# Jiveworld — Language Learning — user reviews > 123 indexed App Store user reviews of Jiveworld by Jiveworld, SPC, rated 4.85/5 from 386 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/jiveworld-language-learning/id1480744663/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/jiveworld-language-learning/id1480744663.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 354 · 4★ 15 · 3★ 11 · 2★ 3 · 1★ 3 ## What do users think of Jiveworld? Overall sentiment: positive **Pros** - 🚀 Excellent for improving listening comprehension - 👍 Engaging and interesting stories - 💡 Customizable features (speed, transcript visibility) - 👍 Helpful vocabulary tools - 👍 Well-designed interface - 👍 Useful for a variety of Spanish levels - 👍 Great for maintaining and improving skills **Cons** - 🐛 Occasional bugs and performance issues - 💰 Expensive subscription cost - 🔇 Audio quality degrades when slowing down playback **Commonly reported bugs** - Freezing/crashing issues - Inconsistent progress tracking - Audio playback issues when slowing down **Most requested features** - Ability to loop/repeat sections - Export vocabulary lists - More content/stories - Dark mode option ## Newest reviews (17 of 123) ### 5/5 — Learn how native spanish speakers really speak! *2025-08-29, version 13.5.6* Jiveworld will help you improve your understanding of Spanish as its really spoken by native speakers. I have listened to and studied all the spanish duolingo podcasts and this is the logical next step for me. Its more challenging for me to understand some of the spoken spanish, but its a great opportunity to improve my comprehension, as this is how people really talk! The app is set up so you can slow down what you are hearing, see the written spanish (or not), easily translate to english etc. And the tech support is so helpful and so responsive. Support these folks! ### 5/5 — Best language app I’ve ever used *2025-08-23, version 13.5.6* I’ve tried many Spanish language apps over the years but this is the best. It allows you to read and listen to interesting stories from Latin America, learn new vocabulary while being able to keep track of words to study, and get exposed to a variety of speaking styles…as you’d hear in real life. Love this app and highly recommend it!! ### 5/5 — A must for Spanish learners *2025-06-12, version 13.5.6* Hands down the best app I’ve found for improving one’s listening comprehension. The stories are very interesting as well and it’s a fun way to learn. ### 5/5 — Real life stories in bite size pieces *2025-05-29, version 13.5.6* I love how this app breaks episodes into chunks. It makes it less intimidating to dive in and study. I also really love the thoughtful pieces of context it provides of the country history, dialect, etc. I’m at a beginner-intermediate level so I go through chapters suuuper slow. But the stories themselves keep me motivated to keep going since they’re so well done. Thank you for this beautiful homage to the Latin stories! ### 5/5 — Increíble app *2025-05-25, version 13.5.6* Me encanta conocer historias de Latinoamérica con el apoyo de traducciones y con la habilidad de bajar la velocidad. Me siento más conectada con este parte del mundo a través el app. Recomiendo este app a todas las personas que quieren aprender español y ser una persona más informada. ### 5/5 — Impressed and grateful! *2025-04-29, version 12.0.0* I'm an intermediate Spanish speaker who's found herself in Mexico City often these days. I've struggled to keep up with excited conversationalists. This app is just hit the spot for what I need. It's also a great refresher. It's obvious the team's spent countless hours curating and coding this beautiful collection. Radio Ambulante is also worth checking out. Mil gracias a todos! ### 5/5 — Highly Recommend *2025-02-22, version 12.0.0* I had listened to Lupa and Radio Ambulante in the early days and love how this all morphed into Jiveworld. The multimodal method and user-friendly logistics are the best. It really covers much ground in it’s approach. Daniel Alarcón narrates with a clear, steady voice while native Spanish speakers with varied accents tells their stories. ### 5/5 — Supercharges Your Listening Comprehension *2025-01-31, version 12.0.0* If you don’t understand Spanish on the phone, or if you can’t understand movies without subtitles, this app will help you SO MUCH. You get to listen to really interesting stories from across the globe with many different accents. My favorite part is that you can toggle stories to show just some of the words, so you can kind of read along, but you cannot fully understand unless you are specifically listening. Then you can do another run through with the words hidden. I was struggling to find an app that wasn’t geared just toward beginners, and this was such a pleasant surprise. I wish it had been around when I learning Spanish in high school—I would have loved and breathed this app. It is well worth the money in my opinion. Teachers—this would be AWESOME for your classroom. It can be difficult to make primary