I’ve been using LingQ for about 18 months, and yes it is a very helpful tool, but it seems to me that over the past year a whole host of serious bugs have been appearing, then disappearing, usually in functionality that used to work. Currently during a one hour study period I can expect the iOS app to crash many times, and I expect it to hang for at least a minute, I get bored of waiting so I kill it. Accessing word definitions is getting hard, sometimes after I click on a word it takes ten or twenty seconds for a popup dialog with a basic definition to appear, and when I want to see more definitions it can take many seconds and countless clicks before multiple definitions appear. In the past we’ve had the app crashing as soon as you open it (workaround fix for 20 minutes with a uninstall and reinstall), imports not working at all, import titles not correct and so on. And before someone says, I can’t use the web app, as that doesn’t have the required functionality due to what I consider to be serious design flaws.
Is this something recent? Was it like this two or more years ago?
I have been using Lingq since 2019 and as far as I know, it has always been buggy. Some bugs are small, but others make the site or app unusable at times. It probably could do with being rewritten from scratch, but I suspect this would be too costly and difficult to implement. V5 was supposed to alleviate the problems, but it ended up being less reliable than v4. Performance issues have been plaguing the site for more than a decade.
With French I listen to quite long videos from YouTube using the iOS app. I listen to the audio while reading the transcript. At some point I will notice a new word or a new term, or I don’t understand a phrase. At that point I switch to line mode, and look up the word(s) or phrase. I often copy the fragment and put it in Anki so it gets recalled later on, otherwise I will usually forget it. The problem with the web interface is that when I switch to line mode, it takes me to the line I last accessed. Thus the first time I do this I will see the first line, even though I might have been listening for ten minutes. Trying to find the current line is nigh on impossible. Thus the web interface is, for my usage, no better than using YouTube directly. In fact it’s worse because the video is much smaller.
I reported this as a bug, but LingQ informed that it is by design. And yet that is not how the iOS app works, so it’s all a bit odd.
I can’t remember that I have experienced crashes when using the mobile version (android). However, I rarely do and mainly stick to the pc/browser version, so maybe time plays a role, besides the OS. The long waiting times is something I can second. I would assume it has to do with the ai functions. I haven’t had any issues with imports, but I rarely use the LingQ browser plugin, mainly for news articles, and import by using pretranscibed content most of the time.
I’ve noticed that recently some ai functions start without asking me first. For example, I’ve imported a text with timestamps and added the audio file, and later on I have added a few additional “headlines” in the text for structurization purposes. Without asking me the app automatically started to create the timestamps, which in this case was complete nonsense, as they already existed, the newly added lines weren’t represented in the audio file and I couldn’t access the lesson for learning
Are sentence translations precreated? I didn’t notice any delay recently.
Automatically starting tons of ai functions while those are also needed for the definition creation (at least on my end ai suggestion won’t turn off) may cause the laggy behaviour.
The good thing is that all of this made me learn a new word: flaky.
I don’t see most of the issues that people find. I don’t see any of the issues you mention when I use the ios app (that you’ve reported in the past…I’ve not used the ios app in the past week or so so I’m not sure about some that you’ve mentioned above).
I do see the issues that tend to affect everyone…like some of the recent import problems in the past few weeks.
So, yes, for some it appears there are a lot of problems. In a general sense, I’d say yes there are bugs that creep up, but usually don’t affect me much, or I have a way around it. Or I simply do something else with the language for a bit, either in LingQ if I can simply read without issue, or something outside of Lingq.
I started in 2017 and I think there’s just as many reports of issues as in the past. For the most part it doesn’t bother me, but can certainly understand the frustration of others, especially those he seem to get affected more than I do.
Part of it is trying to incorporate all the new technology…and I’ll embrace a little pain if they’re trying to incorporate something cool. On the whole the app is so much better than it was back when I first started using it even with a few warts here and there.
I really have no idea about the issues you’re seeing. I’ll try the ios app this week and see if I’m experiencing these. I mostly use the android version on my phone as I have that always with me.
It might be because I watch long videos including films. I also switch between video and text mode a lot. I use a 4th generation 256 GB 12.9” iPad, latest iOS.
This is generally my experience, too. I mostly use lingQ for reading while listening, and sometimes for one or the other. I generally have no issue importing epubs, importing audio for those epubs (when audio exists) or generating text from the audio with LingQs current transcription. I also use it for my vocab/flash card review, and my master stat recording system. For all those functions it works fine for me and crashes or other issues are extremely rare.
I think the main thing that has stopped being reliable since I started using lingQ is the youtube import function. Youtube has no interest in helping us view their content without viewing ads, and they won’t directly allow the the import of just the audio and subs. You can rip the audio separately, and use the LingQ transcription. That isn’t as easy as the direct import, but it works.
I say none of this to negate the experience or frustration of others. I know people use the app in different ways, and have different experiences. I know there are issues, and I have plenty of things I would change on lingQ if I could, but for how I use it, I find LingQ to be quite stable and reliable.
