Polly builds your lesson: a new lesson card shows what you'll practice today. In the game, conversations are now face to face. The person you're talking with stays in view, with their words and your mic in a small strip below. Plus fixes and polish.

Polly says hello first. Right after you sign up, she has a quick chat with you to hear where you are with the language and to show you how she'll get you speaking it. Your first real lesson comes after that. Your lessons with Polly now start from what you actually did: the story you read, the words you missed, the line you fumbled in the game. Open today's practice and she's in it. The app works offline. Your stories, flashcards and phrases come with you on a plane, and everything syncs when you're back online. Shadowing in stories is free for everyone. More places to fly to in Polly's Atlas, and you can talk to the people there with your mic. Plus a stack of fixes: the app no longer gets stuck on the bird at launch, story pictures stop swallowing your taps, and a lot of text that was still in English now shows up in your language.

Polly is now your tutor. She has a face, she talks back, and calls look like a real video call. Before this, your tutor was a voice with a name you probably forgot. That one is on us. Your first call with Polly is free, and it happens right after you sign up. Pick a name, pick a picture, then just talk. There is no countdown ticking in the corner while you try to remember how to say hello. When a call ends, your summary shows up right away. It used to make you wait on a spinner, which is not how a good conversation should end. Polly's Atlas is out of beta. Walk around the airport, chat with the people there, and fly off to a city to practice. Conversations now work in French and Italian too. The Canyon Dive now has a clear way back to the airport. Before, the canyon was a lot more committed to keeping you than we meant it to be. Finishing your daily plan no longer tells you to come back tomorrow. If you want to keep going, it keeps going. Plus a stack of small fixes, including translations that no longer just repeat the phrase they were supposed to translate.

Big things are coming to the game. This build lays the groundwork for them, which is a polite way of saying most of what changed is under the floorboards. While we were down there we fixed a few small things across the app. If you notice them, good. If you do not, that was the idea.

PollyStop is a new app underneath. We rebuilt it from the ground up for iPhone, so it opens faster, feels lighter, and has stopped doing the small odd things the old one did. If something looks a little different, that is why. Add a phrase is back. It had been quietly failing since August with a polite message and no result, which is not what a button is for. Type a phrase, hear it, keep it. Your first minute with the app got a rethink. The placement step now shows you how close you got, word by word, instead of turning green and hoping you understood. Every phrase in it has a real recording. My Phrases is now a set of topic folders instead of one long list. You can see how many you have in each, open the ones you want, and search across all of them. Speaking practice waits for you. It used to move on to the next phrase before you had read the feedback, which was ambitious of it. Plus the usual: labels that fit their buttons, a Notifications heading that stays on one line, and a Delete account button that is no longer sitting right next to Log out.

Start Practice is now the one button on the home screen. Tap it and Polly picks what you do today. Flashcards swipe the way you'd expect: left means again, right means you knew it. Picture match shows four options stacked, no more hide-the-image toggle. Reading levels are three honest bands: A1 to A2, B1 to B2, C1 to C2. The Listen tab plays your current language and offers more phrases after today's five. Short segments in the story reader get a gloss right under the word. Fixed: the practice grid freezing for some languages, and a dead session dropping you on an empty dashboard instead of the login screen. New screenshots and a short preview so you can see what the app actually does before you download it.

Start practice is now the big green button on the home screen. If you ever opened PollyStop and wondered what to do first, that was on us. Press the button. Flashcards swipe the way you expected: left for "again", right for "knew it". Until now either direction meant "knew it", which was a bold assumption about your memory. The story library sorts by three reading levels, A1 to A2, B1 to B2, C1 to C2. The old six chips included a couple that returned the same stories as their neighbour and called it a choice. Tap a word in the daily story and the meaning slides up. Saving it now actually looks like something happened, instead of a button turning grey and hoping you noticed. Listen no longer stops at five phrases. When Polly's picks are done, More phrases keeps going. Five was the plan; a wall was not. The leaderboard is the People page again, and a person's words live behind their name. Tap someone, see what they added, take what you like. A tidier onboarding: the flip card fits its text, the paywall stops claiming your trial is for Spanish when you chose French, and a new account no longer inherits the previous account's languages on the same phone. That last one was a fun afternoon. Also fixed: practice tiles freezing mid-slide in Greek, Swedish, Croatian, Finnish and Swahili; the headphones tab playing the wrong language after a switch; picture match dealing bears for body parts; and an expired session showing you an empty home instead of asking you to sign in again.