source material accessible to students and Jiveworld does it so well. ### 5/5 — The best! *2024-09-18, version 11.0.0* I’ve tried a bunch of different apps. So far, this is definitely one of my favourites. It is really effective in exposing you to real Spanish, enhancing fluency and understanding. The platform is well formatted and you can adapt it to a way that suits your level! ### 5/5 — Fantastic. Perfect. Most helpful Spanish app ever. *2024-06-08, version 8.1.0* This app is unbelievably good. It is perfect; effective beyond description in getting to fluency in Spanish comprehension, especially from oral conversation. I think that is the most difficult part of becoming fluent. And Jiveworld is the most helpful program by far for achieving that of anything that I have encountered in my years of involvement with Spanish. Not just the best app: the best program of any kind. The design of it, the technology, the features, the content, everything about it is absolutely superb. I have seen such improvement in my comprehension abilities in a modest amount of time by working with this app over and over. I am better each new week than I was the week before. You really will be amazed by the results you’ll see from using this app regularly. From regularly using this,I have now begun conducting business meetings with Spanish- speaking clients without an interpreter. All the grammar and vocabulary in the world could not, alone, facilitate that; not without the listening and comprehension skills that Jiveworld provides. If, like me, you don’t have the ability to go live in a Spanish speaking country, this is by far the best way to obtain the benefits of doing that. And when I have needed technological or other assistance, the support staff have been amazingly prompt and helpful and nice.This is a top-shelf app and a top-shelf operation. For the things it focuses on, nothing anywhere in the market even approaches it. ### 5/5 — Amazing UX for Advanced Learners *2024-03-16, version 8.1.0* Great UX and content for intermediate to advanced learners. Compared to other major learning apps, you can practice without any speaking requirement and download offline when commuting. Content is a more advanced level and offers both visual/audio learning ### 5/5 — The best intermediate/ advanced Spanish app *2024-02-28, version 8.1.0* If you feel like you have been stuck at an intermediate level forever, this is the app for you. I bought a one year subscription and I’ve used the app everyday for 17 days! The app allows you to slow down the rate, look up vocabulary words, re-listen, and then listen in normal time. It tracks your progress daily and motivates you to keep going. The stories are engaging, heartfelt, and insightful. I also love how they feature accents from all Spanish-speaking countries. Best $100 I’ve ever spent. ### 5/5 — This app is the best *2024-02-20, version 8.1.0* I have tried every app I could get my hands on, paid or free to improve my Spanish . This app is by far the best, it’s not even close. Radio ambulante is such a great podcast and this app really helps me drill difficult vocab and pronunciations. ### 5/5 — Best fluency app for Spanish *2023-09-15, version 8.0.0* This app is so smart, so tuned to the learning needs of intermediate and advanced Spanish learners and so savvy about learning I can’t believe it’s FREE. The stories are great, really great, and the ability to slow, follow along via transcript and then listen again without prompts is genius! ### 5/5 — A wonderful app for intermediate and advanced learners *2023-07-28, version 7.0.0* This app is special because of the Soundbites I consider myself an advanced student and believe I have outgrown most apps. I take lessons with native speakers online a couple of times a week and generally go around listening to podcasts in Spanish including Radio Ambulate. I understand what the journalists are saying but often get lost with the interviewees. That’s where the Soundbites come in! They are carefully chosen snippets of the story featuring difficult pronunciation or interesting grammatical structure or a piece of cultural context. They are short and fun and motivating. You can listen at different speeds, reveal and hide the words and review a vocabulary list. You get explanation of patterns used with similar examples. They require little time commitment and I return to them every day. The Soundbites alone are worth the price but then you also get the whole stories if Radio Ambulante broken into segments, analyzes and explained. I highly recommend this app. It’s the one you will actually use and improve your Spanish while learning interesting things and having fun. ### 5/5 — Jiveworld Español *2023-07-27, version 7.0.0* This app (along with the amazing Radio Ambulante podcast it is connected to) is the main reason my comprehension of spoken Spanish has improved so quickly. The stories are fascinating, the adaptable learning method is great for reinforcement, and the producers do an amazing job explaining patterns, quirks, colloquialisms, etc. Best method I’ve ever encountered for improving oral comprehension! ### 5/5 — The best! *2023-07-27, version 7.0.0* Jiveworld is an amazing application to improve your language acquisition skills! The application allows you to learn by interacting with world-class podcast content. I have appreciated the recent addition of Soundbites, which are a great way to start my morning learning Spanish. