How Lighthouse Prep works.

What Lighthouse Prep is #

A focused study workspace for competitive-exam aspirants — an AI plan builder, a session timer, a mentor that remembers you, a spaced-revision queue, and study groups for preparing with friends.

Lighthouse Prep is organised around the tabs you'll spend time in: Today's Plan (your day), Live Session (the active timer), Wastage / Insights (what happened), Learn (short videos on what the app can do), Community (everyone sitting your exam), Groups (study with friends you invite), and the Leaderboard (your weekly timer hours).

What you can do with it

Getting Started #

The fastest way to your first session. No sign-up needed to begin.

Open the app

Open lighthouseprep.in/app in any modern browser and you go straight into setup — no account first. On Android, get the app from Google Play instead: it's the only version with Focus Shield and study alarms. On a computer or an iPhone you can install the web app from your browser so it gets its own icon and window.

Two ways to keep your progress

1. Carry on as a guestSessions, plans and even the AI plan builder all work without an account, and everything is saved on this device. You can sign in later and bring your data along.
2. Sign in with GoogleYour plans, sessions, revisions and AI balance sync to every device you sign in on. Lumi, the AI mentor, needs a signed-in account.

Your first 5 minutes

1. Pick your exam — tap one of the exam tiles or type its name, choose your study language, and set how many hours a day you study and when.
2. Watch your plan build — a short checklist ticks through while the AI builds your routine from the exam's pattern and previous papers.
3. Add your exam date if you know it — it's optional, on the "your plan is ready" screen — then tap Start my journey.
4. Choose how to keep your progress — sign in with Google, or carry on as a guest and tell the app your name.
5. Start your first session from Today's Plan. The timer counts up and stops by itself when the slot is over.

Account & Sign-in #

How accounts work in Lighthouse Prep — guest mode, Google sign-in, and what happens when you upgrade from one to the other.

Two account modes

What each mode unlocks

Sessions & timer

Both modes — full feature.

AI plan builder

Both modes — uses your free balance.

Lumi mentor

Sign-in only.

AI balance / top-up

Both modes can use it; only signed-in users can top up.

Study groups & chat

Pro only (and signed in).

Leaderboard

Sign-in only — free shows as 'Anonymous'; Pro shows your name, photo, and rank.

Sync across devices

Sign-in only.

Push notifications

Study reminders work for guests too; the rest need sign-in.

Going from guest to signed-in

When a guest signs in to a new Google account, their plan, sessions and study time simply move into it. If the account already has plans, a Merge Guest Data prompt asks whether to bring the guest data along, so nothing is lost.

• Your local guest data stays as a fallback until the merge succeeds.
• Time studied per session carries over, so your streak survives the upgrade.
• If something fails, just retry — you don't lose anything.

Deleting your account

Visit lighthouseprep.in/delete-account to permanently remove your account and all data tied to it. The action is irreversible.

Onboarding Flow #

One screen of setup, and you have a complete study plan ready to start.

The setup screen

1. Your examTap one of the tiles — SSC, Railways, Banking, UPSC, TNPSC, State PSC, Defence, Teaching or GATE — or type your exam's name. If you pick a broad category, a short popup asks which exam exactly.
2. Your study languageShown when your exam is held in more than one language. Study material, quizzes and AI chat follow it; technical terms stay in English, like the real paper.
3. Your daily study timeHow many hours a day you'll study, and when. Tap Change to adjust it.

While your plan builds

A short checklist ticks through six steps, one at a time, while the AI builds your plan:

1. Analyzing your target exam pattern
2. Understanding syllabus structure
3. Searching high-weightage topics
4. Analyzing previous year question trends
5. Comparing toppers' preparation strategies
6. Building personalized study sequence

The first five tick on a steady rhythm. The last one only ticks when your plan is actually ready — so the wait always feels purposeful.

Your plan is ready

A summary card shows your exam, how many plans and sessions were built, and the list of plans with their session counts. You can add your exam date here. It's optional, and it powers the exam countdown, Lumi's days-left and the distance in The Crossing. Tap Start my journey.

Save your progress

Next you choose how to keep what you've built: sign in with Google, or carry on as a guest and type the name the app should call you. Signing in to a new Google account simply moves your plan into it; if the account already has plans, the app asks whether to import the guest data. Then you're on Today's Plan, with a one-time spotlight pointing at the Start button on your first session.

