Mobile App?

Is there any progress on, or roadmap for, a native iOS/Android app for LLN/Language Reactor?

I confess I would be much more likely to use it/pay for it if I was able to consume / interact with via mobile in a nice way - it feels like a product which could be tailored very nicely to mobile

Just my 2c

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Hey @justin , thank you for your interest. We don’t have any roadmap yet, but we are starting developing it seriously now. We will keep the users informed about it with a roadmap or something like it.
It will be for both iOS and Android.

Stay tuned :slight_smile:

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OMG. Such a awesome news! :smiley:

Will it be a native app or web-based?

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React Native, you get nicer performance and the interaction is a bit more slick, and we can reuse a lot of our Typescript code from languageReactor.com.

First we’d try do TurtleTube, our dictionary with examples, and a flashcards/example sentences mashup thing (Kirian is prototyping it now, it will appear soon on the languageReactor site). Netflix on mobile would be really tough, would need to reimplement big parts of Netflix’s player stack (I mean, kodi does it), I don’t thing that will happen. :confused: But, we will soon expand TurtleTube to support playing entire channels, perhaps soon a general Youtube search feature.

If anyone is skilled with React Native and got some time on your hands, you can send an email to dioco@dioco.io , or, if you aren’t getting a response, give me a call on +359 879 three four zero 1 9 ‘IV’, anytime 11am to 11pm CET, I’ll be happy to hear from you.

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Thanks for the info guys :slight_smile:

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@David_Wilkinson nice to hear from the founder :slight_smile: Some questions -

  • What’s the overall product strategy here? It feels like so many different angles in Language Reactor. - Netflix, YouTube, text, video, mobile. Aren’t you spreading yourselves a bit thin? Why not double down on the most promising of these?

  • Why the name change to Language Reactor? I saw a comment that suggested you had a problem with spam/copycats in the Chrome Extension Store which necessitated a name change. Is that right?

  • Why is the forum so broken? I’ve seen spam here recently, many customer questions seem to go unanswered. No resources for a moderator?

Overall it feels like there is some great engineering going on behind the scenes, but product / customer focus is non- existent. How about rectifying that with a roadmap and regular updates, for starters? I think you could make a lot of people happy :slight_smile:

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Ah, I would understand that people think the project is being a bit neglected these days, from the state of the forum… this year we’ve actually been working tirelessly. I’d like to spend more time on the forum, just, I seem to have less time this year, and there are more messages. Feedback from users has been very useful for making improvements to the extension, for a time however we have been focussing on some of the bigger internal ideas we have for the future of the project and the associated required underpinnings. :confused:

In 2020, most of the time went into the Youtube extension, and we made improvements to the Netflix extension and converted all code to Typescript.

2021, we have worked on expanding from being an extension-only project to an ‘extension and website’ (languagereactor.com), with the goal that they both work fairly seamlessly together. This involved a rewrite of a lot of the extension code (vanilla js) into React + MobX. We have TurtleTube working (more features planned). Also laid the ground for some new translation and ML things (subs for dubs, better ASR subs on Youtube), and moved from firebase database to postgres for greater speed and features.

Strategy now (2022) is to reach a wider userbase, by means of 1) a smartphone app, and 2) features for learners that still early in their journey to learn a language, in addition to making numerous improvements to existing features. The vision for Language Reactor will hopefully come together, and the whole will be more than the sum of the parts.

If we are spread a bit thin? Yes, that’s a danger for sure. The Netflix, Youtube extension, I see these as mostly feature complete. There are some niggles that need sorting, and some feature requests, but many of these are tricky for one technical reason or another. Text and video, these are both prototypes and still need further attention. There is a lot of overlap in the code though between features, so improvements to one mode results in improvements to all modes (like the Tatoeba examples we added a few days ago).

The name ‘Language Reactor’: it’s mostly that we wanted to expand the project beyond being a Netflix-only extension, so the name needed to change. There is a copycat extension that shamelessly took our name, but in any case we were going to change it.

Hofit is going to be doing more forum moderation, she already tries to help who she can… I actually didn’t figure out how to give her admin status until today, didn’t seem to work, I had misread the forum software (discourse) instructions.

