Thanks for joining the beta! To get started click this link Join the LingQ 5 Beta beta - TestFlight - Apple to download Testflight and the new 5.0 Beta iOS app and log in to your LingQ account.
Please post all feedback here in this forum.
Current Status:
Most of the core functionality is in place. Still to come:
Notifications
Lesson editing
Folders, playing audio from Folders
Onboarding help messages
Known Issues:
Google login crashes app
Course page needs full titles and progress bars
Let us know how you like the app and, of course, if you find any issues or have any questions about how it works. Please try to provide as much information as possible about any issues you find and, ideally, how to recreate those issues. Screenshots are also very helpful. You can post them here using a tool like TechSmith Capture - TechSmith Capture (Formerly Jing) | TechSmith.
Thanks so much for letting me join the testing group guys!
I just did a quick run through the app and it looks A-W-E-S-O-M-E!
I do have some feedback, including bugs and small UX improvement suggestions. I’ll compile some things over the next few days and make a post for you. Let me know if there’s any other way I can help!
Hi there. I look forward to being part of this. The app has a very nice feel so far in my testing. Quick question: Should we post iOS beta feedback here as a comment in this “iOS Beta” forum thread? Or as an actual post in the “LingQ Beta 5.0” forum?
My first feedback regards vocab cards. A few issues here, actually:
I want to set up my prefered style of flashcards, which show everything on the front. To do this, in settings, I select the “Flashcards” activity, and toggle the term, phrase, translation, and status bar to all be shown on the front (and back). However, when I do this in the beta, and go to study, the flashcards don’t show anything on the front other than the term. There doesn’t seem to be a way to get the card display to match my settings.
If I go to the Vocabulary tab, and select “SRS Due” in the top drop-down menu, I see many cards in the list whose status is “learned”. This is the case whether my filter is set to “New - Learned” or “New - Known”. This doesn’t make sense to me, because shouldn’t any learned or known cards not be due for SRS, and thus not be shown in this screen? Furthermore, if I tap “Review” while viewing this list (that contains learned/known cards), I get tested on these learned/known cards. Again, this is unexpected, because I selected “SRS Due” at the top. It’s definitely not what I want when I go to review cards due for SRS. If I make the filter more restrictive (eg, “New - Familiar”), then all the learned/known cards appropriately disappear. But setting that filter shouldn’t be necessary, if I’ve selected “SRS Due” … right? (Or do I misunderstand?)
I’m not a fan of how the back of these cards look. It seems that the back of the card is simply the “edit term” screen. In the old LingQ iOS app, the back of the card actually looked like the back of a flashcard. The format was similar to the front, possibly with extra information showing according to the user’s settings. This made it easy to comprehend quickly: just see the answer that appeared, check if you were right, and go to the next card. If you wanted to edit the card, you’d tap the edit button. With the new model, the back of the card doesn’t resemble the front. The term shrinks and moves to the top; lots of extra text and fields appear (possibly more than the user wishes to see). It takes too much work to find the answer (usually the translation). This confuses my eyes every time and will take lots of time to get used to … especially because it goes very counter to the standard flashcard model used by almost every flashcard app I know (and even typical paper flashcards). Why not show a more typical back of the card – one that looks just like the front, but with the extra info shown? And to edit the card, give us an edit card button?
On the back of the card (ie on the “edit term” screen), it is harder than it used to be to distinguish each card’s rating. I spent a while tapping to mark a card “known” before I realized it was already marked known. The circle surrounding the checkmark was very slightly whiter (I use dark mode) than the circle around the trash can, but it’s very hard to see the difference. If a card is rated 2 thru 4, it is a bit easier to distinguish … but still very subtle.
I hope this is helpful. Please let me know if you have questions or want screenshots or anything.
Highlighted words in dark mode are a bit hard to see.
It appears to be a lot of row spacing or something and I can’t find a way to make it more compact.
Some kind of separator in the library view between categories would increase readability i think (cf. apple music app). See image: Dropbox - File Deleted - Simplify your life
Also in the library. Not sure but it looks like the categories (Currently Studying etc) have too small font size. Correct according to font size guidelines?