Learn videos #

A short-video library inside the app that shows you what Lighthouse Prep can actually do. Most people never find half the features in an app they use daily — this is the fix for that.

Where to find it

The Learn tab in the main navigation. Nothing to unlock and nothing to pay — it's open to everyone, guests included.

How it's organised

It remembers where you were

Leave a video half-watched and it reappears under Continue watching at the position you stopped; Recently watched keeps the last few you opened. Both show up only when you're browsing, so a search result is never cluttered by them.

Lumi — your AI mentor #

Not a chatbot. Lumi remembers your goals, notices how you're feeling, and times its check-ins so it stays useful — not annoying.

How to talk to Lumi

Tap the floating Lumi button (bottom-right of any page) to open the chat. Replies stream in word by word. Lumi picks up your language automatically — English, Tamil, Tanglish, Hindi, Hinglish — and replies in the same register.

What makes Lumi different

When Lumi will start the conversation

Whenever you open the chat, Lumi may lead with a check-in. These come up in the moments where a nudge actually helps:

• Right after a study session — to ask how it went.
• If you sound burnt out lately — a softer, "let's talk" opener.
• As your exam gets close (within a week) — a focus check.
• If you've been quiet for a few days — a low-key "even 20 minutes today counts" nudge.
• If it's been a week or more — a real check-in on how prep is going overall.

Celebrations Lumi tracks

When you finish a session, Lumi shows a little celebration popup (with the Lumi picture) if you've earned one — and if you'd already earned one while the app was closed, it greets you with it the next time you open the app. These never push to your phone. You can earn them for:

• 3-, 7-, and 30-day study streaks
• 10, 50, and 100 total completed sessions
• Your longest focus session yet — a new personal best for one sitting
• Your biggest study day yet — a new personal best for a day's total
• Days you studied more than yesterday
• Coming back after a long break

Asking Lumi to build a plan

If you ask Lumi to "build me a plan" or "create a study plan", it won't try to write one inside chat. Instead it opens the same plan-builder you saw at onboarding — so you get a real structured plan, not a wall of text.

Lumi Call — a voice check-in

Lumi can also talk to you out loud. Open Lumi Call, pick a preferred time window and a language (English, Tamil, or Hindi), then:

• Call me now — starts a live voice chat with Lumi right inside the app.
• Ring my phone (in the Android app only) — sends a full-screen call to your phone so you can answer Lumi from the lockscreen, like a real call.

Study Sessions #

The timer is the heart of the app. Here's how to use it without losing a second of your study time.

Today's Plan

This is your home page. Pick your exam from the top dropdown, then a plan under it, and you'll see today's sessions laid out on a timeline. Each card shows the session name, when it's scheduled, how long it lasts, and how much of it you've already studied.

Starting a session

1. Tap a session cardOpen the session's sheet for details.
2. Hit StartThe timer begins counting and (on Android) Focus Shield switches on.
3. StudySwitch tabs, lock your phone, take a break — the timer keeps running.
4. Auto-finishWhen you hit your scheduled time, the timer stops on its own.

What the timer guarantees

• It survives tab switches. Move between Today's Plan, Lumi, even the Wastage report — the timer keeps ticking on whichever session you started.
• It stops itself. When the session reaches its scheduled length, it auto-stops and is marked as complete. You can't accidentally over-study a slot.
• Pausing keeps your place. Hit pause and the visible time stays — resume continues from there.
• Switching mid-study never loses time. If you start a different session before finishing the first one, your elapsed minutes on the first session are saved before the swap.

Live Session page

Once a session is active, the Live Session view gives you a full-screen timer, a choice of clock-face themes, a notes / material area for the topic, and a quick-revise shortcut for the topics in this session — all without stopping the timer.

Two plan modes

• Fixed mode — sessions have start and end times. You'll see a clock-style timeline, and any time you don't study during a slot counts as wastage.
• Flexible mode — sessions are just an ordered list. There's no clock; you do them in order at your own pace. The Wastage tab is replaced by an Insights view.

When the plan is bigger than your day — Catch-up mode

A plan here is a daily routine, not a dated calendar, so falling behind doesn't mean missing Tuesday's topics — it means the routine keeps asking for more hours than you've actually been managing. When that's been true for several days, a catch-up banner appears on Today's Plan offering to rebuild the routine to a size you can actually hit.

