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Hourly Learning: foreign-language words on your lock screen / widgets, “one word every hour”. 7-day trial, then subscription or lifetime one-time purchase. Three weeks after launch, it was running multilingual Meta ads to test the market
Watching Trackable · new surface (lock-screen widget) + paid acquisition being tested First spotted 2026-11-01 · last updated 2026-11-04
- Status
- Watching (Meta has 316 live ads and the store has some traction. Check in 11-08 on how the ad count and rating growth move; the answer should be clear within a month).
- Why now, and how long the window lasts
- iOS lock-screen and home-screen widgets make "a word every time you check your phone" nearly free to deliver. It's a different surface from Duolingo's "open the app and study 5 minutes a day". LLMs push the cost of a language's word list, example sentences and multilingual glosses close to zero, so one template can cover Japanese, Korean and Chinese in 11 interface languages (my inference). Radish uses Meta multilingual video to test which language × country combinations pay back, with copy aimed at Southeast Asia and Latin America. Copying the product is easy; the hard part is whether the paid-acquisition unit economics work. The window depends on whether they double down or pull back next month.
- Confidence
- Low. Store volume is still small (1,002 ratings in us), revenue is unknown, and Meta has only one tracking point. Upgrade if: 11-15 Meta's live ad count holds steady, and Hourly Kana reaches the top 50 Education top grossing in any major store (us / jp / gb), or Hangul / Hanzi start to grow. Kill if: within 11-30 the Page's live ads drop below 50, and Hourly Kana falls out of the top 100 top grossing in the hk or id category.
Evidence
Grouped by store. Each group starts with the charts that can be graphed (real curves, data dates below the chart), then the scanner's original notes and source links.
App Store4 evidence items · 11 products with curves
Hourly Kana: Learn Japanese Radish Retail, LLC
App Store · launched 2026-07-02 · US store rating 1,098 · charted in 11-08 of 15 stores
US storeKoreaAustralia
Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 12 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that day
Data 2026-10-30 → 2026-11-08 (10 days, 9 observations). Apple doesn't publish download counts; rating growth is a proxy for downloads.
Hourly Hangul: 學韓文 Radish Retail, LLC
App Store · Launched 2026-07-02 · Australia rating 35 · 11-08 charted in 7 stores
JapanAustraliaSingapore
Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 12 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that day
Data 2026-11-01 → 2026-11-04 (4 days, 2 observations). Apple doesn't publish download counts; rating growth is a proxy for downloads.
Hourly Hanzi: Learn Chinese Radish Retail, LLC
App Store · launched 2026-06-18 · South Korea rating 22 · charted in 2 stores 11-06
KoreaOmanMalaysia
Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-06 (10 days, 10 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that day
Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-06 (10 days, 10 observations). Apple doesn't publish download counts; rating growth is a proxy for downloads.
Widget Vocabulary: Learn Words ORBIT STUDIOS TEKNOLOJI LIMITED SIRKETI
App Store · launched 2026-06-24 · US store rating 496 · charted in 11-08 of 39 stores
VietnamBYUZ
Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-05 (9 days, 8 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that day
Data 2026-11-04 → 2026-11-08 (5 days, 5 observations). Best rank across each day's category charts
Ayat Online - Hourly Widgets Orbit Studios Technology
Google Play · Launched 2025-08-22 · 11-07 installs 425,452
Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 10 observations). Google's detail page only refreshes install counts every other day, so a flat day doesn't mean nobody installed.
Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 10 observations)
Zarafa: Vocabulary Widget Dzmitry Branchuk
App Store · Launched 2026-10-03 · BY rating 7 · charted in 1 stores for 11-08
VGDMAI
Data 2026-10-31 → 2026-11-08 (9 days, 9 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that day
Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-06 (10 days, 9 observations). Apple doesn't publish download counts; rating growth is a proxy for downloads.
IchiJi: Kanji Widgets Sebastian Lopez Garcia
App Store · Launched 2026-06-02 · Spain rating 4 · charted in 1 stores for 11-03
UZBGThailand
Data 2026-10-30 → 2026-11-03 (5 days, 5 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that day
Number of ratings 4
Data day 2026-10-31, only 1 days so far. Apple doesn't give download counts, so rating growth is the proxy
yīZì: Chinese Character Widget Sebastian Lopez Garcia
App Store · Launched 2026-06-06 · Peru rating 5 · 11-08 charted in 2 stores
MUSIPY
Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-06 (10 days, 8 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that day
Data 2026-11-03 → 2026-11-05 (3 days, 2 observations). Apple doesn't publish download counts; rating growth is a proxy for downloads.
3 more products' curves
Wrd – Word of the Day Widget Anastasiia Iaemurd
App Store · launched 2026-05-14 · Turkey rating 18 · charted in 11-08 stores 1
SKBYTurkey
Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 8 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that day
memsy Marina Atchikova
App Store · launched 2019-03-30 · US store rating 1 · charted in 11-06 of 1 stores
Memsy: English Word Widget UZNO BILISIM VE YAZILIM TICARET LIMITED SIRKETI
App Store · launched 2026-10-26 · Turkey rating 36 · charted in 11-08 stores 2
Data 2026-10-30 → 2026-11-08 (10 days, 10 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that day
- App Store (11-02 check): Hourly Kana: Learn Japanese (id 6780309160, Radish Retail, LLC, launched 2026-07-02, version 4.1.2) charted in 18 stores, all in the Education category: #29 top grossing in hk (the App Store report says #22 11-01), #38 top grossing in id, #20 top free in ph (it reached #13 top grossing in 10-30), #90–117 top grossing in jp, #68 top free in au, #192 top free in us. Ratings: us 1,002 (up +48 last week), ph 429, jp 333, id 196, ca 132. Monetization: 7-day trial, then paid; 4.1.2 added a lifetime one-time purchase. Interface and glosses are in 11 languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, Malay, Filipino, Hindi, Arabic, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese). apps.apple.com/us/app/hourly-kana-learn-japanese/id678030916…
- App Store (11-02 check): The same developer's two other apps use the same template for different languages, and neither has picked up traction yet. Hourly Hangul: Learn Korean (id 6778228989,07-02, launched first) charted in 5 stores, best at #42 Education top free in sg and #60 category top grossing in mo, with combined ratings across stores of 53. Hourly Hanzi: Learn Chinese (id 6777846080,06-18, launched first) charted only in kr and om, #135 Education top grossing in kr, ratings 15.
