CharMap vs Vowel Practice
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
CharMap
Explore and manage Unicode characters with this utility. Organize favorites, view details, and copy characters to your clipboard. Use the custom keyboard to insert them anywhere and sync collections across devices.
- Browse curated character categories
- Organize favorite characters
- View character details and copy to clipboard
- Insert characters with custom keyboard
- Discover characters and blocks
- Sync collections across devices
- Preview system fonts
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CharMap allows to you discover, organize, and use unicode characters. FEATURES • Browse a collection of curated character categories, and organize your favourite characters into custom collections. • View character details and copy characters to the clipboard in a variety of formats. • Enable the CharMap keyboard to insert characters wherever custom keyboards are supported. • Discover unicode characters and blocks using a dedicated unicode browser. • Automatically sync your collections between devices. • Quickly access your custom collections using the collection widget. • Browse system fonts and view font metadata. • No ads, trackers, or analytics. Your data is stored on-device, and optionally synced across your private iCloud account.
Vowel Practice
Analyze spoken vowels by calculating and plotting their formant frequencies. Speak a word with a single vowel to see its graphical representation on a standard vowel diagram, with an indicator light showing the application's status. Useful for speech therapy, language learning, and research.
- Calculates formant frequencies
- Plots vowel locations on a diagram
- Analyzes spoken vowels
- Indicator light for status
- Assists speech therapy
- Supports language learning
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This application calculates and plots the formant frequencies of spoken vowels. The user should speak a word containing a single vowel, and we will analyze and show results. First two formant frequencies are used to graphically show the location of spoken vowel on a standard vowel diagram. An indicator light changes its color to display the status of the application. This is made to assist with speech therapy and language learning as well as other research topics.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: CharMap at Free against Vowel Practice's $7.99. CharMap also leads on rating (4.0 vs 1.0) and review sentiment (54% vs 18%). On update cadence, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
CharMap is free to download; Vowel Practice costs $7.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
CharMap holds the better App Store score, 4.0 against 1.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: CharMap has 57 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 54% of CharMap's written reviews are positive against 18% of Vowel Practice's.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 4 months. Both last shipped on November 1, 2026.
| Parameter | CharMap | Vowel Practice |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $7.99 |
| Rating | 4.0 (57 ratings) — better | 1.0 (1 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 53.7% of reviews — better | 18.2% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 57 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months | Every 4 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 28 MB | 1 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Conor Mulligan | William Entriken |
Customer experience
CharMap
Vowel Practice
Bugs and requests
CharMap
Reported bugs
12 issues- Characters omitted in other apps
- Keyboard looks like white rectangle in some apps
- Private Use Area characters not shown
- Collections feature quit working
- App crashes every time it's opened
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- App crashes on iPad Pro
- App crashes on iPad
- Everything gone after update
- App doesn't open after update
- Some symbols are not shown
- Keyboard not showing up immediately
- Preferences -> font closes app
Requested features
20 requests- Add return/enter key
- Batch add characters to collections
- Multi-font support
- Unicode 18.0 support
- Add Unicode 17.0
Show 15 moreShow fewer
- Ability to select characters with single click
- Add 'raised to the power of x' symbol
- Add superscripts in letter, equation, and inequality form
- Option to format characters (LTR/RTL)
- Make fonts usable in 'Unicode'
- Implement custom font API
- Search for character option
- Search by character name
- Add Sutton SignWriting block
- Add symbol search
- Update UI with SF symbols
- Add dark mode support
- Rename collections
- Backup and Restore collections
- Put collections on top of list when using as keyboard
Vowel Practice
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
CharMap
No in-app purchases
Vowel Practice
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is CharMap free?
Is Vowel Practice free?
Which has better reviews, CharMap or Vowel Practice?
Do CharMap or Vowel Practice have ads?
Which is updated more often, CharMap or Vowel Practice?
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