• It aims at your good days, not your worst. The new size comes from the best days you've already proved you can do, not from your average — a plan built on your worst week is just demoralising.
• Start times never move. Only session lengths shrink, so a morning block stays in the morning and an evening block stays in the evening.
• Nothing is deleted. Sessions that no longer fit are paused, and your studied hours, streak and leaderboard time are all untouched.
• You can always go back. "Restore original plan" puts the routine back exactly as it was. It's saved to your account, so it doesn't expire and it's there on any device you sign in on. You can also snooze the suggestion for a week.
• Paused sessions stay reachable. They move to a Paused sessions list at the bottom of Today's Plan, along with every note, PDF and piece of study material saved under them. Tap Resume to bring one back on its own.

It's a local calculation — no AI, no tokens, works offline — and it stays quiet until there's enough history to judge fairly, so a brand-new plan never gets cut.

Focus Tracking & Shield #

In the Android app, Focus Shield quiets your phone and blocks the apps you choose the moment a session starts, and puts everything back the second it ends — without you doing a thing.

Where it works

• The Android app from Google Play — full Focus Shield.
• Desktop browsers — not supported, no toggle shown.
• iPhone / iPad — not supported (Apple doesn't allow third-party apps to control Do Not Disturb).

What it does during a session

• Do Not Disturb switches on in priority-only mode, so calls and notifications go quiet.
• Notifications from the apps on your block list stop sounding and vibrating.
• Open a blocked app mid-session and a "stay focused" screen steps in and points you back to studying.
• Leave the app and a small floating timer keeps your session in view (optional).
• Tap the shield chip to see how many distractions were blocked.

Pick the apps to block from the shield chip's menu with Choose apps to block. The list stays on your phone. When the session ends, Do Not Disturb goes back to how you had it and your apps open normally again.

First-time setup (Android only)

The first time you start a session in the Android app, a short walkthrough asks for each permission on its own screen, explained before Android's settings open:

1. Do Not Disturb accessSo your phone can go quiet during sessions and come back afterwards.
2. Notification accessSo the apps on your block list can be muted. It never reads or sends the content of your notifications.
3. Keep running in the backgroundKeeps the shield active for your whole session when Android tries to sleep background apps.
4. Android's accessibility serviceThis is what blocks apps: it checks only the name of the app on screen, on your phone, while a session runs. It never reads your screen, text or passwords.
5. Display over other apps (optional)For the floating study timer. You can skip it.

When it switches on

Focus Shield turns on automatically whenever one of these is true:

• A study session timer is running, or
• You've opened the Current Affairs reading sheet.

Both count as "real study time," so we silence the phone for either. Switching between sessions does not bounce you off the page or toggle the shield off and on — it stays running smoothly.

Manual control

In Settings you can turn off the auto-on behaviour. After that, the shield only runs when you toggle it on yourself from the chip. The chip always shows the current state: off, turning on, on, turning off.

Distraction & Wastage #

Where your hours actually went. Two views depending on your plan style — Wastage (for fixed-time plans) or Insights (for flexible plans).

Wastage Report — fixed plans

Every scheduled session becomes a row: how long it was meant to take, how long you actually studied, and the gap between them. The gap is your wastage.

• Daily ribbon at the top shows studied vs. wasted with a percentage.
• History table drills into individual sessions across days.
• Inline edit lets you correct a session's studied time — useful if you studied offline and the timer wasn't running.

Insights Report — flexible plans

Flexible plans don't have time slots, so "wastage" doesn't apply. Instead, Insights ranks your sessions by completion, surfaces your consistency trend, and shows whether you're stacking enough sessions per day to hit your goal.

The day-end report

After you've crossed a meaningful chunk of study time, a day-end report arrives both in the app and (if you've enabled it) as a push notification. It tells you:

Study Material #

Every session can generate its own study material — quick notes, a full topic breakdown, worked practice problems, formulas and exam strategy — written for your exam, in your study language, and checked before you ever read it.

Where to find it

Open any session on Today's Plan and tap Material (the same area is reachable from the Live Session page while your timer runs, so you never have to stop studying to open it).

Quick actions — the 10-second version

Three chips at the top generate something immediately for that session:

📝 Quick notes

A short, scannable set of notes on the session's topic.

❓ 5 MCQs

Five practice questions with answers.

📄 Summary

A condensed set of key points.

Anything you generate is saved under All materials, grouped by day. From the output screen you can Load more to extend it, Convert it into one of the other formats, or Export it as a file to keep or share.

