Four Pillars Studio

Four Pillars Studio casts and reads a BaZi chart — the four pillars of the traditional Chinese sexagenary calendar. Enter a birth moment and get the pillars, hidden stems, Ten Gods, five-element balance, classical markers, and the luck cycles. Every judgement can be opened to show the rule it came from, rather than handing you a verdict and stopping there.

—— No network

This app does not request the internet permission. Not "we promise not to upload" — it cannot: android.permission.INTERNET is not in the package, and you can check that yourself in Settings › Apps › Four Pillars Studio › Permissions. Birth data, names and charts stay on the device. No account, no cloud sync, no ads, no tracking SDKs.

—— The chart

· Four pillars: stems and branches for year, month, day and hour, with hidden stems, Ten Gods, the nayin sound-element and the twelve life stages
· Five elements: day-master strength and the favourable elements, weighed by force rather than counted
· Classical markers: the Nobleman, Peach Blossom, Travelling Horse, Canopy and the rest — each with the reason it applies
· Relations: the six harmonies, three-unions, clashes, punishments and harms, marked on the two characters they occur between
· Luck cycles: the start age, the ten-year pillars, the annual pillar, and how each meets the natal chart
· Time correction: true solar time from the birth longitude and the equation of time, plus China's 1986–1991 summer time. Each step is listed, and the whole correction can be switched off
· Birthplace: 426 cities, searchable in Chinese, English or pinyin

—— Perpetual almanac

Gregorian against lunar, the twenty-four solar terms, the day's pillars, a rating and its suitable/avoid notes. Turn to any date and see what that day means for this particular chart.

—— Toolbox

· Instant chart: this moment's pillars and celestial wheel
· Date converter: solar, lunar and ganzhi, each from the others
· Allies and friction: which signs lift this chart and which grind against it
· Classical rules: the traditional verses, matched line by line against the chart
· Compass: the day's auspicious bearings on a turning card, driven by the device magnetometer (magnetic north — no location permission is asked for)
· Naming: characters drawn from the elements the chart is short of
· Compare charts: every profile side by side
· Day picker and the five-movements/six-qi year

—— Long readings

A full write-up of the luck cycles and the current year, and a two-chart comparison — the scattered judgements joined into something you can read end to end.

—— Language and display

English, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. The Traditional text is not a raw machine transliteration: the characters where one Simplified form maps to several Traditional ones are corrected individually, and place names are protected from the prose rules. Dark theme, dynamic type, reduce-motion, reduce-transparency and a colour-vision-assist palette are all supported. Navigation moves to a side rail as the window widens, so foldables and tablets are not stuck with a phone layout.

—— Pricing

Charting, the almanac, the daily reading and the core tools are free forever, with no limits and no ads. The advanced tools and long readings are Pro. In-app purchase is not open in this version.

—— Note

The Four Pillars is a calendrical and symbolic system a thousand years old. This app presents its rules and its traditional texts faithfully, for study and reference. It makes no predictions and offers no guarantees.