# Transparent Language Online — user reviews > 66 indexed App Store user reviews of Transparent Language Online by Transparent Language, Inc., rated 4.80/5 from 1,176 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/transparent-language-online/id1424518564/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/transparent-language-online/id1424518564.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 1,034 · 4★ 109 · 3★ 16 · 2★ 7 · 1★ 10 ## What do users think of Transparent Language Online? Overall sentiment: positive **Pros** - 💻 Comprehensive language learning platform - 🎓 Effective teaching methods - 🆓 Free with library card - 🌐 Wide range of languages available - 🔄 Helpful review and refresh features - 🎨 Logical and organized lessons - 🎙️ Good pronunciation practice **Cons** - 🐞 Bugs and technical issues - 🖥️ Outdated and sluggish app interface - 📝 Rigid typing and input requirements - 🗣️ Unreliable speech recognition - 🤔 Questionable course structure and progression **Commonly reported bugs** - App crashes during pronunciation activities - Microphone access issues on iPhone - Unresponsive and slow performance - Incomplete or distorted content display - Inconsistent syncing and progress tracking **Most requested features** - Save vocabulary from lessons for review - More engaging and interactive UI - Improved speech recognition and feedback - Flexible answer acceptance for phrases - Better alignment between lesson content and language fundamentals ## Newest reviews (18 of 66) ### 4/5 — 1000 times better than Duolingo *2026-08-28* Have been able to learn a lot with no distractions or social pressure. Love the way it is designed to teach a beginner. My only gripe is that the app was working fine for the past year but the latest iOS 26.6.1 update did something and now it is glitchy, painfully slow and can not be recommended until devs fix it. ### 4/5 — Simple yet effective *2026-07-11* After seeing my local library offered this app I decided to try it. Compared to other language apps, I love how it offers more languages dialects that can be studied and really drags out you fixing your mistakes until you learn them. UI feels old but it works for me! ### 4/5 — Could easily be 5 ⭐️ *2026-06-29, version 1.4.0* Transparent rocks. The only thing that disappoints is the keyboard. If it could use the native iOS keyboard that would be stellar. Even still, this is only a minor blemish on its overall functionality. ### 4/5 — Adventures in Linguistics-Ready to Fly! *2026-03-31* I am loving Transparent Language lessons and grateful for the library offering. It’s been empowering to learn so quickly and have so many options. Whether brushing up on French or learning new and exciting skills like Dakota or German, it’s always easy and adventurous! The only thing I would improve upon is the continuity between language learning and the navigation of some of the lessons. It gets a little confusing at times. ### 4/5 — Almost the best *2026-02-28, version 1.3.8* I’m using this app to study Chinese. I wish I could save words from the grammar lessons as vocabulary to review. That’d make it 5 stars for me. But it’s great !! Feels more like lessons than other language apps ### 3/5 — Recording volume on iOS *2026-01-30, version 1.3.7* I cannot get the microphone to catch anything in the app so I am unable to see if my pronunciation is correct. ### 5/5 — Free with a library card *2025-10-19, version 1.3.5* A great free language learning app if you have a library card. ### 4/5 — Good to Refresh *2025-10-12, version 1.3.5* I learned introductory-conversational ASL in college, and since have lost a lot of it from not being able to practice. There are some great YouTube videos out there, but I really needed a way to quiz myself to build my vocabulary back up. This app has been perfect for that! Only downside is that I don’t know how great it would be to learn from zero knowledge of a language. At least with the ASL section, they use the same stock sentences over and over, so I wish there was more variety that felt like it really tested what I know. With the same material over and over, it feels more like memorization. The refreshing stale vocab does help with this to see if it makes it stick, and for a free language app from the library, I’m pretty happy with it. ### 5/5 — Love *2025-08-24, version 1.3.2* This is easy and free ### 5/5 — So much better than Duolingo *2025-08-21* I’m only on day three but everything just feels so much more logical. I joined with my library card, and to think the previous platform wanted over $100 a year, claiming it could be split between six people, but if I’m sharing an app with somebody I don’t expect them to pay me for it. My sister was kind enough to offer but neither one of us really enjoyed it and absolutely hated the pressure of the duo practically