Getting Started with SmartWit

Most study tools hand you a wall of text and hope you read it. SmartWit does the thing a good tutor actually does: it talks to you, works the problem out on a whiteboard while it explains, watches what you write, and stops to check whether you are following.

You speak. It answers out loud — usually within about a second — and draws as it talks. Diagrams, graphs, properly typeset equations. When you are stuck, you can point a camera at your homework and just say "I don't get step three."

This post walks you through your first fifteen minutes: signing up, choosing what to study, running a lesson, and knowing what to do afterwards.

Sign up

About a minute. Head to the signup page and pick whichever is least annoying:

• Phone number — we text you a six-digit code, you type it in, done. No password to forget.
• Email — either a password, or the same one-time code by email.
• Google — one tap.

Then a short onboarding screen: your name, and optionally a course to start with. That is the whole setup. No credit card, no placement test, no forty-question "learning style" quiz.

The course list you see is matched to your region, so an Indian student and a US student see catalogues that make sense for them. If someone shared a course link with you, that course is pre-selected and you are enrolled the moment you finish onboarding — even if it is from a different region's catalogue.

Don't stress the course pick. You can browse the full catalogue later from Courses, and enroll in as many as you like.

Your first lesson

Tap into a course and start a lesson. Two things happen before your tutor speaks.

The mic check

You'll get a "Check your microphone" screen. Pick your input device, say something, and watch the level meter move. Thirty seconds here saves you the classic five minutes of talking to a tutor that can't hear you.

Headphones are worth it. Not required, but they keep the tutor's voice out of your mic, which makes the back-and-forth noticeably smoother.

The whiteboard

Then the board opens and your tutor starts teaching.

Watch what happens as it talks: shapes, labels, and equations appear in time with the words, the way a teacher writes while explaining rather than dumping a finished slide on you. The maths is real LaTeX, not an ASCII approximation — fractions look like fractions, integrals look like integrals.

The board is yours too. Draw on it. Sketch your attempt, write your working, scribble the step you are unsure about. Your tutor sees what you draw and responds to it. That is the part that makes it feel less like a chatbot and more like sitting next to someone: you can show your work instead of describing it.

Talking to it

On a laptop, just talk. On a phone, use the mic button — hold to talk, or switch to tap-to-toggle in settings if you prefer.

And you can interrupt. If the tutor is explaining something you already know, cut in. It stops and follows you, the way a person would. You don't have to sit politely through an explanation you don't need.

The five ways to use it

The home screen gives you a Today recommendation — resume where you left off, or the next thing worth doing. If you would rather choose for yourself, there are five modes:

The five modes

Mode	Use it when
Learn	You're working through a topic properly, start to finish. Launch it from your course map or the Today card.
Practice	You want quick-fire questions aimed at your weak spots — or one specific topic you want drilled.
Review	A test is coming and you want to lock in what you've already covered, across a module or the whole course.
Get Help	You're stuck on a specific problem right now. Snap a photo of it, draw it, or type it out.
Explore	You're curious about something and just want to talk it through. No curriculum, no scoring.

Learn, Practice, and Review track mastery and move your progress. Get Help and Explore are deliberately progress-light — poke at whatever you want without it counting against you.

The Get Help trick worth knowing

This is the one people underuse. Homework problem you can't crack? Start a Get Help session and choose how to hand it over:

• 📷 Snap it — point your camera at the textbook or worksheet
• ✏️ Draw it — sketch it on the whiteboard
• ⌨️ Type it — paste or write it out

Then talk about it. Not "give me the answer" — say which step lost you, and get walked through that step. It is fastest at 11pm the night before it is due, which, let's be honest, is when you'll use it.

Take the question that has been sitting unfinished on your desk and hand it over the way you'd hand it to a person.

Try it yourself.

What happens after a lesson

Sessions don't evaporate when you close the tab. Open Library and every past session is there with:

• Notes — a written summary of what you covered
• Clips — the moments worth rewatching
• Replay — the full session played back, voice and whiteboard together, exactly as it happened

Replay is genuinely useful the week before an exam. You get the explanation that actually landed the first time, with the same drawings, instead of trying to reconstruct it from memory.

Meanwhile, progress accumulates quietly in the background. Mastery is tracked per concept, not per chapter — so SmartWit knows the difference between "understands the formula" and "understands why the formula works," and stops re-teaching what you have already got. Finish topics and level up, and you'll unlock chests: new whiteboard themes, stickers, small things. Not the point, but pleasant.

Five tips for a good first session

1. Say what you don't understand, out loud, in your own words. "I don't get why these two things are equal" is a far better prompt than "explain put-call parity." The messier and more specific, the better the answer.
2. Interrupt. Genuinely. It is built for that and the session goes twice as fast.
3. Draw your attempt before you ask. Even a wrong attempt. Your tutor can see it and correct the actual mistake rather than guessing at it. This is the same reason showing your working beats showing your answer.
4. Answer the questions it asks you. It will check your understanding rather than lecture at you. Guessing out loud and being wrong is how the adaptation works — it is the point, not a penalty.
5. Keep the first session short. Fifteen focused minutes on one concept beats an hour of drifting.

Frequently asked

Do I need to install anything?

No. It runs in your browser, on a laptop or a phone.

What if I can't speak out loud?

Choose "I'll type instead" at the mic check. Full lesson, typed — same tutor, same whiteboard.

Can I use it without a microphone at all?

Yes — same text-only path.

Do I have to follow a course?

No. Explore and Get Help work without one. But if you're studying for something specific, enroll in the course — that's what turns on mastery tracking and the Today recommendations.

What if the tutor gets something wrong?

Push back. Say "that's not right" or "wait, go back" and it will re-explain rather than dig in. If something is properly broken, tell us — beta feedback shapes what we fix next.

Start with one concept

Don't plan a study system. Pick the one thing that has been bugging you this week — the concept you have reread three times and still can't hold onto — and talk it through for fifteen minutes.

That is the fastest way to find out whether this works for you.