Sound engine and game updates
- Updates to our sound engine. Also some updates to our games for smoother experience on older devices..
- Plus a round of behind-the-scenes improvements for a more reliable experience. Happy spelling!
A smoother session on every device
- Plus a round of behind-the-scenes improvements across the games, cloud sync, and the reward shop for a steadier experience.
Smoother, more reliable syncing between your family's devices
- Plus a round of behind-the-scenes improvements across the games, cloud sync, and the reward shop for a steadier experience.
Two games rebuilt — a bigger, brighter Snake and Letter Catch.
- Letter Catch, reimagined — a smooth new net scoops each falling letter into the boat with a splash. New sea friends wander in: a playful octopus that inks the water (wipe it away with your finger) and a shark that chases the boat off — plus a surprise disco dance-party when the fish light up the sea. Every round opens with a 3-2-1 countdown, and each catch has its own sound.
- Snake, redrawn — a brand-new glowing look with real depth, sparkle, and a satisfying burst every time the snake eats a letter. Unlock a big new roster of snake skins — tiger, bee, pirate, robot, ghost, galaxy, hearts and many more, each with its own little animation — and grab a power-up that transforms your snake mid-game.
- Confetti celebration — a joyful confetti cannon fires when your child finishes, tuned to stay smooth even on older devices.
- Kinder hints — when a word is tricky, a gentle glow points to the right letter instead of racing a timer, so practice stays encouraging.
- Behind-the-scenes improvements for a smoother, more reliable experience.
New Written Test mode — plus a lighter, faster app.
- Written Test mode — a real-classroom-style test: the app reads each spelling word aloud (and repeats it), your child writes it on paper, and it moves to the next word on its own. The screen stays awake through the whole test and the check-your-answers screen, so nothing sleeps mid-word.
- Smaller, faster download — trimmed unused language data from the photo-scan feature so the app downloads and installs noticeably lighter, with nothing lost.
- Behind-the-scenes improvements for a smoother, more reliable experience.
Your family's English — and a whole new soundscape.
- Your region's English — Read-aloud and voice entry now match your region, so families in Australia and New Zealand hear and dictate in their own English.
- One switch for sound — A single toggle now controls all of the app's sound.
- A fresh soundscape — New sound effects throughout the app.
- Behind-the-scenes improvements for a smoother, more reliable experience.
Bug fixes & stability improvements.
- Bug fixes and behind-the-scenes improvements.
An easier way to set up Real-World Prizes
- Real-World Prizes, refreshed. Setting up the real-world rewards your child works toward now feels just like your spelling lists — a clear create button, a name-first flow, a tap-to-pick star cost, and a quick menu on each prize for edits.
- Friendlier empty screens. The rewards and prizes screens now greet you with a clean, consistent start-here look instead of a bare page.
- Smoother celebrations. Your buddy's victory wave stays crisp on every screen and the confetti clears itself cleanly.
- A gentle heads-up before Pro ends. The parent dashboard now reminds you before your subscription is about to lapse, so cloud sync and extra profiles don't switch off by surprise.
- Plus a round of behind-the-scenes improvements for a smoother, steadier experience.
Bug fixes & stability improvements.
- Bug fixes and behind-the-scenes improvements.
Meet Tic-Tac-Toe — our first play-against-the-AI game — plus a calmer practice flow and parent-area polish.
- Tic-Tac-Toe. Our first play against AI. Your child claims a square on the 3×3 grid by spelling the word they hear; first to three in a row wins the match, best of three takes the series. Three skill levels — on the easier ones the AI makes believable spelling slip-ups your child can catch and steal the square.
- Practice goes at your child's pace. After each word in Practice, your child taps Next (or Finish on the last word) to move on — no more automatic skip-ahead, so there's time to see how they did before the next word.
- A gentle tap in the parent area. The PIN and math keypads give a light tap as you type, with a stronger buzz on a wrong entry.
- UI refresh across the games, tests, and throughout the app.
- Plus a round of behind-the-scenes improvements across the games, cloud sync, and the reward shop for a steadier experience.
Smoother games, smarter Snake, faster between words, multi-device sync polish.
- Snake rebalanced — two copies of each target letter, fewer wrong-letter distractors, friendlier powerups, and respawns land close so kids don't chase letters halfway across the board.