fainting when I was just in there two hours ago. Nobody needs that kind of pressure when they’re not even actually in the app. This feels more like a Spanish class, and I am grateful to the developers. ### 5/5 — Love it!!! *2025-07-23* Recently switched over from Duolingo due to its new AI First approach. Even besides that it had other issues. My dad downloaded Transparent for me, and I have to say, this app is so much better than Duo in so many ways. I’m actually genuinely motivated and excited to get on Transparent each day. I love the pronunciation practice exercises (learning Italian, gotta work on rolling those ‘r’s haha) and even though it doesn’t have a colourful game-y UI, I’ve had more fun on this than I ever did on Duolingo! Also, the fact that there is an ASL course is so exciting for me!!!! I’ve wanted to learn ASL for almost my entire memorable life, but never really had a way to do so, and now I do!! Overall, amazing app, and it’s cool that you can connect it to your library card. ### 5/5 — Great for Michif! *2025-07-17* I’ve been trying to learn some Michif for a while now but wasn’t getting anywhere. I have just started with the app, but already feel further ahead in a week than I was over the past couple of years. The vocab of Michif can be tough to learn, but the review mechanisms and frequency seem remarkably effective. I really like the vocabulary “fresh” day count to help guide reviews. The audio content is good and the activity variety seems effective for learning. I’m also impressed with the number of sequential lessons. Looking forward to where I will be after 75 lessons! Thanks. ### 5/5 — Awesome free service *2025-07-16, version 1.3.1* It could use a minor refresh, though, like teaching me phrases about using travelers checks. Nobody uses travelers checks anymore. But there’s a whole ton of useful phrases overall. ### 5/5 — Post-breakup *2025-06-30* After duo started using AI for the voices and fired all the voice actors I immediately renounced them, putting me back in the market for an affordable language programme. Thank you so much for being accessible and for keeping the human element alive. ### 3/5 — Videos glitchy and too small *2025-06-01, version 1.3.0* The videos are glitchy and they are too small to see the signing clearly (for the ASL course) ### 5/5 — One of the best language apps I’ve used *2025-04-07* I’ve used a lot of different language learning apps out there, but this is by far the best one I’ve used. First off, connecting it with my library card, is a really nice feature. I really like how the lessons are set up, it really helps me to actually learn new vocabulary. I personally also like the different ways of learning, like the spelling at the end of each lesson, and the matching. I can also appreciate the vocab trainer , that I can always come back to. All in all, I will be using this app from now, and I am so grateful that it exists. ### 5/5 — Learning Sign Language 😊 *2025-04-02* I’m so grateful that this software is available through our libraries. It’s easy, it’s fun and I’m glad I’m finally getting around to reaching one of my lifelong goals of learning another language. Thanks to you guys!! ### 5/5 — Great platform *2025-02-07, version 1.2.8* I love that my library provides this for free. Such a great way to brush up on my French! ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Produce and write sections *2026-08-04, version 1.4.0* Once I spell the word or phrase correctly it does not allow me any time to write it out I there needs to be an option to click next to continue I should not have to screenshot each to finish writing the languages please fix this immediately ### 1/5 — One word at a time *2026-04-13* It’s basically flash cards and clunky tests. Boring, incredibly slow, and fractured learning. It’s Duolingo without the moronic sentences. I actually feel Ive learned maybe 10% the pace I did with Rosetta Stone and with about 5% of the content value. So disappointed my library bought a contract with them instead of Rosetta Stone. ### 1/5 — Honestly, mostly decent *2023-04-24, version 1.1.7* Great content and functionality on the website, but the app just fails to deliver. None of the practice games function. It just tells me I’ve completed it already ### 1/5 — Unhelpful *2022-12-03, version 1.1.6* When doing the produce and write it for Russian when giving incorrect answers and correct answers offered are partially transliterated and unclear so essentially bloody useless!!!! And confusing HOW was such incompetence allowed to in designing this app I cannot fathom ### 1/5 — Maddening. *2022-08-07, version 1.1.5* I so want to love this app and wish I did, but from both a course structure and a technical standpoint I am finding it maddening. Fifty languages? Steep discounts for a year long sub? I want to love