The session bar is full when the counter says you are done The bar counted finished questions while the label counted the one in front of you, so at „7 / 7” it still had a sliver left, and on the first question it was empty. Two ways of saying the same thing, disagreeing by exactly one question, half a centimeter apart. Reduce Motion now switches this app's animations off Seven things moved when you tapped them — readings appearing, translations appearing, level sections folding open — and all seven ignored the iOS setting. For some people that motion causes nausea and dizziness, so it is not a matter of taste. With Reduce Motion on, the same taps do the same thing, immediately and without travel. If clearing your progress fails, the app says so Resetting is the one thing here that cannot be undone, and it was the one thing that could not report a problem: the app closed the dialog and said nothing, whether it had cleared anything or not. A failure would have surfaced days later, on the progress screen, with no way to connect it to what caused it. Purchase messages follow the language you picked in the app Choosing Polish inside the app left a few sentences behind in the phone's language — the purchase errors, and the mastery bar labels read out by VoiceOver. They were reaching for the system's translations instead of the app's, so one screen could end up in two languages at once.

Every form name says what it means, right under the question „Make the attributive form” is a fair question only if you know what an attributive is — and nine of the twenty-five names this app asks by are grammar terms in English. The name stays, because it is the word you will meet in every textbook; under it there is now one plain line saying what the form does. It never mentions a single Japanese character, so it can stand before your answer without giving it away. A session never shows you the same screen twice Picking an answer from four and typing the same answer for the same word are two exercises in the app, but one screen for you — the same word, the same instruction, the same answer. Worse: the first one showed the answer among the four. Drilling a single form, this happened in fifty-nine sessions out of sixty. Sessions now count what you see, not how a question was built. A session gives you as many questions as the button promised Narrow sessions — one form, or only the irregulars — could end early and say nothing about it. The pick was cycling between three forms and refusing to repeat one, so when a form ran out of material the session kept asking it for a question it could not build, and stopped. The shortest session measured gave three questions where the button said twenty. New forms arrive in the order they are built from each other Levels came in order, but forms inside a level did not: the causative-passive could turn up before the causative it is built from. A form met before the one it derives from can only be memorised, not worked out. New forms now enter a session in catalog order, which is the order they teach each other in. Answer tiles are all the same height A tile whose answer wrapped onto two lines was twice as tall as the others, and a tile carrying readings above the kanji was taller again — so four answers looked like four different kinds of thing. When you are choosing between them, size means nothing and had no business looking as though it did. Your average answer time is written the way your language writes it In Polish it read „3.7 s” where Polish writes „3,7 s”. Nothing was broken and the number was right — it was simply written in the wrong language, which is the kind of fault that never gets reported.

Turn one form straight into another Every exercise so far started from the dictionary form or led back to it, so you could work through the whole app without ever joining two forms directly. Real fluency is 書いた → 書ければ without going back through 書く on the way. There is now an exercise that asks exactly that: it shows an inflected form, names the one it wants, and you type it. It turns up once a form is going well. The study day starts at the hour you picked — on every day of the year On the night the clocks change, the boundary moved from four in the morning to five. One day a year, quietly, so nobody reported it and nobody could have.

Kanji are set in a Japanese typeface, not a Chinese one On a phone whose language is not Japanese — which is most phones — iOS was quietly falling back to a Chinese typeface for the kanji in questions, answers and readings. Several characters simply have a different shape there, so an app teaching Japanese was showing a form of the character it was not asking about. It is the kind of fault you only notice next to correct typesetting. Every Japanese line now says which language it is written in, and the readings above the kanji sit at the right height because of it. The icon carries the number of questions left today The badge on the app icon shows the same number as the "Finish today's forms" button, and clears itself once the day is closed. And if the badge stays dark although reminders do arrive, Settings now says why: iOS asks for notification permission once, so badges can be switched off for this app without you ever having switched them off — with a way straight to the system settings from that sentence. Answer tiles are visible in the light theme The tiles you pick an answer from, and the field you type into, stood white on white: only a hairline outline said where one of them ended. The question screen now sits on the gray those tiles were designed for, so they read as tiles at a glance. Nothing changes in the dark theme, where the two colors were never the same in the first place. The session bar shows how far you are, not that a session is on The progress bar sat inside the title bar, a hundred and forty points wide. In a twenty-five question session one answer moved it by five points — so after answering it looked exactly as it had before. It now runs the full width of the screen under the navigation bar, in one layout at every text size, and it tells a screen reader which question you are on. Restoring a purchase and the two documents look like rows, not loose text On the purchase screen, "Restore purchases" and the links to the privacy policy and the terms of use were bare text, while those very same three rows in Settings had icons — one thing in two places reading as two different things. They now carry the same icons wherever they stand, and the restore row is a full-sized target instead of a line of text. The sixth app in the family has a card that leads somewhere Kuzushi, the one about spoken Japanese, is in the App Store — and its card in Settings now opens its page instead of standing there without an address.

