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 Beta 5.0 forum. We will periodically add new threads as we push new versions.
Current Status:
Most of the core functionality is in place.
Still to come:
Onboarding messages
Known Issues:
links to log in via google and apple don’t seem to be working, and while clicking the link to log in via facebook actually gets a response, it never actually loads
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.
The links to log in via google and apple don’t seem to be working, and while clicking the link to log in via facebook actually gets a response, it never actually loads
It would be very nice to have a button that jumps to current lesson from the top of the course overview page. It can be a lot of scrolling to get to your lesson.
I like the sleeker look. Still, the option to slow down speech should be readily available without having to search for it, just like in the older version.
installed β version and logged in without issue. Learning Japanese. Opening an completed ministory 55, I noticed that the audio for the lesson is not tracking in the dedicated audio reader (where the audio is read and the current sentence is highlighted). This problem also manifests itself in sentence view because the audio for the chosen sentence does not match. Seems like an audio parsing problem - then found that the issue can be reproduced in the current LingQ app in sentence mode. It is just that the new features of this version exposed it more quickly. I’ve captured a video of the problem if needed.
I downloaded the beta version with no issues. I read Russian. I mostly read imported works that are full books.
Love:
-DARK MODE!
-More minimalistic!
-Various line spacing
-Underlining with yellow and blue instead of highlighting
Needs work:
I only use sentence mode. I HATE having the speaker button in the middle and so obnoxiously large, my thumb can’t reach and so I can’t use the app one handed. Can we put it back on the left? I loved it on the left and way smaller icon.
Major issue: The status bar on the old version showed a count down for blue words. That has disappeared. You have to go to “show info about the lesson.” That doesn’t update automatically. I have to “refresh” everything each time. Even still, I completed a lesson yesterday and it still says I have 30 blue words. Unreliable and inconvenient. I relied on that count down for pacing.
When you click on a word the definition appears in the middle of the screen, blocking other words. I need to still see that word in context. I wish you could pull the definition down to the bottom of the screen (manually or automatically) to not have it block other words.
Great work!! I am very pleased. If you can’t make any of these changes, at least consider shrinking down the speaker button on sentence mood, it is just too large.
Maybe it’s me that I’m stupid and can’t find it, but where’s the count on the amount of Lingqs I’ve saved on the day on the new beta version? Besides that, everything is great, love how things are displayed on the new beta version, having a place where it says news, podcasts and all the types of lessons makes me a lot more willingly to actually listen to them for some reason. Great job.
We probably won’t add that but if you sort the course list by Recently Opened, you will find your last opened lesson at the top of the list. The sort dropdown is on the right at the top of the lesson list.
It seems that the app gets stuck a lot when opening the full expanded list of community definitions. I’m not sure of how to replicate this, but it seems to happen fairly often.
I think it would be nicer to have default pop up with 3-5 community definitions or simply have this be a toggable setting. 2 definitions is just so few and I don’t really see the downside of popping up a couple more unless it hurts performance that much. Covering up more of the screen seems irrelevant as you are going to be reading the definitions anyways.
It would be really nice to have an option to convert an existing lingq to fully-known status in 1 tap. Right now it’s 2 taps which is a little obnoxious.
We have deliberately reduced the number of visible definitions to reduce clutter for new users. We may enable customization here in future but I find that swiping up to see all is relatively painless once you get used to it. Especially since often the first 3 or even 5 may not be enough. One of the criticisms of our existing app is that it is too cluttered so we have been conscious of trying to reduce clutter in our new version while still trying to keep things handy. I think if you just use it this way for a while, you will get quite comfortable doing it this way. Swiping up to see all seems much more comfortable and faster than in our v4 app when you wanted to see all meanings.
As for the status changes, we did experiment with swiping to known and ignore but found it too easy to do this accidentally. For now, tapping on the status to view the status popup and then tapping again to select your status is actually not too bad. I have been doing it for months and find it just fine. I initially felt that same way as you.
We may eventually come up with a fast way to make words known or ignore them. Still thinking on that.
Thanks for the feedback! The speaker location seems about similarly accessible. Being in the middle is equally fair to both right and left handed people. We can take a look at the size of the button but that is more a design consideration and down to personal preference.
Good point about the blue word countdown. We’ll try and see how we can get that to show more easily and, of course, be kept up to date properly.
Location of the popup is also something we can look at enabling customization for. We will think about how we could possibly enable something like this.
Ok I see ya the community definition thing isn’t a big deal at all. I really don’t understand why not have the known button tho. It could just be a button right next to the current status on the lingq. Maybe I’ll just get used to it like you.
Any thoughts on adding a plus counter for the number of words you add after you page?
when I go to “challenges” i find the active. It is a little subtle to see the “joined” as the only indicator of my own active challenges. In addition, if i go to my active challenge, it has my stats correct, but the leaderboard displayed is from somewhere else. For example, there are 89 in the challenge, I am 71 (uggh), but 100 participants are listed…and I am not there at all.
let Me list some features that I am really enjoying. Number #1 the style of transitions , pull this up , tap this , cool.
number #2 the root letters and definition
number #3 the new narrator and her accuracy in pronounciation
Actually the size of the speaker button isn’t cosmetic. The larger the button the less of the sentence is visible. You can’t see the whole sentence because the button takes up a 1/3 of the screen. It needs to be shrunken so you can see more of the text.
The position of the button also matters. I am disabled in my hands. If you had the option of which side to put it on you could accommodate everyone: lefties, righties, and disabled. It takes away from my flow to struggle to press it each time. I am reaching and missing it several times, which only takes away from my flow and adds irritation.
I have read over a million words on LingQ. I use it for hours at a time. There are some things that are vital to flow: the speaker button and visible blue word count.
So overall I really like it, but here’s some feedback.
the dark mode is too dark.
I have an astigmatism, and the pure black background gives white text on pitch black a halo effect. If there was an option to make the background less light (think the discord dark theme) that would greatly increase readability.
Also, not dyslexic, but for people with dyslexia, I believe studies have shown that green backgrounds (or different color backgrounds in general with black text) greatly increase readability (i.e. kindle e-reader gives green as a background option)
Highlighting phrases and copy and paste not intuitive
One of the reasons I use lingq in the first place, is the seemless highlighting and copy and pasting on mobile. It’s because of that feature that I use lingq so much. I’m a huge fan of “sentence mining” WHILE reading, and because of that I copy and paste directly into anki on my ipad. I’m not sure if this is a bug or intended functionality. I really hope it’s intended functionality.
Downloading lessons to read offline didn’t work
I had downloaded an entire books worth of lessons for reading offline, and when I went to use it lingq wouldn’t even start up when I was offline, and none of my lessons that I had downloaded showed up. I want to be able to use lingq like I use my kindle.
Static sidebar
in the options I selected to have the sidebar activated on the right hand side. I like how you can choose where you want it, but I don’t like how when you collapse it it’s just gone and you need to reactivate it (unless i’m missing something). Perhaps have like a little button on the side that you can click to make it slide in and out of focus (like how discord or slack on mobile works).
Line spacing issues
Is there a way to make the line spacing more like the line spacing on the original lingq? I’d like a bit more text per page.
Logo
This is really just nitpicking and has NOTHING to do with features - but I think the logo would look cleaner if the speech bubble wasn’t two places in the same logo. Just have the speech bubble on top, and then lingq on the bottom. Otherwise it looks kinda redundant.