The deep dive — a topic broken into subtopics

For real study, generate the topic breakdown: your session's topic is split into chapters and subtopics, and each subtopic opens a deep dive with seven tabs.

⭐ Important Notes

The things that actually get asked.

📖 Core Concepts

Each concept as its own card with a short brief.

📐 Key Formulas

Formulas with what each symbol means.

📚 Practice Problems

Worked examples you can follow step by step.

❓ MCQ Quiz

Questions on this subtopic, with explanations.

🎯 Scoring Objectives

What to be able to do before you move on.

💡 Exam Strategy

How this topic is best attacked in the paper.

Everything is written in the same house style: scannable bullets, the words that matter in bold, and a closing memory tip — not walls of prose.

Going deeper on one point

Illustrations

Sections carry a generated illustration of the concept — a diagram-style image rather than decoration. The first person to open a section pays for its image; after that it's stored and free for everyone else who ever reads that section.

Checked before it reaches you

My resources — your own notes on a topic

1. Notes are free for everyone. Write your own notes against any topic. They're private, and they sit right next to the generated material.
2. Images, PDFs and links are Pro. Save a photo of a page, a PDF, or a useful link alongside your notes with Lighthouse Pro.
3. The session card gathers it all. Opening resources from the session card shows everything you've saved across all of that session's topics in one place.

Material feeds your revision queue

As you mark subtopics studied, they enter the spaced-revision queue at level 1 and start coming back on schedule. This is the intended path: study a session → generate its breakdown → mark what you covered → revise it automatically for weeks afterwards.

Revision Reminders #

A spaced-repetition system that gets harder each time you ace a topic — from a quick MCQ to a twisted, applied question.

The six levels

L1 — MCQ

Just learned. First revision is multiple choice.

L2 — Hint recall

Second pass. The prompt gives you a hint; you fill in the rest.

L3 — Pure recall

Third pass. No hint.

L4 — Timed recall

Fourth pass. Same as pure recall, but with ten seconds on the clock. Go over and the topic counts as shaky, so it comes back sooner.

L5 — Applied

Fifth pass. A twisted question — you have to apply the concept.

L6 — Mastered

Long-term refresh mode. Once every two months.

The schedule

After a successful revision, the next one is scheduled:

A topic asks you three to seven questions, and you have to get most of them right — not all — to move up. Answer everything cleanly and it goes quiet for the full gap. Scrape through with a few shaky ones and it still moves up, but comes back on the previous, shorter gap. Only a genuinely poor run holds it where it is and brings it back tomorrow, and you can never slip more than one level back. The system is built to be forgiving.

Due Today banner

On Today's Plan, a banner shows you what's due. It groups items by:

Urgent

Overdue topics that are also shaky — these come first.

Weak

Topics you answered shakily or missed — they come back on a shorter gap.

Due

Due today or earlier.

Strong

Topics sitting at L4 and up — shown for awareness, not urgency.

How a revision session feels

1. Tap Revise from the banner or any session card.
2. The quiz opens in the format matching the topic's current level.
3. Answer, then see the real answer. You tell the app how it went — I got it, Partly, or I missed it — with its own guess already selected, so it's one tap when the app got it right. The app can't reliably mark a typed answer, and you know whether it was really in your memory.
4. The next revision schedules itself from the result.
5. Not in the mood for a topic? Skip topic steps it to tomorrow without counting against it, and the ✕ next to any topic in the queue stops it coming back at all.
6. A calendar on Today's Plan shows how heavy the next five weeks look.

Where revision items come from

Open any session and use the Material section to generate a topic breakdown — chapter → subtopic → MCQs / deep dive. As you work through subtopics, they enter the revision queue at L1 and start the cycle.

Mock Tests #

Full-length computer-based mock tests built on your exam's real paper pattern — the same sections, marks, negative marking, timing and screen behaviour as the actual exam. Your first mock test is free.

Where to find it

Tap the Mock Test button on Today's Plan. You need an exam selected first — the mock test is built around your exam's real paper pattern, so the app has to know which exam you're preparing for.

The real paper pattern

Before you start, the app shows you exactly what the paper looks like:

• Every section with its question count and marks.
• Negative marking (for example −⅓ per wrong answer), just like the real exam.
• Total duration — and sectional timing where the real exam locks you into one section at a time.
• Well-known exams use their genuine published pattern; for other exams the AI works out the pattern and it's saved for everyone after that.