- Snake speaks the word at game start — fixed the silent countdown bug, and removed the mid-game recap so you fly from one word straight into the next.
- Connect auto-advances after each correct word — no more "Next" tap, just like the other games.
- Adaptive frame rate (Snake, Connect, Letter Catch) — the games now self-tune to your device, so budget Android tablets stay smooth and iOS games don't chop when the CPU throttles.
- Voice input keeps working offline on Android — if the network drops, dictation falls back to your phone's built-in on-device speech recognition (Android 13+ with the English model installed).
- Multi-device families: active kid stays per-device — opening the app on the iPad no longer switches you to whatever profile the phone last used.
- Bigger games-grid tap targets on phone portrait — switched to a 2-column layout that fits all the games without scrolling.
- Home-screen sticker shadow — the otter (and any sticker buddy) now casts its full shadow without getting clipped at the edge.
- Android 15 polish — cleared Google Play's deprecated edge-to-edge warning.
Profile + cloud sync hardening, smoother game opens on iOS.
- Your profile names stay exactly as you set them — fixed a bug where a lapsed Pro subscription could rename your kid's profile to "Kid."
- Lapsed Pro lands kids on a visible profile — cold boot now snaps to the first visible profile instead of stranding kids on a hidden one.
- Account deletion is final — closed several edge cases where cloud or local data could resurrect a deleted account on the next sign-in.
- Free-tier one-profile cap enforced everywhere, not just on the Profiles screen.
- Snake: easier for younger spellers — distractor letter density cut roughly in half so targets are easier to reach.
- Smoother game opens on Ocean and Galaxy themes (iOS) — resized backgrounds so they don't stutter on the first frame.
- Cleaner dev/test output and tighter crash breadcrumbs.
- Behind the scenes: new crash diagnostics (MetricKit on iOS, ApplicationExitInfo on Android) so resource-related issues surface faster.
Sign-in, account deletion, and celebration fixes.
- Cloud sync sign-in connects on the first tap — Apple and Google sign-in no longer silently fail when a separate service hiccups.
- Account deletion works even if your Pro subscription has lapsed — the deletion path no longer required an active Pro claim (a COPPA / GDPR right, never gated).
- App no longer freezes after signing in to cloud sync — fixed an infinite render loop in the profile listener.
- End-of-game celebrations no longer flicker between two emoji bursts — the per-word and completion celebrations now coalesce cleanly.
- Quieter sign-out — stray permission errors during cleanup are now silenced.
Faster cross-device sync and feel polish.
- Faster cross-device sync (Pro) — edits get one last chance to push to the cloud before iOS suspends the app, so other devices see them sooner.
- Backspace haptic on phone & tablet portrait — the leading press now ticks the same as every other key.
- Profile score ring fixed — no more "NaN%" in a rare edge case when totals were zero.
- Status bar hidden app-wide for a cleaner kid-mode look.
- Behind the scenes: tightened crash-report breadcrumbs for stricter privacy.
Cross-device sync, haptic feedback, redesigned Profile screen, cheaper stickers.
- Seamless cross-device sync (Pro) — set up a profile on your phone and the names, custom themes, stickers, and word lists are instantly ready on the iPad.
- Haptic feedback — subtle vibrations on keyboard taps and answer reveals make practice feel tactile and responsive.
- Stickers cost less, permanently — Common 20⭐ (was 30), Uncommon 40⭐ (was 60), Rare 60⭐ (was 100). Collecting the rares is now actually within reach.
- Redesigned Profile screen — new Score Rings visualize the latest test result, and the "Words to Practice" section highlights exactly what they missed most recently for targeted review.
- Snappier launch — reduced startup time so they're practicing in seconds.
- Better battery life — optimized loading paths cut idle drain.
- Stability polish across the Word Search word bank, the Flashcards finale, and other small corners of the app.
Per-row list menu, sticker boards that sync, a cleaner iPad Reward Shop.
- One-tap row menu on the active list — the new ··· button opens Edit, Preview Audio, and Delete in a single tap.
- Sticker Boards sync across devices (Pro). Your kid arranges stickers on the iPad, opens the iPhone, same masterpiece. Buddy drag positions follow them too — including the auto-reset when a new sticker buddy is equipped.
- Reward Shop redesigned for iPad landscape — Common, Uncommon, and Rare tiers all fit on screen. No scrolling.