The question says what its word means, not what someone else's does The line under the instruction always conjugated the same stand-in verb — "let's write", even when the question was about 読む. Two different verbs stood on one screen and the wrong one looked like the translation of the other. In its place is the meaning of the word you are actually conjugating, hidden until you tap it: with your own language in view you stop reading the Japanese, which is the one habit this screen must not teach. Never, always or on tap, in Settings. The same stand-in verb is gone from two further screens as well: the block that opens after an answer, and the list of misses at the end of a session. Three sentences say what they were meant to say A dimmed start button said "nothing in rotation" — a word that named neither of the two reasons behind it — and says "all silenced" now. The sentence about a form with too little material said "at this stage" and now says where the rest comes from: more forms come with the next level. And Support names the iOS version, which is what it actually attaches. Searching the forms list no longer needs the accent marks In Polish, typing "grzecznosciowa" did not find grzecznościowa and "przeszla" did not find przeszła: the list came back empty, as if the form were not there — and 21 of the 25 forms could be missed that way. Search now folds Polish letters, "ł" included, which plain Unicode folding leaves alone. English form names carry no accent marks, so there was nothing to fix on this side.

The buttons count from the material, not from your setting Four start buttons printed the number from Settings, whatever the catalogue could actually give. Each one now asks the pool first, so the number on the button is the number of questions you will get — and when it comes out lower than you asked for, a triangle beside it says which of the two reasons is behind it. A greyed-out button says why it is greyed out A button that does nothing and explains nothing reads as broken. Every start button now carries a short reason on the same line — nothing in rotation, or today's forms already done. It stays one line: the wording was chosen after measuring it in Polish, which is the longer of the two languages. Pause the streak while you are away A trip used to cost you the streak, so the only way to protect it was to open the app and answer something you had not planned to answer. Pause it in Settings and the streak holds, reviews stop piling up against you, and everything resumes where it stood. The screen says it is paused, so a quiet day cannot be mistaken for a broken one. "I already know this" silences a form A form you know from elsewhere no longer has to be earned question by question. Marking it writes it in as fully learned and takes it out of the queue — as a declaration, which is what it is, so the numbers keep meaning what they meant. A form you have not seen in a long time comes back on its own Choosing questions by weakness alone had a blind spot: something answered correctly months ago sits at the top of the scale and never comes up again. Time counts too now, so a form that has been quiet for long enough returns before you notice it slipping. The pace row says "score", and shows the curve it scores by The row spoke about time and was really about the score that time feeds into — two different things under one word. It names the score now, and the curve underneath is the one the engine actually uses, not an illustration of it. The reminder can be set to the half hour The reminder moved in whole hours, which is fine until the hour you want is 21:30. It takes minutes now. Support says what leaves your device Writing to us attaches the app version, the build, the iOS version and your device model — and that is now written above the button instead of being left to be discovered. Every one of those lines can be deleted before you send, and nothing leaves the device until you press Send.

The question says what it is asking for "Make the volitional." is the right term and it leaves a beginner with nowhere to start — not because the Japanese is hard, but because the instruction is. Every question that names a form now says underneath how that form sounds: let's write. The one question that asks you to name the form yourself keeps quiet, for obvious reasons. A reminder while the day is still open Turn on Reminders in Settings and the app will nudge you once a day, at an hour you pick, with exactly how many questions you still need for today's goal. A day you have already finished stays quiet. Nothing is asked of you until you turn it on — and it can be turned off in the same place. See when a sister app has reviews waiting Rows in "Your Japanese" told you how the learning is going over there. They now also show when something is waiting to be reviewed right now, so you can tell a quiet day from a day with work in it — without opening the other app to find out.