The test series — pay once per paper

1. Paper 1, Paper 2, Paper 3… Each pattern has a series of fixed papers. Everyone preparing for the same exam gets the same Paper 1, so scores are comparable.
2. Buy a paper once, keep it forever. A paper costs a small one-time amount of tokens — its actual creation cost, nothing more. Once you own it, every re-attempt of that paper is free, forever.
3. Want fresh questions? Start the next paper in the series — each new paper is a brand new set of questions on the same pattern.

Inside the exam screen

After you submit

• Your score, maximum marks and accuracy, with negative marking applied.
• A full answer review — every question with the correct answer and an explanation.
• A 💡 doubt chat on every explanation — tap it to ask the AI anything about that question until it makes sense.
• Your recent attempts stay on the mock-test start screen, labelled Paper and Attempt number, with one-tap re-attempt and tap-to-review.

In your study language

Questions come in your exam's study language. Sections that test English itself (like an English Language section) stay in English — the same way real bilingual papers work.

Productivity Analytics #

Three views of your progress — per session, per day, and per week.

Per session — Wastage / Insights table

Every session you ever ran is logged with its date, scheduled length, actual studied minutes, and the gap. You can filter by date range, edit any row, and export the whole thing to a PDF for offline review.

Per day — the day-end report

Once a day, after you've studied, a summary lands in the app (and as a push notification if you've allowed them). It covers your hours studied, % toward your goal, and a peek at tomorrow's plan.

Per week — the leaderboard

The Leaderboard tab shows your weekly timer hours on the week's board, with your row highlighted.

Share your stats

The Share today's stats option in the burger menu builds a downloadable image card with your name, weekly hours, longest streak, and exam name — handy for posting to social media or sharing with a study buddy.

Streaks & Rewards #

The small celebrations that show up to remind you that this work is adding up.

How a streak day works

• A streak day is any day you study with the session timer. There's no minimum — even a few minutes counts.
• The day boundary is your local timezone — midnight to midnight.
• Your streak stays alive until the end of the next day, so opening the app in the morning before you've studied doesn't break it.
• Miss a whole day and the counter resets. The next time you study, a new streak begins.

Your streak shows as the "N-day" pill with a little plant in the top bar, and the same plant sits on the green Start studying bar. The plant grows with your streak, and on days 3, 7, 14 and 30 it grows a flower that pays free AI credits — see the Streak Garden for how it works.

What you can earn

You'll also see one-time celebrations at 10, 50, and 100 total completed sessions, a lift every time you study more minutes today than yesterday, and — the repeatable ones — whenever you beat your longest single session or your biggest study day so far.

What's intentionally missing

No XP bar, no badges to collect, no leveling system, no daily lockout for missing a day. Streaks here are encouragement, not pressure. Skipping a day doesn't punish you — it just resets the counter, and the next time you study, Lumi welcomes you back.

The Crossing #

You're in a small boat. The lighthouse ahead is your exam. Every hour you study moves the boat closer — and nothing you've sailed is ever taken back. It runs on the study time you're already logging, so there's nothing to set up.

Where to find it

On Today's Plan, the crossing is the small round porthole in the row of pills at the top, next to Current Affairs. The scene inside it is live — the light is either close or it isn't, the water is either clear or fogged — and the number on it is the percentage of the way across. Tap it for the full-screen sea. During a session, the same crossing appears as a card on the Live Session page.

The three rules

How far it is

The distance isn't a number we picked. Once you've set an exam date and a daily plan, the crossing is exactly the study your own plan still asks for — your daily hours multiplied by the days left before your exam. It shortens as exam day comes nearer. Without an exam date the default is about 800 hours: roughly four hours a day for six months, one exam cycle.

The eight stops

The crossing is marked by eight legs, named for what you'd see from the boat. Tap The whole crossing in the full-screen view to see all of them with the hours each one costs.

Open water

No land, no bearings. Somewhere out there, a light.

A light on the horizon

Barely a spark. But it's there, and it isn't moving.

You have a bearing

You know which way to steer now.

Holding course

Hours of open sea behind you.

The light reaches you

It falls across the water. You aren't sailing blind.

You can hear the sea break

Close enough that the rocks have a sound.

Within sight of the harbour

You can see the steps.

Home

You crossed it. Every hour of this was you.

Crossing into a new leg is one of only eight moments in the whole journey, so it doesn't wait to be found — a card appears the next time you open the app, and you can share it.