- Cross-checking the two reports: the App Store report (11-01) lists Hourly Kana under "niche / minor-language learning" (#22 Education top grossing in hk, ratings 1,994, 5 days +107). The Meta report (11-02) treats this Page as a typical case of "almost nobody in the store, already burning money on Meta". The Meta report's "53 ratings, 5 stores charted" describes Hourly Hangul (6778228989; the ad library records it as this Page's main app), not the main app Hourly Kana. Counting Hourly Kana alone, the store already has some volume. 11-02 After checking, the two reports are describing the same thing.
- App Store / GP (11-02 check, same-format comparison): Widget Vocabulary: Learn Words (id 6775767149, Orbit Studios, launched 06-24, English vocabulary widget) charted in 41 stores, #7 Education top grossing in tr (#4 when the report was written), with tr ratings 421. The same studio's Ayat Online - Hourly Widgets on Google Play (com.glmtr.ayetonline, a widget that shows one Quran verse every hour, listed 2025-08) has 424,706 installs and 4,524 ratings. Smaller comparable apps are all by individual developers with single-digit ratings: Zarafa (6815355508), IchiJi kanji widget (6773030069), yīZì (6775217478), Wrd (6760948982), Memsy (6821136005,10-26, launched first). Hourly Kana doesn't appear in the Google Play library; it's iOS only.
Meta Ad Library 1 evidence items · 1 products with curves
Hourly Learning itunes.apple.com
Meta Ad Library · running 284 ads · earliest seen running from 2026-07-26
Data 2026-11-01 → 2026-11-06 (6 days, 3 observations). Meta Ad Library tracking started 11-01; an advertiser is tracked about every 2–3 days.
- Meta ad library (11-01 tracked, 11-02 first screen): Page "Hourly Learning" (id 1136810212857692, 6 likes). Hourly Learning has 316 live ads and 728 total ads over its history. The earliest was 2026-07-26, so it started running ads about three weeks after Hourly Kana launched. The most recent new creative is from 10-22. Of the 53 ads seen, 85% are video, and all of them land on the App Store: Hourly Kana 43 ads, Hourly Hangul 10 ads. Copy is in English, Indonesian and Spanish ("Revisas tu celular 100 veces al día", "Kamu cek HP 100 kali sehari"). Placements cover FB, IG, Threads, WhatsApp and Audience Network. For the search term "flashcards", it ranks #2 on the JP first screen and #3 on DE.
Qualifying list 1 pieces of evidence
- Shortlist (11-01): Hourly Kana passed the App Store bar and matches "Meta has 316 live ads (Page Hourly Learning)". 11-02 is still being tracked; two-day rating increase 117.
Already doing it
Radish Retail's three apps (Japanese has traction; Korean and Chinese are very small). Widget Vocabulary (English, Turkish storefront). Orbit Studios' Quran widget (Play). Several individual-developer kanji and word widgets, none of which have taken off. Related: [021] (niche languages, organic ASO route), [016] (in the faith category, also a widget that shows a verse every hour), [023] (conversation practice, also a paid-acquisition-heavy category).
The hardest step
Paid conversion. The advantage of widgets is "you can learn without opening the app", but that also puts the paid features further from the user. Radish's answer is a hard paywall after a 7-day trial, plus the newly added lifetime one-time purchase. The second issue is paid acquisition: a Page with 6 likes running 316 ads suggests it treats Meta as a testing tool. Whether that pays back isn't visible from outside.
Who it's for
An iOS / SwiftUI indie dev who knows WidgetKit and can produce multilingual content. Charge with a subscription plus a lifetime purchase. Start markets in Southeast Asia (ph, id), Hong Kong / Taiwan, and among people learning Japanese. Copying this approach means budgeting several thousand dollars a month for paid-acquisition tests. Without that budget, use the organic ASO route from [021].
Should every product builder know this?
Yes. "Lock screen / widget as the carrier + one template swapped across languages + multilingual Meta video to test the market" is a public experiment with visible results. One month from now it will either scale up or disappear, which will show whether paid acquisition can rescue a small app.
Change log
2026-11-04
The "language learning" cluster on the qualifying list has 3 apps (Hourly Kana is still being tracked). Hourly Kana's two-day rating went 117→94→109, flat.
2026-11-02
Backfill check: hk Education Top Grossing #22 → #29; ph category Top Free #20; us rating 1,002; Meta running 316 ads (11-01 only tracked once, not comparable yet). Confirmed that the "53 rating" in the Meta report refers to Hourly Hangul.
2026-11-01
First recorded. Backfilled from two reports: the App Store report names Hourly Kana, the Meta report names Page Hourly Learning, and the 11-01 qualifying list matched the two.
Original: Scanner opportunity library #022 (updated daily, 06:00); this page was generated on the 2026-11-08 edition.