Roadmap, yes, I should sort that out a bit.

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Hey @David_Wilkinson great update! Maybe you could commit to these sorts of updates every quarter? I am sure the forum readership would love it :slight_smile:

Pls can I be an Android beta tester :slight_smile:

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Thank you so much for the update @David_Wilkinson :slight_smile:

I agree with justin. Would be nice to know from time time were’s the project, upcoming features…

For example, a couple of weeks ago I realised that you’ve added a search box in the Saved Items section. I love this feature because sometimes I wanted to search some word to delete it and I had to scroll down, Crtl+F…

Or… For example, I didn’t know the feauture you say about Tatoeba.

In a few words, I’d like to know about the new features as soon as possible to test them and try to add them to my learning flow. :smiley:

Thank you guys for your great job :slight_smile:

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Thank you guys for your help, we indeed lack of communication towards LR users. We will make something soon that summarize everything and communicate about new releases !

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Where does Youtube on a Smartphone fit in the schedule?

This app blows everything else out of the water btw. thx again guys!

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@D_Rock Unfortunately we are quite limited to what we can do on smartphone compared to in the browser. So we can’t have a version of language reactor that will directly work on youtube or netflix on smartphone.

But we will have a version of our Turtle Tube (link here : Language Reactor) feature on the future smartphone app, as well as dictionaries, flashcard features, etc…, which we hope will satisfy you guys :slight_smile:

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So turtle tube videos aren’t stored on YouTube?

Yes, but you’re using LR as a “interface”. I guess the devs can use the YT API to get the subtitles and integrate them into LR. I doubt Netflix had a API as YT.

I don’t know if this might be possible, I use LR in desktop, but if TubeTurltle works on iOS/Android maybe they can add a box to search a link and watch the video through LR.

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Yeah that would be awesome! Seems that if they are still streaming from Youtube, they should be able to stream any youtube video on iOS/Android. Unfortunately right, still no Netflix. Right now, I’m debating which tablet to buy. I was thinking about a MS Surface because they run windows which means I likely CAN watch Netflix through the browser, but the screen ratio is still slightly wider (3:2) than the standard PC aspect ratio (16:9). That means youtube won’t fullscreen in the browser correctly and it messes up your LR experience. But if I could run Youtube in an app, that would solve the issue and it would be a complete LR tablet solution.

Hi @D_Rock ,

Did u by the MS Surface? I am also wondering if I should buy a MS surface or a android tablet…
The only reason to by the MS Surface would be to use LR… but samsung tablets a better in general

Caio_Villaca,
No, I haven’t gotten around to it. 2 important things about MS Surface:

  1. Surface X runs ARM OS. I don’t know if Netflix will run on a browser in that OS. I believe Surface Pro 7 runs regular Windows OS so hopefully, it should work. Be nice to try both first.
  2. It is unlikely that youtube (maybe Netflix too) will full screen correctly in a browser on a Surface because it is a 3:2 vs a standard PC 15:9 aspect ratio. I have that issue watching youtube in a browser running LR on my smartphone. It is a major issue but I have managed to tweak it enough on my phone to at least uncomfortably survive for now. But from a quick google search looks like it is possible to change the aspect ratio (resolution) on at least some surfaces. Of course, that will ruin your wide-screen enjoyment for non-LG media if you keep it that way.

I was going to try to install Windows on an android and see how that goes. It’s really tricky. I don’t know if I would prefer running windows on an android tablet or just use a Surface.

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@David_Wilkinson any update on the mobile app?

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hello any upptade for ios app?

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I haven’t pursued the Surface route further though I was thinking about trying a Chrome Book. I believe it may run Netflix as well as plugins in the chrome browser. Youtube should run in the browser as well of course, I can do that now on my android. They also come in touchscreen.

I’ve actually been using Yandex browser on my android lately. It has a built-in subtitle translator so no browser plugin is needed. It doesn’t have a dual subtitle view but does have a subtitle translator when hovering over a word. Works ok for me except that it doesn’t have backward and forward subtitle arrows or ample reference in a popup dictionary. I often go to wordreference for the best word transition anyway but the lack of the forward and backward arrows makes me still strongly prefer Language Reactor if I could only get it to work on my android.