Not translated words in Korean ver: Search Library, Currently Studying, Popular Lessons, Folders, Explore All, Change Language, < Library (back to library view), Activity, Stats, Details.
It might be an idea to have a “Begin here/First steps” or something category in the library. Perhaps it could be pinned at the top for new users with the option to remove the pin and it would then go to the bottom or something.
I’m not sure what will happen in 5.0 on desktop but here coins are a bit of an odd metric in your statistics. I assume you have them for gamification? But do users care about them? I think number of words read should have a place in the statistics as it is more related to actual progress and possibly the most important metric for language learners.
Should the graph update with different time interval in statistics?
When selecting a blue word there is a 1 in a status circle. Pressing it pops up the same menu as the one for lingqs although with a blue scale. Pressing the numbers doesn’t seem to work as intended. Would be nice if you could create blank links here. Probably there should be a “+” or something for blue words instead of a number?
Hello! Thank you for inviting me to the Beta testing. Currently, the Farsi version of the app still has an earlier issue I reported from the previous iPhone version which renders it unusable. This does not happen on the desktop app, it is an iOS app issue.
It is kind of as if an English learner were confronted with a page of letters, no capitals, no spaces. Unfortunately, this makes the iPhone app not possible to use for Farsi learners. But it would be great to get this fixed because it would be a wonderful tool! Creating a minimum spacing between words I think would fix it.
It would be more efficient and quicker to read if there was a arrow button to move to the next word instead of having to click on the word itself. I am studying Chinese and I usually use Pleco and copy and paste content on to it. In there, I am able to read similarly to LingQ but they have an arrow to click on to move to the next character so I can read much faster and less stressful. If you have space on the app can you put a left and right arrow similar to how we can read on LingQ on the computer? I use the arrows to read on the desktop and can read much faster compared to the phone app.
Hi everybody! Thanks for letting me take part in this. Over the past 6+ months I’ve been using LingQ 4.0 an average of ±2 hours per day, mostly on my iPad Pro or the desktop (i.e. browser) version.
I’ve spent some time with LingQ 5.0 in the last few days, but to be honest I still find it a bit too frustrating to work with for me to switch over completely. All in all, it feels more like a facelift than a truly new version. There are no real new features yet (I personally would have liked to see the integration with a transcription service, for example) and the reader itself feels more like a step backwards compared to LingQ 4.0. But of course I am aware that so far we are only talking about a beta version, here :).
Here are my biggest pain points so far:
Highlighted words in dark mode are a bit hard to see.
There’s a much wider page margin and row spacing in LingQ 5.0 than there was in LingQ 4.0. As a result, there’s a lot less content that can fit on a single page. For an app that is mainly designed to read text, this is really annoying.
I would really love a way to switch off dark mode, especially inside the reader (without having to switch the entire iPad over to Light mode, of course).
Word pop-ups sometimes don’t display properly and are shown semi-translucent. A good way to reliable reproduce this is to change the font size and then click on a word.
I find it annoying that I now have to click three times in order to ignore a word (once on the actual word itself to open the pop-up, once on the „1“ to open the level-chooser and once to click on the trash can). This is something that I do all the time, so making that option easier to access would be a real boon.
Learned words (4) are no longer shown as underlined. In LingQ this was only a problem for phrases, but never for single words. So right now there seems to be no way to visually distinguish learned and known words/phrases, at all (without clicking on them, of course).
The “manage” link at the end of the dictionary list inside the word pop-up doesn’t work
The “manage” link at the end of the dictionary list at the bottom of the dictionary pop-up itself seems to work, but the UI to manage dictionaries it totally buggy: removing the first dictionary in a list causes the pop-up to close. dragging the first dictionary in the list into a different position causes the pop-up to close. Clicking on a row representing a new dictionary isn’t enough to add that dictionary to the list. Instead, I have to click more-or-less precisely on the name of the dictionary itself.
The “Paste” inside the dictionary pop-up turns into a “Save” button once the clicked. This is very annoying to me, since I’m used to copy-pasting multiple alternative translations (separated by comma) into the text field, e.g. when using DeepL.