Shadowing is back in the daily story, and the story now opens straight into it. We took it out during a tidy-up, which in hindsight was a bit like tidying the engine out of the car. Swahili is now a language you can learn, not just one you can speak. It had been sitting in the wrong list. Native-voice audio throughout. Reinstall the app and all of your languages come back. Before this you got exactly one of them, and not necessarily the one you wanted. Speaking feedback has stopped showing you your own sentence and calling it another way to say it. It was not another way. It was the same way. Home screen labels now fit. Including the one that just said "Apps" and left the rest to your imagination.

A new Home: Polly sits on this week's story, one Start button, your seven-day streak, and quick access to Listen, Cards, Pictures, Verbs, Speak, Games, Phrases and Words. Listen and repeat now records you and grades how you sound, like From memory, and the Listen screen is grouped into Listening and Speaking. Your language choice sticks between launches. Verb practice hides itself for languages that do not have it. Plus fixes to the shield, the streak row and label sizes on every screen.

The blocking screen got cleaner. One button instead of two that did the same thing, and Polly no longer sits in a white box. Everything else is where you left it: a new story chapter every day at three levels, shadowing, speak-back that grades what you meant, and the word bank.

Polly now shows you around: every time you open the app, a spotlight introduces a feature you have not tried yet, from listening on the go to flashcards and games. Achievements come alive. Earn a badge and Polly celebrates with you on the spot, with a refreshed achievements screen to browse your collection. Smarter speaking practice. When you say it from memory, Polly now grades what you meant, not just the exact words, so a right answer in your own words counts. Retell feedback teaches with specific tips and a model answer. Plus polish and fixes throughout.

Fixes a freeze when building Tap Mode practice sessions. "Say it yourself" now opens the story first, so you retell what you just read. Words your tutor adds to the weekly packet can now be heard aloud, even offline. Clearer microphone messages during speaking practice.

Polly got a makeover. The whole app is now hand-drawn, from the icon to the widget to the stories. - A fresh hand-drawn look on every screen - Polly lives on your home screen and fades when you skip days. Practice brings her back - Verb practice with instant feedback and full conjugation tables - A bigger practice hub: flashcards, games, quizzes, picture match, and practice tests - Story chapters preview the tricky vocabulary first, and you can look up and save any word as you read - Shadowing now shows exactly which words it heard you say - Clearer speak practice: see what you said next to what was expected Two minutes minimum to unlock your apps. You set the rules.

Polly's been busy. She noticed you keep making the same mistake. New tutor hints appear when you trip over the same word or tense twice. Gentle. Not judgmental. Mostly. Practice stopped asking you things you already know. You got it right. Three times. We heard you. "I don't know" is now a real answer on the placement test. Guessing was making us both look bad. Grammar, in human. "Pretérito perfecto compuesto" now just says what it actually is. Better voices in interleaved Listen mode. Fewer robots. Learn from your own language. New base-language switcher in Settings — if English isn't your first language, PollyStop no longer assumes it is. Plus: your story moved to the top of the home screen, more words in the word games, and a pile of translation fixes across all 30 languages. If something read strangely in Finnish before — that was us. Sorry.

- Read at YOUR level. You can now pick A2, B1, or C1 instead of Polly deciding you're basically fluent and hurling B1 at your face. Bold assumption on our part. Our bad. - Sound's back, baby. Correct answers go ding, finishing gets a tiny victory trumpet, and Polly finally stopped narrating three sentences at once like a haunted karaoke machine. - Brag button. Share your streak (and now your word count). Guilt your friends into learning Spanish too. It's called community. - "No story yet"? We had the story the whole time. Polly was just hiding it in his little beak. We've spoken to him. - Shadowing that actually shows up. No more "getting your audio ready" on stories that were, in fact, ready. - Quieter, faster, and 100% fewer parrots talking over each other.

