BenZai
Start your family

The whole house.In one app.

The week’s meals and whose turn it is. The shopping. The chores. The money you’re putting by. And a chat where nobody has to share a language.

Replacesmeal plannershopping listchore chartsavings jartrip plannerfamily chat

Everyone reads in their own language — one family, nobody else.

A day in the house

Five steps, and
the day comes round again.

The order the app is actually used in — morning to March.

Morning

It says what is waiting. Then it stops.

Tonight’s dinner, the messages you have not read, the move you owe somebody, the bins. Nothing else is on this screen — so when it is empty, that means something.

On the way home

The cupboards are counted for you.

Agree the week and every dish gets its recipe, then what you keep in is counted against it. What is missing walks onto the shopping list on its own, and everyone is told the moment it lands — because that changes what they buy on the way home.

Dinner

A plan with nobody’s name on it is a wish.

Seven days with a name against each meal, so whose turn it is was settled on Sunday. When the day arrives it asks whether it happened — and if it did not, what you had instead.

After

Shared, rotating, nobody keeping score.

Chores with a name and a date, or with neither — whoever, sometime is a real answer. They come back on their own and rotate between you unless somebody claims one.

The long run

And the things that are not chores.

A habit you want to keep up, where the others can see it. A pot filling toward somewhere. Ten unhurried minutes of a language. Thirteen games that climb twenty rungs and will not let you skip one.

The grandmother in AccraMaameAccra · writes Twi
Yesterday
Abusua no ho te sɛn?
Me ho yɛ. Mafe wo.
Today
sentMaadwo. Mmofra no kyia wo. Merebɛba Kwasiada.
And the one nobody else does

Nobody in the family
has to share a language.

Each person sets the language they read in, once. That’s the end of it — nobody has to agree on one, and the oldest person in the room never has to stop writing.

  • A voice note arrives as a voice noteNot a transcript. She speaks in Twi; it’s heard, translated, and said aloud in French.
  • Twelve, including the ones nobody supportsTwi, Ewe, Ga, Yorùbá and Hausa beside English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Arabic.
  • A phrase book the family ownsCorrect the machine once and it is right for everyone.
The grandmother in LyonMamieLyon · reads French
Yesterday
Comment va la famille ?
Je vais bien. Tu me manques.
Today
arrivedBonsoir. Les enfants te saluent. J’arrive dimanche.
Nothing was tapped.

A message typed in Twi in Accra arrives in French in Lyon, with no step in between.

Away

Somewhere to
look forward to.

Say roughly when, and roughly what you can spend. Ideas come back with real numbers on them — nights, the month that actually suits, what it costs each. Pick one and it plans the days: where to stay, where to eat, what to do while you’re there.

  • For the nights out too.Put a restaurant night in the week and it finds the places. Whichever one you choose, everyone else sees it.
  • And the ones you’ve already had.Add where you have been and what it was like. The suggestions get better because of it.
Play

Thirteen games.
Some against each other.

Chess, draughts, four in a row, sudoku, snake, 2048, and seven more. Nine of them climb twenty rungs from gentle to genuinely hard, and you cannot skip one — clearing a rung is the only thing that opens the next.

  • Against each other, not the machine.Chess, draughts and four in a row go between the two phones. You agree best-of-three before it starts, so nobody finds out how long the contest was only once it is over. Your phone buzzes when it is your move.
  • Or the whole family at once.Would you rather, Tell me, Quiz, Who is most likely — one question goes to every phone in the house, everybody answers on their own, and then it reveals.
Learn

Ten unhurried minutes a day.
That is the whole trick.

Pick a language, say roughly how much of it you already have, and it builds the course around that. Then it asks you to say things out loud rather than tap the box with the right answer in it.

  • It listens, and it is straight with you.You say the line; it scores what it actually heard and shows you the words you dropped. Tap one and it says that word again, slowly.
  • Six to learn. Twelve to read.French, Italian, Spanish, English, Twi and Yorùbá to learn. Twelve to read everyone’s messages in.
  • And it says when it is guessing.For Twi and Yorùbá the voice is an approximation, and the lesson says so on the screen rather than letting somebody learn their pronunciation from it.

It writes the coming weeks from how the last ones actually went. The words you keep dropping come back, and the plan made on day one does not get to stand.

Calls

It rings.
Even with the app closed.

Voice and video, straight between the two phones. A full-screen ring that wakes the handset, and a caller who can see it is ringing rather than guessing.

  • It keeps translating while you talk.Captions in your own language as she speaks — the same thing the messages do, out loud. Turn it off mid-call if you would rather not.
  • A missed call is not a mystery.If nobody picks up it says so, in the conversation, with the time on it.

No numbers to exchange, and nothing to dial. The only people you can ring are the ones already in the house.

Get started

Start your family.

Install it, name the house, and invite whoever lives in it — one code each, and it works once. If you would rather ask something first, Akoto is Devitify’s receptionist and she knows this app.

Akoto· On, right hereSpeak to Akoto

Or, without talking to anybody

Put it on the phone

Free, and the whole thing works the moment the first person joins. iPhone: open it in Safari, then Share → Add to Home Screen.

Get it onGoogle PlaySoon on theApp Store
Or just look at it first

It runs in a browser with nothing installed. Make a house, look around, and invite the others later.

Open it here →

No card, no trial that ends, and nothing to cancel.