Clicking on an alternative translation inside the dictionary pop-up when using DeepL as dictionary sometimes causes the entire dictionary pop-up to scroll down to the bottom of the DeepL page.
That’s it, for now. I’ll try to spend more time with the app over the coming days and weeks, so hopefully I can provide you with more qualified feedback later on next week. Until then: Hang in there and thanks for all the good work! LingQ has helped make my language learning adventure an entirely fun and enjoyable experience! Thanks you for that!!!
PS: I’m not really convinced that public forum posts like this are an efficient way to elicit and manage feedback, especially bug reports. Ever considered setting up a public issue tracker, e.g. Atlassian Jira?
Hello, The beta crashed when I try to log in with my google account. I am using an ipad mini. I sent over the data on the app I also wanted to let you know here as well. The IOS version I have is IPadOS 14.0.1
Thanks everyone for all the feedback! Sorry for the delayed response. We are reading everything that comes in, not to worry!
A few updates and comments in response to your feedback so far:
First of all, make sure to update to the new version released yesterday which has resolved a few issues
Also, new functionality was added for phrase selection. In addition to being able to swipe to select phrases, you can now tap adjoining words to create or extend phrases. Tap a second time to isolate the adjoining word.
Google account bug has been recorded @ckesselh - You’re right, there isn’t much new here. More of a facelift to update the reader and make a quieter more pleasing reading interface. Night mode has been added. Phrase selection has changed. Layout on popups has been optimized to hopefully make it clearer for new users. We do have new functionality coming to improve lesson editing particularly as it relates to matching text with audio and easily fixing lesson text issues within the user flow. Integration with a transcription service would be great and is something we will look into in the future. We first had to rework our apps to make future functionality improvements easier to deliver on.
Yes, we can work on the colouring in dark mode. An option for a more condensed page view is something we can consider here. A dark mode switch is coming. We’re trying to figure out the translucent popups, I passed along your way to recreate it. I agree it would be nice to ignore words more easily. We wanted to keep the popup quieter for new users but will try and figure out a way to ignore with fewer taps. We should get that underline for status 4 words back. I’ve reported the dictionary issues, thanks. The Paste then Save button can be frustrating in the case you describe but is an advantage when you only paste one meaning. We will think about what to do here. We can look into the Deepl issue when we have time but there is not usually much we can do about things that happen on other sites pages.
We do use a task tracking tool for tracking bugs but it doesn’t have a public interface. Maybe we should switch to Jira at some point. But, we have enough happening right now already! @Calvin - In terms of tapping the arrow, isn’t just as easy to tap the word you want to move to? I don’t really see us adding that capability since it’s one more control to add clutter and have to explain. @andreatic - The Farsi is an issue that we are aware and that Steve also complains about! Something we hope to fix eventually but it’s not clear what is happening there and, unfortunately, Farsi specific issues have to wait until we have more time.
We haven’t focused on localization yet but thanks for this!
We do plan on doing something like this. Pinning it and having an ability to pin shelves is something for us to look into
We are planning to continue using coins as our main metric. You will earn coins from doing all different activities on LingQ. This will include having streak targets and activity score measured in coins.
The graph shows the week only. We could look to allow the switch to change the graph too but it isn’t meant to do that now.
This allows you to choose a status other than 1 before selecting a meaning. One of the improvements we have added in this version is that you can now add a meaning without checking a dictionary. Just swipe up to show the expanded popup and tap and input your meaning in the meaning field. There does seem to be a glitch when selecting a blue status option where the first option gets selected if you input your own meaning. I have added that to our list.
Please post your feedback here in this forum. Thanks!
We need to spend more time on the review activities for sure. Thanks for pointing out these issues. I have added them to our list. With regard to the look and feel we are experimenting with having the full word info on the back. Please keep using it for a while and see if it grows on you at all. It has some advantages but does definitely create more clutter during review. We will look at the colours and how status is displayed, but I do agree it isn’t as clear as it could be.
Hey,
Thanks for the reply. It sounds just as easy conceptually but when you have to read an entire book it really is more difficult and pushes me to read on the computer on the website instead so I can read faster buy pressing the arrows on the keyboard.