The keyboard opens in Japanese The answer field asks for a Japanese form and nothing else, so it now opens straight onto the Japanese keyboard instead of the one you used last — no more reaching for the globe at every typing question. It needs a Japanese keyboard added in your system settings; without one the field behaves as before and says so underneath.

How it works, in one place A guide under Support that answers what this app drills, why the questions come back the way they do, and which of it you can change. It shows each answer on a real verb from the catalogue rather than listing terms, and new installs get the first three topics on opening the app. Form names, in plain words "Causative-passive" and "attributive form" are the right terms and they tell a beginner nothing. Every form now carries a short line saying how it actually sounds — imperative: write!, passive: it was written — right next to its name, wherever the name is there to explain rather than to be answered. Put a form aside Swipe a form in Levels to pause it. It leaves your sessions and your level average together, so pausing never lowers a bar — and everything you had learned on it is waiting when you resume.

Statistics — how it is going A new screen under Progress: accuracy for each question type, mastery for each verb class, your week in bars, and how many forms are mastered, started or untouched. All of it is counted from answers already on your device — nothing is sent anywhere. Hear the form A speaker button next to the answer and next to each worked example. It reads the kana from the catalogue rather than the kanji, so the reading is the right one. It works offline, and it stays hidden if your device has no Japanese voice installed. Speed counts only if you want it to Answering quickly counted towards mastery and nothing said so, so a flawless but unhurried session showed less than a full score. Settings now has a Scoring section — speed stays on, because fluency is the point here, but you can be scored on correctness alone. Beat the clock A session where every question has a countdown, ten seconds by default. A question you don't finish in time counts as skipped, never as a mistake, so trying this mode cannot cost you progress.

Level bars reach a hundred The dictionary form counted towards level progress even though the app never asks about it — so "Foundations" stopped at 89% and "Mixed Mastery" at 96%, no matter how much you practised. In the free version "Mixed Mastery" sat lower still, because forms from the paid levels counted as zero for good. The bars now show what you actually know. Practise your mistakes again The session summary has its own button: a short session on the forms you got wrong today. The questions are new rather than the same ones — this is about the rule, not about an answer you memorised two minutes ago. One session for every weak spot "Weak spots" listed the forms you keep missing and let you into one at a time. A button under the list now takes all of them at once. A session that finishes today's goal A third button on the home screen holds exactly as many questions as you still need for today's goal. Once the goal is met, the button goes away. Meanings where they were missing The screen after an answer, the form explanation and the form list now show what the word means. In the dictionary-form drill the meaning disappears from the question screen — it was giving the answer away. A new question: which conjugation class 帰る looks like an ichidan verb and is a godan one. You can now be asked that directly, and the answer ends by showing what the class leads to: 帰る → 帰って. A new day starts without restarting After the reset hour the daily counter used to sit still until you killed the app and opened it again. Today's numbers now turn over on their own — coming back from the background, or with the app open the whole time. Today's numbers count answers only A skipped question went into today's counter and into your accuracy — as a wrong answer. Skip three questions out of four and you saw "4 answered, 25% accuracy". A skip is no longer evidence either way, and an empty field sent with the keyboard's return key no longer counts as a mistake. Your Japanese, in one place A new section on the home screen puts your conjugation practice next to the other two apps in the family, Kaname and Joshi — one row each, with its weakest spot. Rows for the others show up once you have them installed, and nothing leaves your device. Practise only the irregulars する, 来る, 行く and the handful of exceptions are the only words no rule will get you — and they sit scattered across the levels, next to regular verbs. The Levels tab now has one entry that picks them out: no new material, the same words seen from the one angle that matters. A session you were pulled out of still counts If the app was closed from the app switcher in the middle of a session, that session never counted towards your day — the answers were saved, but the streak broke as though you had not practised at all. Those sessions are now closed with what you actually answered, the next time you open the app.