The Anchor — your reason, in your own words

Open the crossing, tap More, and you can record your anchor: who you're doing this for, one line in your own words, a photo, and a voice note of up to 20 seconds.

It comes back at exactly one moment. When you press Stop a few minutes short of finishing a session, the app shows you your own words and offers to stay for the last few minutes. The timer keeps running behind that dialog — if you choose to stay, not one second was lost; if you stop, the session pauses exactly as it always would.

Your exam Community #

The Community tab puts you in a room with other people sitting the same exam — who's studying right now, who topped yesterday, a daily challenge to join, and 1-to-1 messages. Unlike Groups, you don't have to invite anyone: you're placed in your exam's community automatically.

You're already in one

Your community is chosen from the exam you're preparing for — set your exam and you're in. The Community tab is in the main navigation, and it works for guests too (a few actions need sign-in or Pro, noted below).

What's on the page

Members

The members list shows who's around, with their streak and today's hours; View all opens the full roster. Tap anyone to open their card, where you can:

• Wave at them — a light nudge, capped per day so it stays pleasant.
• Invite them to today's challenge, if they haven't joined it yet.
• Message them directly.

Direct messages

1. Starting a chat is a Pro feature. Opening a new conversation with someone needs Lighthouse Pro. It's the one gate — it keeps the inbox from filling with cold messages.
2. Replying is always free. Whoever messages you can be answered without Pro, as many times as you like. Once a thread exists, both sides chat normally.
3. You stay in control. A first message arrives as a request you can accept or decline, and you can block someone from their chat header at any time (and unblock them the same way).

Other exams

The exam picker at the top lets you look into other exams' communities. Browsing another exam is Lighthouse Pro, and even then it's view-only — you can post, wave, welcome and join challenges only in your own exam's community, which is what keeps each room on-topic.

Study Groups #

Invite-code groups for studying with friends — chat, shared plans, a shared resource library, and a small online indicator. Study Groups are a Lighthouse Pro feature. (For the public room of everyone sitting your exam, no invite needed, see Community.)

What's in a group

Joining a group

1. Get an invite codeThe group's invite code, shared by the owner or any member.
2. Enter it on the Groups tabTap "Join" and paste it in. Codes aren't case-sensitive, and you're in straight away.
3. You're inYour name and photo show up to other members. You can post, share, and access the library.

Group notifications

A bell icon in the navbar shows you when there's new group activity — new messages, plans shared, library uploads, join requests. Tap it to jump straight in.

Sharing a plan

From any plan on Today's Plan, the share menu offers Share to group (when you're in at least one group). The plan and its sessions get posted into the group. Members can clone it, and the clone becomes a fresh plan under their own exam.

The library

Members can upload PDFs, text files, or JPG and PNG images (up to 20 MB each). Each upload becomes a card with a preview, the uploader's name, and the date; uploads from members who aren't admins wait for an admin to approve them. Tap any card to preview or download it.

Current Affairs #

A daily news brief with MCQs, grouped by exam category. Read the day's brief, browse a whole date range, or take a practice test built from it.

Two ways to read it

What you'll see in a day's post

• News items grouped by category — Polity, Economy, International, Science & Tech, Sports, etc.
• Category chips at the top let you filter the view.
• A second row of chips filters by exam (UPSC, TNPSC, Banking, SSC, GATE, RRB) — only items relevant to your exam show.
• Each item has a summary, a source link, an optional image, and an MCQ underneath to test recall.

Two views: Daily and Range & Test

Inside the app the Current Affairs sheet has two tabs at the top:

• Daily — one day's brief. Use the date picker to hop to an earlier day.
• Range & Test — pick a date range (or tap a whole month), then either Read items across that whole span, or Take test: choose 10, 25, 50, or all questions and the app builds a shuffled practice quiz from that period, scores you, and keeps a list of your recent test results.

Read it in your language

The Daily tab has a 🌐 Language picker — Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Gujarati, Malayalam, Odia, or Punjabi. Translating a day costs a small one-time amount of AI tokens (shown before you confirm); reopening that day later is free. Names, numbers and technical terms stay in English, the way bilingual exam papers are written, and every item keeps its original source link.

Focus Shield is on while you read

On Android, opening the Current Affairs sheet switches on Focus Shield — the same way a study session does. We treat current-affairs reading as study time, not scroll time, and silence the rest of your phone while you're in there.

AI Balance #

How AI usage is metered, the top-up packs, and what you can do without ever paying anything.

