A Japanese word appears on your lock screen every time you wake your phone.
Not a word of the day — a word every time you look.
Kanji with its furigana above it, or kana as the word is written, a vermilion N5 or N4 seal, and the English meaning.
Nothing to open. No session to start. No streak to keep.
Lockana is free to install and rotates a curated sample of JLPT N5 words. A single purchase — $3.99 / £3.49, once, and priced in your own currency elsewhere — opens the full set of 1,386. No subscription, no free trial, no account, and no card details asked for up front: the purchase is handled by Google Play, and Lockana never sees your payment details.
The gate is vocabulary breadth and nothing else. Hiding the meaning, the word list, the search, the appearance counts and the word position are all fully usable without paying. The word list shows the whole catalogue either way, with the locked rows marked, so you can see exactly what the purchase adds.
No ads, no accounts, no tracking, no analytics — the only network use is the one-time purchase check with Google Play. Your settings and your place in the rotation stay on the device, and are excluded from system backups.
What you see
◆ A word set the way a textbook would set it: furigana above the kanji, and kana words as they are written. Never romaji — you can read every word from day one.
◆ A vermilion seal marking the level, N5 or N4.
◆ The English meaning underneath. Switch it off and the word stands alone: hide the meaning, and see whether you still know it.
◆ Long entries fit themselves to the screen instead of spilling off it.
◆ The word can be moved up or down to sit clear of your clock, dragged in the companion app's live preview.
The rotation
◆ 1,386 words: 718 at N5, 668 at N4. With the full set unlocked, study one level or both.
◆ It will not repeat a word until you have seen every word in the set.
◆ Your place in the rotation survives a reboot.
◆ The word list records how many times each word has actually been shown, and searches by kana, romaji or English.
What it does not do
◆ It fades the word in once when you wake the phone, then stops. Nothing keeps redrawing behind your lock screen.
◆ It is a live wallpaper, not an overlay. No notifications, no alarms, nothing on top of your screen, and it does not react to taps on the lock screen.
◆ There is no sign-in, here or anywhere. Your purchase belongs to your Google Play account, not to an account with us.
Where the words come from
The vocabulary is drawn from commonly accepted N5 and N4 word lists compiled by the learner community. The JLPT publishes no official vocabulary list, so no list is the official one. Lockana is not affiliated with the JLPT or JEES, and makes no claim about your result in any exam.
Word lists: "JLPT Resources" by Jonathan Waller (tanos.co.uk/jlpt), CC BY 4.0. Meanings and readings: "Open Anki JLPT Decks" by Jamie Sinclair, MIT Licence. Both modified for Lockana. The full notice is in the app, under About.
A N5 / N4 word on your lock screen every time you wake it, kanji with furigana.