Before you start — everyone
Whoever you are, it goes in the same order. The one that trips people up is the first.
Set your account up on this website first — not in the app
If you are the first person in your household, or you are using Zen Reader on your own, or you are a teacher, start here on zenreader.co and choose a plan — every plan begins with a free 14-day trial, and you can cancel from your account page at any time before it converts.
Please don’t install the app first. The app is a sign-in, not a sign-up — until a trial, preview or subscription is attached to your account it has nothing to let you into, and you would only have to come back here anyway. Start your free trial
Were you invited by someone? Then skip this step entirely — you are joining a household that already has a subscription, and your invitation is all you need. Go straight to step 2.
Get the app
Zen Reader runs on Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android. Install it on the device the reading will actually happen on — usually a tablet or a laptop, because a bigger page is easier to read from. Download Zen Reader · System requirements
Sign in with your own email
Use the same email address you signed up or were invited with — that is what connects the app to your subscription and your family. Everyone gets their own login, including children. There is no password to invent: enter your email and Zen Reader emails you a one-time code. You can add a password later in Settings if you prefer one, and you can sign in with Google, Microsoft or Apple instead.
Your books, readings and progress follow your account, not your device, so signing in on a second device picks up exactly where you left off.
What languages does it work with?
Two different things are meant by “language” here, and it helps to keep them apart.
- The books your child reads — Chinese and English
- Both are fully supported. Zen Reader listens to your child read, marks every word, reads the page back aloud, and works out a reading level — HSK and the Singapore MOE 生字表 lists for Chinese, a reading grade for English.
- … and seven more, with one gap
- A book can also be set to French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, Malay or Tamil. Reading aloud, marking and the read-aloud voice all work. What those books don’t get yet is a reading level — Zen Reader leaves it blank rather than guessing one on the wrong scale.
- The app’s own buttons and menus — 14 languages
- Quite separate from what your child reads: English (US, UK, Australia, Singapore), Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Malay, Indonesian, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Thai and Burmese. Change it any time in Settings.
A few things are Chinese-only, because they only exist in Chinese: pinyin alongside the characters, Mandarin tone checking, and the HSK and MOE reading levels. Everything else — reading aloud and being marked, word lists, spelling, homework help, progress and reports — works whatever language the book is in.
Family Manager
You are the person who signed up and pays. There is exactly one Family Manager per household — everyone else joins the family you create, so please don’t have both parents sign up separately.
Sign up here, then open the app
Your family is created for you when you sign up on this website — there is nothing to set up in the app. Once you are done we drop you on a welcome page where you can invite your family and download the app; sign in with the email you signed up with and you land straight in your family’s Library.
Add your first book
In Library, add a book — import a PDF, or photograph the pages of a paper book with your camera. Tell it which language the book is in, and Zen Reader reads each page, adds a translation — plus pinyin for a Chinese book — and works out the reading level. Check it over in the Book editor and fix anything the scan got wrong.
Invite your family
Invite each child as a Reader and your partner as a Parent. They get an email with a link to join, good for seven days. You can also do this from your account on the web. Inviting is part of the Family plan — the Individual plan is a single person, so there is nobody to invite.
Set the family up once
In Settings: turn on a daily reading reminder at a time that suits your household, choose how much the homework tutor may reveal, decide whether pinyin fades away as your child learns each Chinese word, and add a PIN or fingerprint lock so settings stay yours.
Watch it happen
Family activity is the 30-day feed of everything every reader has done. The Reading, Spelling and Word list portfolios show each child’s trend over weeks and months.
Only the Family Manager can
- Add, remove and change the role of family members
- Change family-wide settings — reading reminders, the homework-help reveal level, and usage-analytics consent
- Link a child’s teacher, and remove that link again — from Family members, on the child’s own row (see the teacher section)
- Manage the subscription, seats and billing on zenreader.co/account
Parent
You are an adult in the family who was invited by the Family Manager. Day to day you can do almost everything the manager can — you just don’t own the family settings or the subscription.
Accept your invitation
Open the link in your invitation email, or install the app and enter the join code it contains. Sign in with the address the invitation was sent to.
Look at the Library
You share one library with the whole family. Add books the same way the manager does — import a PDF or scan a paper book — and edit any page’s text, pinyin or translation.
Sit with your child for the first reading
Open Reading, pick a book, and use Practice mode first — it gives instant feedback and saves nothing, so a nervous first go never lands in a report. Switch to Scoring when they’re ready to be recorded.