this so much. Up front I'll say 1) I'm an experienced linguist who already speaks four languages fluently and has studied numerous others & 2) I suspect that the courses I tried (Welsh and Estonian) are among the least well developed. That said, the fact these languages are even offered is what made me excited to try the system, and it's not really a good excuse for what's poor here. I'm not a natural linguist, but I've worked hard and learned-how-to-learn, so I'm pretty confident saying my issues with this course are not because I haven't tried hard enough or don't understand how languages work. Technically: I hate the inbuilt keyboard, it's laid out differently to the inbuilt (and very good!) iPad keyboard, so I make typos way too easily; this wouldn't be so bad except that one is immediately penalised for any typo (in assessments, you hit one (1) wrong letter, you just failed that question). The alternative is to use the easy keyboard, which means a set of letters from which you pick one, except the letters move around between keystrokes even if a word has an oo or ee in it. Woe betide you try and hit one letter twice, you just failed that exercise. (Especially annoying in some contexts which I'll cover in the course structure part.) Overall, the site works okay-ish most of the time, but the app is maddeningly slow, and audio often doesn't come up for a ridiculously long time. I've tried both the online and offline versions of the app, you'd think having the course downloaded locally would help, but you'd be wrong. Also, it's a relatively minor point in the scheme of things, but the whole thing is just very dry. There's very little to capture one's imagination. Pretty graphics and funny sentences are not the most important thing, but I know from experience that anything that makes things more vivid, more interesting, gives more things for my brain to latch on to, is going to lead to me learning the target language faster and more deeply. Course structure: For starters, combined with the absolutely terrible keyboard, there are multiple exercises that require you to type a response in English, and guess what, one typo? You just failed that exercise. This is not conducive to learning, it's conducive to me wanting to throw something. The learning curve seems... singular. I appreciate that it appears the aim is to provide me with useful phrases first, but without context or much background knowledge on which to hang what I'm learning, sometimes it's just overwhelming. I need a little more time than two lessons of very basic stuff before I'm going to absorb jällenägemiseni, much less be able to type it correctly on a keyboard that's actively working against me. I've not explored enough to be sure, but it feels like the courses have been written to get X vocab & phrases in, rather than in a way to make sense for teaching this specific language. Similarly, in Welsh I'm getting phrases which I'm 99% sure are in the conditional when I haven't even been exposed to that verb (or many verbs at all) in the basic present tense. I know from study elsewhere that that's not particularly hard in Welsh, so why am I not being taught it? The quest for "useful" language seems to have badly impacted the ability to, ya know, learn how to use the language. If I hadn't been studying Welsh for the last few weeks, I'm pretty sure I'd be hopelessly lost at this point. (I also find it frustrating that it's very, very straitjacketed in terms of the answers it will accept. It's one thing on an app like Memrise, which is explicitly for vocabulary learning, but for phrases it seems shortsighted. I'm less than a month into learning Welsh, and I already know two synonyms for "like" and for "want"; given how many dialects Welsh has and the north/south divide, it seems particularly strange to be so rigid. Similarly with Estonian, while my usable Estonian is very small indeed, I've already found a couple of areas where I know one phrase but TL insists on a different one.) I've just got to telling time in Estonian, and it's a case in point; I'm being taught phrases for "it's three in the afternoon" when I can't even count to ten yet. Hell, I can't count to five! The only Estonian numbers I know, I know from elsewhere. Being taught "it's 3pm, it's 10am" etc doesn't help me unless it's those actual times - I could learn these phrases perfectly, then be absolutely stumped because it's 4pm and I haven't been taught what four is yet. Yes, being able to say what time it is is important and more "useful" than counting to ten, but the former isn't much use if I can't do the latter. This kind of thing is littered all over both courses, & with Estonian in particular, it's frustrating beyond reason that one of the very few resources out there for learning the language has been structured by a drunk donkey and is being