- Buddy celebrations clear of the notch and Dynamic Island — the sticker pops in cleanly from the sides or bottom for a smoother reveal.
- Polished celebration preview in Settings — only the style you tap fires, with a quicker reset and a buddy cheer alongside the confetti.
- Cleaner sticker cards — retired the lock badge on un-affordable stickers; the dimmed silhouette already says it.
- Tap hints on "Real Prizes" and "Sticker Board" tiles on iPad.
- Free-tier devices self-heal a missing active list on launch — tap the home tile and you're practicing in two seconds.
- Quieter Pro restore — if the App Store thinks you already own Pro, we restore your subscription silently instead of showing an error.
- Profile polish — deleted profiles stay deleted across devices, deleting your last profile is now blocked, and switching after a delete picks the top profile.
- Layout and stability fixes across iPad and Android.
Try Pro free, scan your kid's word list from a photo.
- 7-day free trial on Pro — try every feature free for a week, then $1.99/month or $19.99/year. Cancel anytime.
- Scan word lists from a photo. Open Add Words → Scan, point your camera at a printed sheet, and we'll pull the words straight in.
- New per-word ⋯ menu — one tap for Preview Audio, Edit, or Delete.
- Polished celebrations — slot-machine star reveal and burst animation when kids earn stars.
- Cleaner, friendlier empty-list screens across the app.
- Fixes: list-deletion undo, ALL-CAPS scanned words, paywall trial copy for returning subscribers.
Stability & sync fixes for Pro families.
- Connect, Snake, and Letter Catch no longer freeze after switching apps or locking the device.
- Spelling Lists: tap the checkmark to unassign a profile from a list — it now behaves like a checkmark should.
- Pro subscribers no longer get briefly downgraded during rare service hiccups.
- More reliable cleanup of expired Pro data.
Smoother editing, deletes that stay deleted.
- Edit List screen scrolls smoothly even on long lists, and editing a row no longer makes the layout jump.
- Duplicate words are now flagged with a clear message instead of silently disappearing.
- Lists, profiles, and rewards you delete on one device no longer reappear on another — and stay gone for good.
- Practice and Final Test no longer skip words on rapid taps, and word audio plays in full before advancing.
- "Live" terminology on Spelling Lists replaced with the clearer "Assigned to."
- Word Scramble and Missing Letter now always match the spoken word to the letters shown.
- Connect orbs drift more predictably; Snake no longer feels stuck on walls.
Bug fixes & polish.
- Fixed paywall close button placement on iPhone.
- Fixed wizard freezing after switching apps and coming back.
- Fixed purchase spinner spinning forever after cancelling sign-in.
- Mic and audio now stop properly when the phone locks.
- Faster, more reliable subscription handling.
- Better screen-reader and accessibility support.
- Stability improvements across games and Parent Center.
Clearer Parent vs. Kid roles, friendlier game intros.
- New handoff slide at the end of the setup wizard makes it clear that parents add words and kids play.
- "Parent Dashboard" renamed to "Parent Center" across the app for consistency.
- Test and Practice empty states now point straight to Parent Center instead of a dead-end.
- "I'm Ready!" button on every game intro is now pinned to the bottom — no more scrolling to find it.
- Word Scramble and Word Search filter accidental unwanted words.
- Per-list voice recordings — recordings are now scoped to the list they belong to, so editing one list never affects another.
- Behind-the-scenes reliability: better star tracking, cleaner sign-out for shared devices, and improved crash diagnostics.
Reliability fixes and small improvements.
- More reliable Cloud Sync for Pro users.
- Faster game completions.
- Parent Center keyboard and "Forgot PIN" flow polish.
- Small bug fixes and behind-the-scenes cleanup.
Cloud Sync reliability.
- More reliable Cloud Sync setup on fresh installs and first-time sign-ins.
- Better diagnostics behind the scenes to help us find and fix any remaining sync hiccups faster.
- Smaller bug fixes across the Parent Center.
Quality-of-life for parents — plus a PIN safety net.
- Forgot PIN? New recovery option — solve a math problem to clear and reset your PIN from the Parent Center.
- Cloud sync reliability improvements for Pro users.
- Smoother list-creation wizard with clearer Free vs. Pro info.
- Refreshed Parent Center layout with a quick "Go Pro" upgrade path.
- Smaller fixes across the keyboard, the home screen tour, and sign-in.