Litchi for DJI Drones

Review by eFreeware

Litchi for DJI Drones is a paid flight app from VC Technology Ltd, sold in the Photography category for a one-time $26.99. It runs alongside the manufacturer's own app and adds a set of automated flight modes to drones the developer lists as compatible. The main reason to consider it is control: instead of flying every shot by hand, you can plan a route, set camera actions and let the aircraft fly it.

The app has been on Google Play since March 2015 and currently sits at a 4.5 average from 13,957 ratings, with more than 100,000 installs. Those numbers suggest a settled product rather than a new experiment, and the April 2026 update shows it is still being worked on. For a paid tool tied to hardware, that kind of track record matters.

What follows is a look at who the app fits, what its modes do, what the price actually covers and how it compares with the alternatives a drone owner might weigh.

The pilots this app was built for

Litchi makes most sense if you already own one of the DJI models on its compatibility list and you want the aircraft to do more than hover and record. The list covers the Mini 2, Mini SE (version 1 only), Air 2S, Mavic Mini 1, Mavic Air 2, Mavic 2 Zoom and Pro, Mavic Air and Pro, the Phantom 4 and Phantom 3 lines, the Inspire 1 and 2, and the Spark. If your drone is on that list, the app is aimed at you.

The developer is explicit that newer aircraft are not supported, naming the Mini 3, Mini 4, Mini 5, Mavic 3 Enterprise and Matrice 4 among them, and pointing owners of those models toward a separate app called Litchi Pilot. That is worth checking before you spend anything, because the hardware you fly decides whether this purchase is useful at all.

Beyond the hardware question, the app suits people who think about shots in advance. Real estate work, inspection jobs, mapping-style passes over a site and repeated cinematic moves all benefit from a route that can be saved and flown again. A pilot who flies freehand for fun, or who only ever wants a quick aerial snapshot, gets less from what Litchi offers.

The modes also assume some willingness to learn. Waypoint planning, camera actions and custom remote controller keys are powerful, and the developer describes the waypoint engine as intuitive, but there is a vocabulary to pick up before any of it feels quick.

Planning routes with waypoints

Waypoint mode is the center of the app. You build a route from a set of points, and the drone flies it. Plans can be made on PC, Mac or mobile, and they carry over between your devices. That means you can lay out a route on a larger screen at home and have it waiting on the phone or tablet you fly with.

For anyone shooting the same location more than once, this is the feature that earns the price. A saved route turns a shot that depended on steady thumbs into something repeatable, which matters when you are matching footage across sessions or revisiting a site months later.

An April 2026 update lets the Tilt Camera action aim above the horizon on models that use the onboard waypoint engine. In plain terms, camera moves in a planned route can now tilt upward as well as down, which widens what you can frame without flying the shot manually.

Camera modes that fly themselves

Panorama mode handles horizontal, vertical and 360 spherical panoramas, stitching-friendly sets that are tedious to capture by hand. Orbit mode circles a subject with advanced settings and real-time controls, so you can adjust the circle while it runs rather than committing to a path and hoping.

Track mode uses computer vision to keep a chosen subject framed while you fly. Follow mode is different again: the drone trails you using the mobile device's GPS and altitude sensors. If you would rather not fly at all, an autonomous Orbit or Follow can run the shot on its own.

Focus mode splits the work by taking over the gimbal and the drone's yaw axis, leaving you to handle horizontal movement. It is a small feature in theory, but it removes two things to think about at once, which is often where shaky footage comes from.

VR mode turns your phone into a first-person view display, an immersive way to watch an autonomous flight or to fly manually.

Sharing, logging and the extras

Litchi can send the drone's video to Facebook or an RTMP server, and it can also share that stream with another device nearby that runs the Litchi Vue app. With Litchi Magic Leash, a second phone works as a follow target on iOS or Android.

Logs are saved as readable CSV files, and they can go straight to Airdata UAV on their own. The app also offers voice feedback for important warnings, automatic video recording and support for Bluetooth controllers. Custom remote controller key functions let you build a flight plan as you fly it, which is a different way of working from planning on a computer first.

One practical detail to plan around: the first time you start the app you need an internet connection so it can validate with DJI servers. Set that up before you are standing at a site with no signal. Buying the app also comes with a 30% discount coupon toward an Airdata.com subscription, described as exclusive to Litchi pilots.

What the price covers

Litchi costs $26.99 as a one-time purchase. There are no ads in the app and no in-app purchases, so the price you see is the price you pay, and nothing inside is gated behind a second transaction. For a tool that replaces a workflow rather than a single task, that is a straightforward arrangement.

The hardware side is the real cost to weigh. The app only works with the drone models listed, so if you fly something newer, the $26.99 buys nothing useful. The Airdata coupon applies to a subscription from another company rather than to anything inside Litchi.

Set against a paid photo editor or a monthly creative subscription, a single payment for a flight tool is easy to justify if you fly often. If you fly a handful of times a year, the case is weaker, because the value sits in repeated use of saved routes and automated modes.

How it compares with the alternatives

The obvious alternative is the app that came with your drone. It is free and it flies the aircraft, but it is built around manual control and basic automated shots rather than a full waypoint planner with cross-device syncing and CSV logs. Litchi's case rests on planning depth, not on replacing the basics.

A second option is a general-purpose video or photo editor used after the flight. That route leaves the flying to you and fixes problems in post, which works well for simple clips but does nothing for repeatable camera moves or follow shots. The two approaches solve different problems.

For owners of newer DJI aircraft, the relevant comparison is Litchi Pilot, which covers those models. Anyone weighing Litchi should confirm which side of that line their drone falls on first, since it decides whether this app can be used at all.

Finally, there is the option of hiring someone to fly the shots for you. That makes sense for a one-off job, but it does not give you a reusable route library or the ability to re-fly a location on your own schedule.

A worthwhile purchase for the right aircraft

Litchi is a mature, focused tool for a specific generation of DJI drones, and it does the job its developer set out for it: automated flight modes, a planner that works across devices and logs you can keep. At $26.99 with no ads and no in-app purchases, the cost is clear and the app has a long history and a strong rating behind it.

It suits pilots who own a supported model and want routes they can save, repeat and refine, whether that is for client work, site documentation or personal projects. The waypoint engine, panorama capture and the track, follow, focus and orbit modes cover most of what autonomous flying involves.

It is a poor fit if your drone is one of the newer models the app does not support, since it cannot be used with them, or if you rarely fly and are happy with manual control. For everyone else with a compatible aircraft, this is one of the more complete flight tools available, and the price is a single payment rather than an ongoing one.

What's new in version 5.0.2-g

- Added support for positive gimbal pitch angles (>0°) in the Tilt Camera action for supported drone models using the onboard waypoint engine