We just submitted the beta builds to Apple and Google 
The TestFlight build needs to be approved by Apple, but I’ll be updating the official release notes later this evening for 3.1.6 (300199) once my kiddo is asleep for the night.
Stay tuned!
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thanks guys, i saw the hide reading is working, cannot wait to test it more. i also like the new navigation system. What new features can we expect from the beta app in the near future?
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i after an hour and half commuting and going through offline and online mode, and going though small review sets of 10, everything seem to run smoothly.
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The latest Japanese beta is looking much, much better.
One glaring “feature” of the app is the presence of romaji. I feel like Skritter is the first place I’ve seen romaji used in years, and it’s quite jarring. I understand it’s important for people learning hiragana and katakana, but you really need to kick romaji to the curb as soon as you can and never look back. Or, as I read the expert say in the “Olle Learns Japanese” blog entry:
“The best part of Romaji is that once you’ve learned kana, you can (and should) immediately throw it out. It’s a necessary crutch to learn kana and how it’s pronounced, but kana should only be used moving forward once you’ve learned both Hiragana and Katakana.”
There really needs to be a way to completely eradicate it from the UI. That means no kana->romaji card, and other kana-only cards shouldn’t display it anywhere, ever.
Turning off “Study Kana” isn’t a viable option, since it turns off the meaning->kana card and the pre-filled okurigana make the kanji writing cards a less effective tool.
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The adding of new vocab is a pain for me 
I’m at a point, where I generally know how a character is to be written (sometimes the differences of the Japanese stroke order to the Chinese one throw me off, but that’s super neglectable). Which is to say, the stroke order animations aren’t very important to me anymore.
Now, it’s seems its only possible to add one new word at a time, which takes up a lot of time, as I intend to add one section per day from the nihongo no Sou Matome lists (I’ve done this the past couple of days and I can cope with the load of vocab).
With the old beta, one could at a batch of 20 words at a time, even before the last update, it was possible to add several new words at once. Now this seems to be completely gone.
Maybe it’s possible to add settings how new words should be learned/added?
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yes I totally agree. Now it takes so much time to add new vocabulary. that should be definitely changed in the next beta
PS. but I definitely like the new learning mode! Much more comprehensive
PPS. but I still find that the loading processes take too much time. Is there any way to shorten these?
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sorry i just noticed the new learning mode. i agree adding one card at a time is a pain. its super slow. before when adding 5 at a timd was much better.
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I like the new iOS build a lot :
- The sounds and the colors make it more friendly and clear in my opinion
- The new system to learn new words is better I think. I think the old one where we needed to tap on a particular button to advance to the next card was cumbersome
- going back and forth is less buggy
However I still have some complains :
- the app overall still feels very unresponsive. As I said before it feels like I’m slowly loading webpages when navigating in the menus. Isn’t everything supposed to be downloaded already ?
- with that comes the lack of intuitive gestures like swipe from the left of the screen to go back in menus, lack of bouncing when reaching the top and bottom of lists.
- lots of text throughout the app is selectable where it shouldn’t.
I haven’t had the occasion to test if there were some improvement on the SRS, mainly my grip with newly learned words appearing in succession in a review session rather than shuffled among the other review cards.
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Hey guys,
Thanks for the new update! I’m SO happy to see the hide reading function available. The new learning mode is pretty good too, that you go through every type of card, not just the writing.
However, it’s SOOOOOOOOO slow. The learn mode has always been frustratingly slow, but now that every. single. word brings you back to the percentage wheel thing, I’m spending more time waiting for the app to respond than I am learning anything. Why can’t it just be a continuous thing and when you’re ready to stop learning you use a back button to go to the main Learn menu? It’s pretty infuriating always waiting for the thing to update. It also makes me skip the word I just learned, thereby making me wait TWICE for the percentage wheel to update so I can continue learning.
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it seems the review mode is stable, probably next update will fix the learn mode.
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I just tested the time it takes to go from one word in Learn mode to the next, and from the moment I hit the Learn Next button to the next word appearing on the screen it takes up to 25 seconds. Normally around 20. Then the word that appears is the same so I have to skip it, which then brings me back to the button, which is another 20 seconds. It takes nearly a minute to proceed to a new word.
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Third this. For me learn mode is really unuseable now. Too slow, words keep coming back, cannot skip without losing progress etc. please fix.
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We’re working on fixing this up! Speed is one of the top priorities right now, the app is reacting way too slow as you’ve all noticed. We’re feeling optimistic that we can make it snappy soon!
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Maybe found a bug? The audio still plays when doing tone cards and the auto play audio is turned off. It’s a little delayed so it gets cut off every time I switch cards. It ends up sounding like a skipping record.
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I’m still experiencing syncing issues. I had about 120 cards to review a few hours ago and reviewed about 50, then exited review mode to go back to the main menu, I even checked in the progress tab that my review session was recorded and then I closed the app. Now I’ve just opened the app again and it went back to about 120 reviews, which are the same in the same order as those a few hours ago. It’s very frustrating…
I think that flawless syncing should be the top priority before speed. On top of making it work, adding a manual sync button and an indicator that syncing is in progress would be nice.
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i like the way the new study mode is heading. when the speed issues are resolved its going to be great!
i have a question about sentenses though. in review mode are you planning to add sentense filter options, similar to the website where it excludes writing and tone reviews?
I’ve been trying to download a deck for two days and it just doesn’t seem to be able to do it. I’ve tried both connected to WiFi and not. Sometimes it gets stuck on 65%, sometimes it gets all the way to 100% (after an hour) but it never gets all the way downloaded.
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when r u going to release the next update?
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Maybe this is a bug, maybe it’s just something that hasn’t been considered. When the English definition is too long the Forgot and Got it buttons end up on the writing field and then I can’t change my decision. Any time I try to press the button it just goes forward to the next card.
Also, I mentioned somewhere that the tone cards read out the word even when the audio is turned off (or the Auto play audio setting is off). I’ve figured out more. The audio goes when I get the tone right but not when I get it wrong. I don’t know what it’s like when I don’t have that setting on, but this is pretty annoying.
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This is a major one, so we’re making sure it’s stable before putting it your hands! We’re working on getting it out as a soon as possible.
Would you be able to try deleting / reinstalling the app to see if the behavior changes?
An issue has been opened for this, thanks for the report!
This should be fixed up when there is better UI handling (which is currently being worked on)