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — App collapses *2020-05-09, version 3.0.3* The app is not functioning. When I open it there is no menu and if I click on the app it closes itself and returns to iPhones home screen ### 2/5 — Nice concept but hate having to *2022-10-23, version 5.5.2* I was super excited to download this app to help improve my comprehension of Spanish speakers in a traditional native setting since I’m currently working towards a language certificate in Spanish. The only mishap is that you have to download the stories if you want to see the transcript and follow along closely. You have the option to view on the Radioambulante site, but you’re not given the chance to see the text, and when you’re learning, reading is essential. I would also like the option to still be able to listen outside of the app so that I can multitask. ### 3/5 — Too expensive *2023-03-30, version 7.0.0* Love this app but can’t use it due to the cost. Also just wish the audio didn’t sound so weird when slowed down to .8x. Suggestion: look in to newer audio tech like r8brain which can produce good audio stretching without sacrificing battery life. ### 3/5 — Super buggy *2022-04-17, version 5.4.3* I really like this app but the save vocab feature is super buggy. In one lesson I was trying, after the first word to my vocab list, no other words would work. I restarted the app which wiped my progress on that lesson and tried again. Still no luck. ### 3/5 — Does not work well on iPad *2021-09-13, version 5.1.1* Every time I have used this app recently on my iPad Pro, it causes displays of other apps such as Amazon to not function properly. I finally deleted this app from my iPad and reinstalled the other affected apps to correct this problem. ### 3/5 — One obvious annoyance *2020-10-27* There should be a way to play the entire episode at a slower speed. I hate that it stops every 2-3 minutes. I really want to try to understand the story, but full speed is just too fast. And stopping every few minutes just doesn’t give me a chance to immerse. I like the idea of breaking up the episodes to learn and practice after listening to the whole episode but I really want to hear the whole story at 80 percent or 70 percent. The closest I can do through the podcast app is 50 percent and that’s just too slow. I love the stories though. I’m just not sure about this learning method. Also, it’s hard to click for vocabulary. Maybe there should just be a set list that we are quizzed on after. **Developer response:** Thank you for the feedback. We're working on the web version of Lupa for which we're designing some improvements that I think you will like. Meanwhile, you can try a podcast app like PocketCasts that gives you more control over speed if you just want slow playback in full. Do try stick with the method, and you will see results — we get feedback everyday from customers who've had incredible success in their listening (and everything else that grows from listening fluency). It works! ### 4/5 — Almost perfect *2025-07-17, version 13.5.6* This is a fantastic app that’s helped me a lot in my Spanish-learning journey. There app itself has a few frustrating bugs that I’m listing here to hopefully help improve the app, because I think it has the potential to be life changing for Spanish-learners everywhere! 1. When reviewing vocab words from a story, the audio is sometimes cut off at the beginning so you can’t actually hear the word or phrase you’re reviewing if it’s at the start of the sentence. 2. Sometimes the app goes nuts and dozens of voices start speaking at once. The only way to stop it is to kill the app, and you often lose your progress on a chapter or vocab review. 3. Sometimes the app forgets your progress in chapters or when you’re reviewing vocab. It’s frustrating to have to review 30+ words you’ve already got down. ### 4/5 — I like it, but it’s missing something. *2024-06-28, version 11.0.0* I learn a lot from this app, especially the way natives say certain things. I also use it as a form of intensive listening to improve listening comprehension. That being said, I wish this app had the option to keep replayable sections looped. If I want to replay a section continuously, I have to keep pressing the button; this impedes the flow of my dictation sessions, making an already cognitively taxing activity more cumbersome. Besides the aforementioned, I like this app; but there are other apps that do what I’d like JiveWorld to do, so hopefully they can implement that change. ### 4/5 — Promising approach to language learning *2023-11-15, version 8.0.0* The tools provided here for listening in Spanish