taught in an app that's actively trying to irritate me. I want so badly to love transparent language. I very much want to have fifty languages at my fingertips, voice recognition, useful phrases etc easy to access, but if these two courses are representative of the rest, I would rather not pay a not insignificant sum to be annoyed out of my mind and want to throw my iPad against the wall. I have limited energy to spend on languages, and if nothing else, the learning should be fun. I feel strongly at this point that I'd get more out of spending a couple of hundred quid on italki lessons. Frustrating, maddening, frankly a little saddening. I can only assume that other language courses are better structured, based on the generally positive reviews of the system, but unless it gets a hell of a lot cheaper or a hell of a lot better, it's not for me. ### 1/5 — Worst Language App *2022-06-30, version 1.1.5* This is terrible. It gives you some vocabulary with no explanation and drills you on it. That's the entire app. And you have to pay for it? I'm glad I only spent a dollar through humble bundle. ### 1/5 — Crashes, bugs, errors, server connection issues... *2020-10-07* That’s all this app is. Don’t waste your time with it. ### 1/5 — Doesn’t work *2020-07-04* It is a great idea but the servers keep going down after I record every time so it never works ### 1/5 — App crashes *2019-11-14* App crashes when I enable my mic after doing the testing phrase. Every time. ### 1/5 — Unusable *2019-10-24* You cannot type in the app to answer questions. It wants you to select each letter individually; however, the letters are not all on the screen and there is no way to scroll down. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Magnificent *2026-06-18* The thing I missed most about university: language classes. I appreciated Babbel for my own use, as someone who has facility in picking up languages. Babbel has its benefits in helping with acquisition of phonics and some vocabulary; I don’t perceive it as having much value as a resource for my kids in studying languages I don’t already speak. Transparent Language, on the other hand, has been a treat all around. I’m enjoying the systematic lessons in Spanish, which I’ve recently taken an interest in. And my kid and I are having a good time with both Irish and Spanish, working through them each at a similar pace. The exercises matching written words and sound recordings strike me as especially useful. Fun so far! ### 5/5 — Awesome and free! *2026-04-29, version 1.4.0* Free from your library and such a great app. My Spanish has gotten so much better. Use it daily ### 5/5 — Lessons *2026-04-19, version 1.3.9* The lessons are actually really enjoyable. Your lessons are better than in Duolingo. ### 5/5 — Can’t Recommend Enough! *2026-02-07* It’s literally the best language learning platform I’ve ever used!! I traditionally always used Duolingo, but when my librarian recommended Transparent Language, I gave it a shot! I never thought I’d make real progress, but thanks to Transparent Language, I’m strengthening my French and getting a REAL basis in Chinese and Italian. The possibilities are literally endless!! Can’t recommend enough!! ### 5/5 — Suggestions *2026-02-02, version 1.3.7* Hi. I am loving it so far. In the future please add British Sign Language and Japanese Sign Language please. ### 5/5 — Language Assistance for Beginners *2026-01-20* Transparent Language is good for beginners, offering learning practice through text explanations, audible pronunciations, and vocabulary guides. I have used it for assistance with Tagalog, Mandarin Chinese, and Thai, but more languages are available including Spanish, French, and others. ### 5/5 — Great App, happy my library gives me access *2026-01-20* This is way better than Duolingo imo and gives me the opportunity to learn with good information and reviewing info I already learned is great ### 5/5 — Best thing I ever had access to from my library *2026-01-09* I have been using the transparent app to learn French for the last six months as a beginner. I like their comprehensive approach and easy paced lessons. ### 5/5 — Surprising winner *2026-01-08* I’ve tried a lot of apps, including Duolingo, Memrise, Rosetta Stone. This one is the closest to feeling like you’re in a classroom. You learn, practice, review, and test reading, writing, speaking and listening for every unit where the words go together. Logical organization, great practices in every area with tons of review and hints if needed. This is how my brain learns. Impressed. ### 5/5 — Love this! *2025-10-28, version 1.3.6* Discovered I can download and utilize this app with my library card. Very grateful for this resource. I like the app & how easy it is to navigate. --- *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 2026-09-13.*