Your balance

Every user — guest or signed-in — starts with 50,000 free credits. You can see your current balance and how much you've used in the AI Tokens menu item.

The top-up packs

Trial Pack — ₹9

30,000 credits. A low-friction tester.

Plus Pack — ₹49

250,000 credits. Most popular.

Pro Pack — ₹149

700,000 credits. Regular usage.

Ultra Pack — ₹499

4,000,000 credits. Best value.

Elite Pack — ₹999

10,000,000 credits. Power users.

Packs are priced in your own currency — if you're outside India you'll see the international price and can pay with an overseas card.

How payment works

What uses your balance

• Building a plan with AI
• Chatting with Lumi (text)
• Lumi Call — the voice mentor (unlocked with the Ultra or Elite pack)
• Generating study material — topic breakdowns, MCQs, deep dives and their illustrations
• A mock-test paper, once each (your first is free, and every re-attempt of a paper you own is free)
• Reading the daily current affairs in a language other than English

What's free without spending tokens

• The timer, sessions, plans, and all session management
• Wastage and Insights reports, and sharing stats
• Viewing the leaderboard (your name shows with Pro)
• The Crossing, Learn videos, the Community, and your own notes
• Reopening study material you've already opened once
• Notifications and settings

Lighthouse Pro #

The core app is free. Pro is a paid plan that removes ads and unlocks the social, current-affairs, and power-user features.

What Pro unlocks

Pricing

Annual — ₹799 / year

Works out to about ₹67 / month — the best value (saves ₹389 vs monthly).

Monthly — ₹99 / month

The flexible option, billed month to month.

Prices are shown in your own currency. If you're outside India you'll see the international price and can pay with an overseas card — there's nothing extra to arrange.

Renewing & cancelling

Subscriptions don't auto-renew — you'll get a reminder before yours expires, and you choose whether to renew. To manage or cancel a subscription, email studytimerpro@gmail.com. Payment is handled securely through Razorpay (UPI, cards, netbanking, wallets).

Study Languages #

Study in the language you'll actually write the exam in. Lighthouse Prep generates study material, revision questions, mock tests and AI chat in 11 languages — in the same bilingual style as Indian coaching materials.

Eleven languages

English, Hindi (हिन्दी), Tamil (தமிழ்), Telugu (తెలుగు), Marathi (मराठी), Bengali (বাংলা), Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ), Gujarati (ગુજરાતી), Malayalam (മലയാളം), Odia (ଓଡ଼ିଆ) and Punjabi (ਪੰਜਾਬੀ).

How to choose your language

• When you create an exam, you pick its study language. Each exam has its own — you can prepare for one exam in Tamil and another in English.
• The picker only offers languages the exam is actually conducted in — no point studying in a language the real paper won't be printed in. English is always available.
• Your default language for new exams lives in Settings, and you can change an exam's language there too.

Bilingual — the way real prep material is written

Choosing Hindi doesn't mean everything is blindly translated. Content follows the bilingual exam-prep style used by coaching institutes and bilingual question papers:

In your language

Every explanation, description and sentence — the parts you actually read and learn from.

Kept in English

Technical terms, official syllabus words, formulas, units and abbreviations — with your language's equivalent in brackets on first use.

What appears in your language

Spotted a wrong word? Long-press it

Session and topic names are translated automatically, and a short name can easily pick up the everyday meaning instead of the study one. Press and hold a translated name and a 🔤 Wrong word? sheet opens — tell us, and suggest the right word if you know it.

The fix isn't just for you: everyone studying that exam in your language sees the corrected word. And if we can't find a word we trust, the term stays in English rather than staying wrong.

Current affairs in your language

The daily current-affairs digest can be read in your language too. It costs a small flat token fee for each day you translate — you're charged once per day's brief, so re-opening the same day later is free. English is always free.

Notifications #

What we'll send you, when, and how to control it.

What you'll get

• Day-end study report — once a day after you've studied, summing up your hours and pointing at tomorrow's plan.
• Revision due reminders — when you have items due today and haven't opened the app yet.
• Group activity — new messages, plans shared, members joining (you can fine-tune this per group).
• Inactivity nudges — a gentle "haven't studied in a few days" reminder.
• Messages from the Lighthouse Prep team — occasional announcements. These also land in the in-app bell, whose badge keeps blinking until you open it.
• Lumi check-ins are not pushed — a dot on her button shows when she has something to say.