seem—during my first day of trying them—ingenious and likely effective aids for facilitating language comprehension. And the stories themselves are interesting and various. Unfortunately, many or most of the stories include a constant backdrop of music during speech. For a low-intermediate Spanish learner like me, this is a bit distracting and makes it harder to focus on the language comprehension challenge. Musical overlay might not bother speakers with a better grasp of the language; and of course conversation often takes place in conditions of noise and random music. Still, imposing these non-language difficulties probably doesn’t promote language skills—and may be distracting for many. I suspect that the music is just the app’s concession to using material designed (by the NPR show) for other reasons … such as entertaining more fluent speakers, rather than training better listeners, and has no teaching rationale. ### 4/5 — Auditory processing and vocabulary boost! *2022-10-21, version 5.5.2* So far I’ve loved this podcast, transcript, app to help Spanish fluency. You can limit the words on the transcript while listening to increase difficulty or slow down the speaker to make it easier. Although, the quality is much worse if you slow down the natural speed of the recording. There are tidbits about specific irregular phrases and grammar which help to understand native speakers. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — favorite learning app *2026-06-13, version 13.5.6* the best ### 5/5 — Best app I’ve used for learning Spanish *2026-06-11, version 13.5.6* Not for absolute beginners, but once you have a grasp of the foundations, this is excellent. You can listen at whatever speed you like, target to individual sentences at a time, view full translations as well as key words and phrases, can listen with a transcript or without or even with part of one. Most importantly, you get to hear wonderful stories. ### 5/5 — Effective *2026-05-31, version 13.5.6* I ditched Duo for JiveWorld because I needed something to boost my listening skills. The stories are real, represent multiple accents from around the world, and are engaging. Listening at .8 speed, being able to study at my pace, and chunking sound bites allows me to use the app in a way that is most effective for me. I consider JiveWorld the most effective part of my practice - which includes a tutor twice a week, listening to other sources, book reading, and studying. I would recommend for anyone who is serious about developing listening skills. ### 5/5 — Great! *2026-03-04, version 13.5.6* Really awesome stories and great for listening, actually really enjoy getting to do this activity for learning Spanish ### 5/5 — Listening comprehension for intermediate adult learners *2026-01-20, version 13.5.6* At last. A program geared for intermediate learners who can read Spanish but can’t comprehend the spoken word. Fantastic, in-depth feature stories, carefully researched and crafted by NPR-sponsored journalists, kept me coming back EVERY DAY. Not only am I learning to listen, I’m also learning so much about multiple Latino countries and cultures. What a pleasure!!! ### 5/5 — Critical for comprehension practice *2026-01-07, version 13.5.6* Although I’m a fluent Spanish speaker in my 40s who learned Spanish since age 6 via an immersion school, I am still not at native proficiency. Part of that is due to how difficult listening comprehension can be. But thanks to JiveWorld, I’ve been slowly chipping away at my comprehension obstacles for months now. This is such an incredibly important app for proficient and fluent speakers who want to take their Spanish to the ultimate level. ### 5/5 — An essential resource for learning Spanish *2025-11-29, version 13.5.6* Once you become a more advanced Spanish speaker, there are limited resources to help you polish your skills. Jiveworld offer a solution by allowing you to listen to real voices from different countries with different levels of support. ### 5/5 — Listening skills will be leveled up with this app! *2025-11-16, version 13.5.6* This app will level up your listening skills immensely if you use it regularly and are an intermediate level learner. Would recommend to anyone who is a serious dedicated Spanish language learner. ### 5/5 — Best Language Learning App I have found! *2025-09-20, version 13.5.6* And I have looked into many over the last year of learning Spanish. This is by far the best. Very well thought out and structured with great stories with different methods of introducing and reinforcing. I have taught ESL for many years and I can see how they took great care in putting this together. ### 5/5 — I feel like I’m learning like an adult *2025-08-31, version 13.5.6* Listening to immersive, real stories, with repetition, has re-captured my sense of pre-Internet wonder. Not only am I learning a new language, but my attention span is back, and my curiosity to really hear others’ experience is growing with each lesson. --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-07-31.*