Currently, we have to click on each word we don’t know, and for somebody with not much LingQs or known words yet that could be a lot of words to click on and then your finger gets in the way of reading and you have to move it up and down the screen just to make a LingQ and move on to the next word. It would be so much better to have a arrow on the bottom of the screen so move to the next word effortlessly just like how we can on the computer with the keyboard. Then we can just keep pressing the arrow to move to the next word instead of moving our finger all over the place and actually focus on the reading.
Can anybody else on this forum agree to what I’m saying? Isn’t is much easier to read on the computer? Why can’t it be so on the phone? If it were, I’ll probably be able to read anywhere with my phone instead of on my computer most of the time. I can do it on the phone, but right now, I’d prefer to do it on the computer. I hope you can consider what I am saying or try it for yourself or ask someone who read a lot on LingQ.
I have read many books on LingQ and I know exactly what you mean about reading on the web and using the arrow keys there being more efficient. In terms of mobile, things are slightly different and I don’t see a significant improvement through your suggestion. Not to mention that putting arrow keys there would make most users think these were paging controls. At any rate, it’s an interesting suggestion. Keep them coming!
One small bit of feedback about what might be called the “progress bar” at the top of a lesson. In the 4.0 app, and on the website currently, this is a gray bar that fills in with green as you progress through the lesson. There are small vertical lines subdividing the bar, which immediately show how far along in the lesson you are. The bars adjust depending on whether you are in page or sentence mode, and the white dot indicating where you are sits in the middle of a subdivision. Everyone knows what this looks like, but here is an example anyway:
Say I am coming back to this lesson after a break. I can immediately see that I’ve read three pages and have two more to go.
By contrast, in the 5.0 app, this bar has been replaced by a line, that again turns green as you progress through a lesson. Here’s an example from the same lesson.
All I can tell from this bar is that I’m about two-thirds through the lesson. But since it doesn’t show me how many pages/sentences I’ve already read, I have no idea if I’m on page 3 of 3, or 5 of 8, or 12 of 19, or whatever.
I realize that if I swipe left/right, a counter appears above the bar, telling me that (in this case) I was on page 5 of 8. I guess this is the compromise you made, so that you could make this interface element more minimal.
I get it if you want to keep things the way they are now in 5.0 … but I really like the 4.0 progress bar. It is elegant and conveys information very quickly. The subdivisions are key to this. I think they could be brought back and still fit into the overall look. But it’s ultimately your call, of course!
Calvin, about this proposed arrow: where would it go? There are already three buttons at the bottom of the screen; would it you add it to those? That might be too cramped on an iPhone. Maybe the arrow would be part of the dictionary pop-up? (Or, crazy idea, maybe we could swipe the dictionary pop-up to move from word to word??) Would you want arrows pointing in both directions, or just one?
I agree that something like what you suggest could be helpful, but I agree with Mark that it could also create clutter and confusion and might not be worth it. I can’t think of a way to elegantly introduce arrows to the interface. Maybe you had some specific ideas?
Have you considered differentiating between new (i.e. blue) and unknown (i.e. yellow) words when displaying the condensed version of the word pop-up?
The most typical actions I normally want to perform on a new word are different from those I would normally perform on an unknown word, so why couldn’t the pop-up reflect this too?
For truly new (i.e. blue) words, I would typically like to…
Mark word as “Known”
Ignore word
Select from a predefined list of meanings in my main language
Create a new translation using my preferred dictionary, especially if no pre-defined meaning exists at the time
Play TTS
For existing unknown (i.e. yellow) words, I would typically like to…
With this in mind, I find it confusing that the pop-up displays a familiarity level of 1 for completely new words. Also, why can I add a new tag from the condensed representation? Is this such a common use case?
One more thing: It’s not clear to me atm how I can switch between different languages for the “Popular meanings” I want to have displayed. With LingQ 4.0, I tend to prefer English meanings by default but I do also browse popular meanings in my native language (German) or the target language (e.g. French or Russian) from time to time. How do I replicate this use case with LingQ 5.0? The little flag symbols next to each meaning seem to be gone, as well. As is the number next to each meaning, which gave an idea of how popular that particular meaning actually is.