Permission states

Not asked yet

We'll ask the first time we'd send something.

Granted

You'll get push notifications. You can turn them off in Settings anytime.

Denied

You blocked them. To re-enable, change it in your browser's site settings — we can't ask again.

Not supported

Some older browsers and a few in-app webviews (like Instagram's) don't support push. The toggle simply won't show.

When we'll ask for permission

1. A card first, never a cold promptOnce you've got a plan running, a small card offers to remind you at your study time. Only if you say yes there do we open the browser's own permission prompt.
2. Saying no costs you nothingDismiss the card and it steps back for a few days. That matters: the browser's prompt is one-shot — deny that and no site can ever ask again, so we don't spend it on someone who hasn't asked for it.
3. From Settings, anytimeYou can trigger the permission prompt yourself from Settings → Notifications.

Turning them off

Toggle Notifications off in Settings and we stop sending. To fully revoke at the browser level, use your browser's site-settings panel — once permission is granted, that's the only place to take it back.

Settings #

What every toggle does, and what each section is for.

What's in the Settings panel

Resetting & re-onboarding

There's no single "reset everything" button — it's destructive and easy to misclick. If you'd like a clean start, the cleanest path is to delete your account at /delete-account and sign in again. For just rebuilding your plan, use Plan with AI on Today's Plan as many times as you like.

Troubleshooting #

The handful of issues that come up most often, and exactly how to fix each.

The timer didn't count my session

• The timer needs to be running — tap Start, not just open the session card.
• Time counts on the active session only. If you swapped to another mid-study, the first session's elapsed time was saved before the swap — the new one starts at zero.
• If you reloaded the browser before pausing or letting the page close cleanly, you may lose the last few seconds since the previous save point.

Focus Shield won't activate

• It's Android only. On desktop and iPhone the shield doesn't exist.
• Inside the Android app, check that the walkthrough's permissions are granted — Do Not Disturb, notification access, running in the background, and the accessibility service that blocks apps. Re-run setup in the shield chip's menu walks you through them again.
• If you uninstalled and reinstalled the Android app, your phone's permissions reset. The next time you start a session, the walkthrough will replay — just grant them again.
• If you turned auto-on off in Settings, the shield only runs when you tap the chip yourself.

I'm not getting push notifications

• Check the Notifications section in Settings. It shows your browser's current permission state.
• If it says "denied," you'll need to re-enable in your browser's site settings — we can't ask again from inside the app.
• Push only works on the real site (lighthouseprep.in). Some in-app browsers (like the one inside Instagram or Facebook) silently block push.

"Top up to continue"

• Your AI balance has run out. Everything except AI features still works — timer, sessions, plans, groups, current affairs reading.
• Open the AI Tokens menu item to top up. Credits land instantly.

AI plan creation failed

• Most often a brief network issue. Tap Plan with AI again — your onboarding state is not consumed by a failure.
• If your exam name is broad (like "Banking"), the confirmation popup needs you to pick a specific exam first.
• Check your AI balance — plan creation can fail mid-way if you run out of credits.

Lumi forgot something I told it

• If a memory has gone stale, simply mention it again — Lumi will reinforce it.
• Older facts naturally weigh less in newer conversations. Re-stating them refreshes their importance.
• You can ask Lumi to forget specifics ("forget that I'm preparing for SSC") and it will.

Group invite code doesn't work

• Check you copied the whole code. Codes aren't case-sensitive.
• If the group was deleted, the code stops working.
• You must be signed in with Google and have Lighthouse Pro (or the Pro trial) to join. Guests can't.

"You're offline" banner across the top

• Your connection dropped. The timer, your sessions and your notes carry on working from the copy on your device.
• AI, chat, the leaderboard and the community wait for the connection to come back — the banner clears itself when it does.
• Studied time saves locally and syncs the moment you're back online. Nothing is lost by carrying on studying.

The plan asks for more hours than I can do

• Wait for the catch-up banner on Today's Plan, or shorten the sessions yourself — it rebuilds the routine to the hours you've actually been managing.
• Don't delete sessions to make the plan smaller: deleting purges that session's history. Catch-up pauses them instead, which keeps your hours and streak intact.

Study material looks wrong

• Every card has a report action — pick a reason (wrong information, too easy, confusing, wrong language…) and send it. Reports reach the team directly.
• Names translated into your study language can be reported by pressing and holding the name.

FAQ #

Quick answers to the most common questions about the app.