April Updates: Review mini-games and next plans

Etiene Dalcol, April 20, 2023

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This newsletter’s topics:

🆕 Version 1.3 is out!

Click here to download / upgrade. What’s new:

1.3.0

🏋️‍♀️ REVIEW

This is a feature I’ve been meaning to add for a long time! A while ago, I wrote a blog post about it to get the idea out and start collecting feedback. While the idea matured, I focused on some other parts of the app, and I’m really happy I now got back to this and it’s finally out.

Reviewing costs 20⚡️ energy points for free users or ✨nothing✨ for Polygloss Unlimited subscribers. You can select which content you want to review. And once you start, you will be given a sequence of different mini-games to help you review what you’ve practiced so far in Polygloss.

@polyglossapp Polygloss now has review mini-games!

You can select different types of content to review:

And there are different kinds of mini-games:

More 1.3.0 updates:
✨ Added bookmark and award option on match completion screen.
📈 Increased speed of image loading and pop up transition.
🐞 Fixed punctuation in right-to-left languages on bookmarks, history, and corrections.
♿️ Fixed font size variability in multiple screen.
🖼 Allowed announcements with youtube videos.
🐞 Fixed bug with announcements version.
🐞 Fixed bug saving time-recovered energy.
🐞 Fixed subscription maintenance bug.

1.3.1
✨ Updated Google Translate.
🐞 Fixed bug with listen button.

1.3.2
🐞 Fixed bug with color scheme.
🐞 Fixed bug opening old corrections.

1.3.3
✅ Correction from speakers.

I adapted the review feature for the languages that you already speak. This allows you to help other learners by sending them corrections and rewards.

More 1.3.3 updates:
📣 Added listen and fill the gap to review mini-games.
🌎 Added privacy settings for reviews.
🏋️ Testing positions for review button.
🐞 Fixed another bug opening corrections.
🐞 Fixed bug that closed reviews when reporting a message.
🐞 Fixed bug with energy counter jumping during match.
🐞 Fixed multiple small UI bugs.

1.3.4
🐞 Fixed a crash when starting a match.
🐞 Fixed issue on iOS that did not save autocorrect preferences after closing and reopening the app.

1.3.5
🐞 Fixed bug not allowing to scroll review screen on smaller screen.
✨ Improved UI of review screen, and tooltip messages.
🐞 Fixed bug with fill the gap exercise when sentence has repeated words.
🐞 Fixed bug with review preparation getting stuck in some matches.
🐞 Fixed error deleting bookmarks.
🐞 Checking autocorrect preferences on iOS again.

Other (no app update necessary)
🐞 Fixed timing of unanswered match purging.
📈 Improved unanswered match redistribution algorithm.
🏋️‍♀️ Review feature unlocked for all players.

 🎤 Plans for next version

🔜 Audio matches! For version 1.4 we will add the possibility to record an audio, and send that with the match instead of a text message. This has been a much asked feature and I can’t wait to start working on this! It will be available for all languages.

Polygloss news

We have been selected for the Google for Startups Cloud Program! 🎉 This means we won $2000 in credits to use on Google Cloud Platform. GCP did not represent a major cost for us so far, (this will reduce our Firebase bill from +-$15 to $0 for two years). But that will allow us to use this money for other costs such as marketing, and test new features that would be too costly otherwise in the future. Besides the credits awarded, the program will also give us different kinds of training and networking opportunities, for another extra boost to Polygloss.

Polygloss Review: low effort, high quality
Jamie Lontok, language expert and owner of the blog Multilingual Mastery, wrote a detailed Polygloss review.
“Objectively, I think Polygloss is great! It’s hard to find a language app that effectively motivates users to practice their active use of the language (as opposed to just pressing buttons) without being overwhelming or a huge time suck.” “Polygloss is high quality, low effort, and very feel-good.” Read more here.

Best feedbacks and shout-outs

Every time we send out a newsletter, we will pick the player who gave us the best feedback or shout-out in social media and send them a surprise prize! 🎁 Tag us on twitter, IG, tiktok or facebook to participate. The winner this month is @LanguageCargo!

Polygloss statistics

In the last month, Polygloss players wrote 18,155 texts in 50 languages!

Highlights of last month:

Supporting Polygloss

🐦  Write a post about us on social networks

Polygloss is a collaborative game: the more people play, the better the learning experience. Inviting other folks and helping us grow our community is the best way to support us! Tell them what you think of the app, and send them the link to our website: https://polygloss.app

Other ways to support Polygloss:

[Scottish Gaelic] Three days learning Scottish Gaelic during Language Jam

[Welsh]

Listen to Meic Stevens's song "Y brawd Houdini" (Houdini's brother) with lyrics in Welsh and English translation.

[Spanish] 50 songs in Spanish with Lyrics on Spotify

What did you think of these updates? Drop a comment below, we’d love to hear your thoughts 👇

Etiene is a Software Engineer who is passionate about languages. She recently finished her MSc. in Computer Science researching Computational Linguistics and Computer Assisted Language Learning.