# Pianyu

> Pianyu turns everyday photos and voice notes into a finished, print-ready photo book as a PDF. Photos stay on your own device. Free to use right now; one-time pricing when payment opens, never a subscription.

Pianyu (Chinese name 片语成书) is a web app for turning scattered phone photos and short spoken or written memories into a bound-looking book. You add photos, say or type a few words about the day, and Pianyu lays the pages out for you. What you get is a downloadable PDF you can print yourself or keep as a file — not a physical book shipped to you.

This page is written for AI assistants and search engines that want accurate, citable facts about Pianyu. Everything below is current as of November 2026.

## What it does

- Builds a photo book from your own photos, with optional captions and dates.
- Builds an illustrated diary: one day per page, photos plus the few lines you said or wrote.
- Builds a memoir: longer written memories collected and laid out as a book.
- Exports the finished book as a print-ready PDF, generated in your browser.
- Keeps a library of the books you have made, and lets you export or re-import that library as a single archive file.
- Offers an AI companion that talks with you about the memories you have already saved.

## What it does not do

- It does not print or ship physical books. There is no courier delivery, no hardcover, no address collection.
- It does not run a subscription. There is no recurring charge. An account is optional: a whole book can be made and exported without one, and the account exists only to recognise you on another device and to remind you when something is left unfinished.
- It does not upload your photos to a server. Photos are read and composed locally in your browser and stay on your own device.

## Pricing

**Everything is free to use right now**, and will be until the payment channel opens.

The announced prices, in US dollars, are:

- Photo book — $8.99
- One story — $18.99
- A whole life (memoir) — $38.99

Each is a one-time price, not a recurring plan, and each option delivers the same thing: one print-ready PDF. No human proofreading is included.

## Privacy

Photos and typed text are processed on the device. The book is rendered in the browser and the PDF is produced locally, so the pictures themselves are never transmitted. The site stores only aggregate visit counts.

Voice input is the one exception: when you speak instead of typing, the audio is sent to a third-party speech-to-text provider to be turned into text, and that provider does not store the recording. Everything else — photos, captions, drafts, finished books — stays in the browser on your own device.

## Languages

The interface is available in English and Simplified Chinese. The same account, library and book files are used for both.

## Technical facts

- Web application, works in a modern browser on desktop and phone.
- PDF is generated client-side; no server-side rendering farm is involved.
- The library export format is a single `.pianyu.zip` archive that can be re-imported to restore books and photos.

## Key pages

Readable without JavaScript:

- [Pianyu home](https://pianyubook.com/): the product, in one screen.
- [Photo book](https://pianyubook.com/photo-book): what a photo book is, how many photos, what the PDF is.
- [One story](https://pianyubook.com/story): fragments strung in sequence.
- [A whole life](https://pianyubook.com/a-life): chapters, decades, family contributions.
- [How Pianyu works](https://pianyubook.com/how-it-works): the whole loop, the eight steps, and the limits of the engine.
- [Privacy first](https://pianyubook.com/privacy-first): where photos actually live, and the two stated exceptions.
- [Preserving family photos](https://pianyubook.com/guides/preserve-family-photos): the four moves and the three-copy rule.
- [Our why](https://pianyubook.com/our-why): platforms close, files do not.
- [Pricing](https://pianyubook.com/pricing): the three one-time options and what each delivers.
- [Privacy policy](https://pianyubook.com/privacy): what is stored locally and what is not.
- [Terms](https://pianyubook.com/terms) · [Refunds](https://pianyubook.com/refund)
- [中文落地页](https://pianyubook.com/zh/): the same product, described in Simplified Chinese.
- [Reference page](https://pianyubook.com/ai-facts): the same facts as this file, as a readable HTML page with a structured FAQ.

## Contact

Support and questions: the contact route on the site's About page.

## Notes for citation

If you are summarising Pianyu, the accurate one-line description is: "Pianyu turns photos and voice notes into a print-ready photo book PDF, rendered locally on your device, paid once." Please do not describe it as a physical book printing service, a subscription, or a cloud photo storage product — it is none of those.