Yeah, this one was unfortunate, and has me using that aspect less, right after I started using it all the time, which is a shame. However, I can’t blame this on LingQ. It is what it is. As you state, I can at least work around it.
for me personally its been fine but its just the last year or so things just seem to be breaking a bit more. I love the new features on paper but they always seem to be buggy and only work half of the time. Im still waiting for some issues to be fixed.
I agree with everything you say. It’s getting worse! The iOS app needs a complete rewrite. The browser version is better, but the way the sentence translation operates is very annoying. You also can’t select more than one word at a time for a Lingq.
I may have sorted out a workaround for the annoying ‘hangs’. I’ve often wondered if there’s a problem with audio cache, even though I try to use audio as little as possible. The cache seems to build up, even to several gigabytes. I’ve taken to clearing the audio cache every few minutes. So far it’s working. In an iOS lesson go to the dots at top right, select Settings, then App, then Clear audio cache.
Thank you, mine was 1 GB ! I will follow your advice in future.
I think LingQ add features and only carry out simple tests with short lessons. That would explain why users such as myself who watch long videos, one hour or more, regularly run into serious issues. That said, the pop up dictionary is almost unusable since they added the AI translation. Of course that could also be connected to the audio cache.
I do think this is true in general of many examples of popular software, other than perhaps the very largest apps like those from Microsoft, Adobe etc.
It is commonplace for apps to have a high profile and many users in their own specific subject area, yet the economics of the business do not allow a proportionately large development and support effort. I’m willing to bet that the development/support team at LingQ are surprisingly few in number and that they are all hard working and thoroughly committed to making their product the best they can. Yet there is a gulf between the constant demands to extend and improve the products and what is humanly possible within a limited resource.
I’m really not sure what the answer is, other than either to secure a major cash injection into the business to allow more development staff to be recruited (but which would bring its own problems of how best to manage the substantially increased resource) or to block eg any new languages or major new features at least for a year or two, while the existing product is reviewed in detail and made as bulletproof as possible.
In my experience other applications are nowhere near as flaky.
I’m sure they have a skilled and hard working team.
My experience of working in software is that bugs are inevitable, but it is possible to work in such a way as to significantly reduce their number and minimise their impact and severity. A large team does not necessarily mean less bugs.
Boeing spends at least ten times as much as SpaceX on orbital launcher development, we know which one produces the better product. Money is not necessarily the answer.
I think the larger ones also have many issues, but they are able with their resources to mitigate a lot. However, even though they may be more bug free, they also often aren’t adding new features…or they may even take some away.
A couple of ones come to mind for me. We use Microsoft in our office and Microsoft is trying to push people to the new outlook. It looks great. You can’t import your old PST file. PST file is where you may have added folders for offline saving. I’ve got years of emails and folders. A lot of the information is still important to me. There is no way to import this into the new and a lot of people are ticked off about it online. Their support people in the forums and from posts I’ve seen where people have called or tried to contact more directly have no clue. They offer suggestions that won’t work, because there is no way to import this data. You could email yourself one by one from the old one, to some other email service I suppose but that would take years. I have to use some sort of PST viewer to look at any of these emails. Will they fix it? I think some of the posts have been out their for years.
Another issue with the new Outlook is the sort function. It used to be you could click on an email from say a few weeks ago. You scroll down and select it. Now you want to see all the emails on that thread. You click the sort button on “subject”. In the old outlook it would still have you on the email you selected and the emails would be sorted around it appropriately. In the new one it sorts it, but puts your focus at the top of the sorted list. So you are nowhere near your email you selected. I’m not even sure the email you had selected is selected. All well and good if you have 30 emails, but if you have thousands, it’s useless. I believe most people would consider this unacceptable.
Youtube tv…It’s a great service. I love it in general compared to my old cable, but it has some issues. First of all, if you want to “record a series”. You have no options to only record new episodes. So you end up with EVERYTHING recorded. Old, new, etc. They do organize it pretty well, but can be a little wonky. Another thing about youtube tv is you can’t extend the time before or after. For whatever reason, our local affiliate starts Wheel of Fortune before 6:30. It always has. So we record on youtube tv, it’s cut off. You can message support and have them adjust the recording to grab the missing part. And they do do this within a couple of hours or so, but it would be so much easier if it could be programmed to just record earlier.
Anyway, my point is that a lot of software has issues…even the big ones. Their forums are filled with people that have issues in the software. Not everyone has the same issues. Some may not see the issues. Sometimes the issue may be fixed before some people see it. In general, at least I feel like LingQ is pretty responsive comparatively. I understand the frustrations for those that see issues more frequently, or for a longer time. I think LingQ could do better to address those situations since it often seems like these are long lasting sometimes and not addressed…maybe because of the smaller numbers having the issue. So hopefully those are better handled.
I just saw my year-end stat’s and, according to Lingq, I’m in the top 1% of Lingq users, by a few key metrics.
If that’s true, it means the overwhelming bulk of people paying for Lingq aren’t using it much.
So it makes sense to keep adding more and bells and whistles to attract new customers who aren’t going to use the software anyway, rather than fix core issues to satisfy the tiny percentage of existing customers who are actually using LIngq.