Read the report, not just the score
Every reading has a “what happened, in words” list — plain English sentences like “Said 大 (Dà) instead of 天 (Tiān)”. You do not need to read the language yourself to know how it went. If the app marked something wrong that your child actually said correctly, you can correct that mark yourself.
Check the marking
Spelling is marked from a photo of your child’s handwriting, and the Spelling portfolio shows you every word it wasn’t sure about. You have the final say: mark a word right or wrong yourself, or give it your own score.
What you can’t do
- Add or remove family members, or change anyone’s role
- Change reading reminders, the homework-help reveal level, or analytics consent
- Link a teacher to a child, or see which teachers are linked — that is deliberately the Family Manager’s alone
- Manage the subscription or billing
Ask your Family Manager for any of these — it’s one setting away for them.
Reader
This one is for the child — or for the grown-up helping them get started. A Reader has their own login and their own progress, so brothers and sisters never share a score.
Join your family
A parent will send you a link and a code. Open the app, sign in with your own email address, and enter the code. Your family’s books appear straight away.
Read a book out loud
Tap Reading, choose a book, and press start. Read the page aloud at your own speed. Zen Reader listens, then shows you every word in green or red and tells you which ones to try again. Not sure how a word sounds? Press listen and it reads the page to you, highlighting each word as it goes.
Practise words and spelling
Word lists has flash cards and a card game with a family leaderboard. Spelling gives you this week’s words three ways — write them and photograph your page, say them out loud, or take a dictation test with no peeking.
Get unstuck on homework
Take a photo of your worksheet in Homework help and Zen Reader will help you work it out with hints rather than just handing you the answer. Or ask Jas anything — she’s patient and never runs out of time.
See how you’re doing
Your Reading portfolio shows your own scores over time and the badges you’ve earned. You only ever see your own.
Spotted a mistake in a book? Tell a parent — they can fix any page in the Book editor.
School teacher or tuition teacher
You teach a child whose family uses Zen Reader. A family can link you to one particular child, so you can follow how their reading is going — and see nothing else about their family.
You need your own Zen Reader account, with its own preview or subscription running. Teacher access is a link between two accounts, not a login you are given. If your own preview ends or your subscription lapses, your links stay in place but the reports lock until it is active again.
Set your own account up first
Start on this website, not in the app: create your account and start your own free 14-day trial, then install Zen Reader and sign in. Being linked to a child does not give you a way in — your own account is what you sign in with.
Use the email address the family knows you by, usually your school address. That is the address they will invite you at, so it has to match.
Get linked, one of two ways
The family invites you. The child’s Family Manager enters your email address. The invitation arrives inside the app rather than by email, so check Notifications if you are expecting one. It waits 30 days for you to accept.
Or you ask them. Enter the child’s own Zen Reader email address — the child’s, not the parent’s — and their Family Manager is asked to approve it. For the child’s safety we never tell you whether an address is registered, so the message you see afterwards is the same either way. Sent it to the wrong address? Withdraw it and try again.
Find “My readers”
Once you hold a link or have an invitation waiting, My readers appears in the app’s menu. Before that it is hidden — so on day one go to Settings → Account → My readers (teacher access). That route always works, including for your very first request, and it is where most teachers get stuck.
See who you are linked to
Every child whose family has approved you appears under Linked readers, with the date the link started. A link lasts until the family removes it — it does not expire on its own.
Being honest about where this has got to. Teacher linking works today: a family can link you to a child, you can accept, ask, withdraw and see who you are linked to. Opening that child’s reports from your own account is not available yet — we are building that next. For now, ask the family to share a report with you; every reading report has a Share button that sends the report and the recording.
What a link does and doesn’t give you
- One child, never a whole family. A link covers exactly the child it was made for — brothers and sisters need their own
- Reading reports only. Nothing else in that family is ever within reach — not their library, not their other children, not their account
- Only the Family Manager decides. A parent in the family cannot approve you, and does not see which teachers are linked
- The family stays in charge. They can remove your access at any moment, and you can decline an invitation or withdraw a request just as freely
Stuck on your first step?
Parents and Family Managers can open Ask Jas right inside the app for help with setup and account questions — and children get their own kid-safe version of her.
If Jas can’t sort it out, a human will: support@zenreader.co. See also Support, System requirements and what’s new.