NerLan
Learn languages by listening
Free · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
Turn the podcasts you already learn from into study material: an AI transcript that follows the audio, a review handout, translation, and shadowing practice.
NerLan is a podcast player built for people learning a language by listening.
Subscribe to any show by pasting an Apple Podcasts link or an RSS address, then play it with the controls a learner actually needs: variable speed from 0.5x to 2x, repeat one or repeat all, precise skip, and a lock screen and Control Center that move between episodes rather than nudging fifteen seconds at a time.
Then study what you heard.
TRANSCRIPTS THAT FOLLOW ALONG
Generate a transcript of any episode and the sentence being spoken stays highlighted and centred as the audio plays. Tap a line to jump straight to it, or loop a single sentence until it sticks.
TRANSLATION
Render the transcript into your language, sentence by sentence, and read it alongside the original. Generated once and kept, so re-reading costs nothing.
STUDY HANDOUTS
Turn an episode into a review sheet - overview, grammar points, example sentences, and vocabulary - drawn from its own transcript. Examples stay in the language you are studying, glossed in the language you choose.
SHADOWING PRACTICE
Loop a sentence, record yourself reading it aloud, and play your version back against the original.
LISTEN OFFLINE
Download episodes for the commute, or let anything you stream to the end be kept automatically. Downloads are grouped by show and language, filterable, and available with no signal.
WIDGETS
Up Next, Latest Episode, My Shows, and a listening-streak widget for the Home and Lock Screen - all playable without opening the app.
SIRI
"Play [show] in NerLan", resume where you left off, change the speed, or ask how long you have listened this week. Give a show a nickname Siri can actually hear when its real title is in a script Siri does not speak.
YOUR AI, YOUR CHOICE
AI features are optional and run on credentials you provide - either an OpenAI API key billed to your own account, or your own OpenAI-compatible server, including one on your own machine. Your key is kept in the device keychain.
PRIVATE BY CONSTRUCTION
No account, no sign-up, no analytics, no advertising, no tracking, and no third-party SDKs. There is no NerLan server, so there is nowhere for your listening to be sent. Optional iCloud sync writes to your own account so your library survives a reinstall; audio is never synced.
NerLan plays podcasts from their own public feeds. All audio content belongs to its publishers.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
The developer, MAO YUAN KAO, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- MAO YUAN KAO
- Size
- 3.3 MB
- Category
- Education
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 17.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 17.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 14.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English and Traditional Chinese
- Age Rating
16+
- 16+
- Contains
User-Generated Content
- Copyright
- © 2026 Daniel Kao