What changed: - Rebuilt signup → onboarding → dashboard flow - Your phrase library now auto-builds from the topics you pick during onboarding (was coming up empty before) - New one-time "What's the Polly Story?" explainer — the weekly listen→shadow→save→review method

What's new in 1.5.4 • Fixed: logging out and back in could drop you on the wrong screen (e.g. log out from Profile, log back in, still on Profile). You'll now always land on the dashboard after sign-in. • Fixed: returning users were being pushed through the language + level setup every time they logged in. Setup now only runs for genuinely new accounts.

You can now answer in your own words. Until now, PollyStop checked your understanding with multiple choice. Quick, but not how a language actually sticks. The new "I'll write my answers" mode reads what you typed, calls out what you got, and gently nudges you on what you missed. Premium unlocks "I'll retell the story" for full free-form recall, where you tell Polly the whole thing back without prompts. This is the mode that turns "I kinda get it" into "I can say it." Also new: • Softer paywall. 3 free open-answer rounds a day, no walls. • The story screen stopped nagging. "How was that for you?" stays gone once you've rated, and "Test your knowledge" disappears once you've done it.

"Learn before you scroll" (now with fewer existential decisions before you start) One button. That's it. The home screen used to ask you to pick a practice mode like you were ordering coffee at a Brooklyn pour-over place. Now there's one full-width green Start button. Tap it. A bottom sheet asks "what can you do right now?" and gives you three honest options: Listen — headphones in, hands free, no taps. For commutes, dishes, dignity. Tap — flashcards + typed verb conjugations. The "I'm in a meeting and pretending to take notes" mode. Speak — out loud, with your face. Polly grades your pronunciation. Tough but fair. No more picking your mood from a chip row that visually duplicated half the screen below it. Push actually pushes you to speak now Push mode used to open by handing you a story to read. Push starting with reading was, in retrospect, a vibe. It now opens to your saved phrases and asks you to say them. Speech recognition scores word overlap. Wild concept. Flash doesn't make you wait between cards Cards preload upfront. The spinner that used to flash between every item is gone — along with the unspoken implication that Polly was buffering your education like a 2007 YouTube video. Stories: you control the speed now Audio playback got a proper speed slider, including a half-speed mode for languages where the narrator is, charitably, "enthusiastic." Less charitably: a man being chased. Polly didn't slow down. You got the remote. Profile got the Marie Kondo treatment Language management moved above learning settings (the order you actually use them in) Achievements moved to the Progress tab (where, you know, achievements live) Dashboard insight selector simplified — fewer dropdowns making eye contact with you General layout cleanup so it no longer reads like a Craigslist post Server-side: Polly remembers what he said What this isn't We did not tell Polly to slow down. He still talks at full speed when he wants to. We just gave you the remote so you can have a healthier relationship with him.

The bangers keep coming.... An amazing new library of daily stories in 9 different categories. Find stories you are interested in and practice in your target language every day with something different. Fixed shadowing bug in reading story.

What's new in 1.3.10: • Story reader redesign — title up top, single "Read entire story" play button, sentence highlighting that tracks the audio as it plays. • Sticky playback bar — pause, skip back 10 seconds, change speed (0.75× / 1× / 1.25×) without scrolling. • Smarter Picture Match — no more repeating the same words round to round. • Faster fallback when audio is loading.

What's new from Polly I redesigned my whole home. Give it a tap. Today's Lesson button: one tap, 8 quick rounds at your level. No menus. Picture Match: brand-new image-to-word cards. Rosetta-style. Story library: scroll a shelf of stories you can actually read. Streak and words you've learned, right up top. Tap me for the full stats. A surprise dance when you open the app. I've been practicing. If something feels weird, there's now a little flag button. Tell me and I'll fix it myself. Vamos!

Verb practice got a brain transplant. New Hide verb mode tests your recall and your conjugation at the same time — because "to swim" alone shouldn't be the answer. Faster loads, cleaner practice grid, and Polly's a little smarter this week.