PinyinLyrics is a free Android app that detects the song playing on your phone (YouTube Music, Spotify,
etc.; free Spotify too), looks up its lyrics and shows them over any app, with pinyin for Chinese and
romanization for Japanese and Korean. It is built for learners: tap a word to look it up, color lyrics by HSK level,
or hide the pinyin you already know.
✨ Highlights
🎵 Features
- Automatic detection of the song that is playing in Spotify (also the free version: it detects ads and doesn't
look up lyrics for them), YouTube Music, Metrolist and more.
- It always tries to find synced lyrics first, and falls back to plain text only if there are none. A badge shows
whether the lyrics are synced.
- Follow along: the current line is enlarged with an animation. Scroll freely and the highlight returns by itself
5 s later; auto-scroll can be turned off with a button. Tap a line to jump to that moment in the song.
- Nudge the timing ±0.5 s per song, plus a global sync offset on top.
- Playback controls (previous, pause, next) in the floating window and full screen.
- Chinese: pinyin by word (correct readings for characters with several pronunciations), with tone marks,
numbers or no tones; simplified or traditional script; zhuyin (bopomofo) and jyutping (Cantonese).
- Japanese: Hepburn romaji or hiragana, with kanji readings.
- Korean: Revised Romanization.
- The language is detected per song.
- Aligned pinyin: drawn above each character, not on a separate line.
- Word card: tap a Chinese character to see the word with pinyin, meaning (CC-CEDICT), HSK level and a
character-by-character breakdown; copy it or open your dictionary app.
- Colors by HSK 3.0 level, and a practice mode that hides the pinyin of HSK words up to the level you choose,
so you only read what you still need.
- Beginner's guide on first launch (and in the menu).
- Floating window: draggable, resizable, and it can shrink to a small bubble that snaps to the screen edge
(tap it to bring the lyrics back). It can open by itself when music starts and hide when it stops.
- Full-screen lyrics: they follow the song that is playing, can be reloaded if they're wrong, copied or shared as
Hanzi, pinyin or both.
- Mini mode: just the current line (and the next one) over a nearly transparent background; draggable, with a ✕
to close it. Needs synced lyrics.
- Quick Settings tile to open and close the window.
- Home screen: a "Now playing" card with blurred cover art and the current line, plus Recents and Favorites.
- Lyrics search by title or artist, with endless scrolling.
- Favorites (saved on your phone, with backup and restore) and recently played songs.
- Wrong lyrics? Tap ↻ to try the next match, or long-press it to pick the right ones yourself; your choice is
remembered for that song.
- Paste or import your own lyrics (text or
.lrc) when no source has them.
- Share a line as an image.
- A list of music apps to ignore.
- Material 3, light and dark mode, and 11 interface languages: English, Spanish, Catalan, French, German,
Portuguese, Italian, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese and Korean.
📲 Install
- Download PinyinLyrics.apk
(latest version; all versions are on the Releases page).
- Open it on your phone. Android will ask you to allow installing apps from unknown sources for your browser or
file manager.
- Open PinyinLyrics and grant the permissions it asks for.
Requires Android 8.0 or later.
| Permission | What it is for |
|---|
| Notification access | Reading the title and artist of the song that is playing. |
| Display over other apps | Drawing the floating lyrics window. |
[!TIP]
On Android 13 or later, if the "Notification access" switch is greyed out, go to
Settings > Apps > PinyinLyrics > ⋮ > Allow restricted settings. If automatic mode stops working after a while,
remove the battery restriction for the app: some manufacturers kill background services.
🔒 Privacy
No accounts, ads or analytics. To look up lyrics, the app sends the song's title and artist (or what you type
in the search box) to the lyrics services (see below). Favorites, recent songs and sync adjustments are stored
only on your device and can be cleared or turned off in Settings. Optionally, once a day at most, the app asks
GitHub for the latest release number to tell you about updates (no personal data is sent); you can turn this off in
Settings. This check is not present in the Google Play version. Nothing else leaves your device.
📜 About the lyrics
PinyinLyrics does not include or host any lyrics: at the user's request it looks them up on third-party
services and shows them on the user's device. Lyrics are copyrighted by their owners.
| Source | Status |
|---|
| LRCLIB | Main source, with synced lyrics. Open, community-run service. |
| lyrics.ovh | Second source, unsynced lyrics only; queried after LRCLIB. |
This project is not affiliated with LRCLIB, lyrics.ovh or any music app.
☕ Support
PinyinLyrics is free and has no ads. If it helps you learn, you can
buy me a coffee on Ko-fi.
Third-party licenses
See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. The same notice is available inside the app (menu ⋮ > Licenses).
