Etch vs Scribo

Note: Etch's interface and its AI-generated definitions are in Chinese. It is built for Chinese speakers learning English. I built Etch because vocabulary never stuck for me. Words I looked up were gone the next day. My dictionary app held hundreds of saved words and not one of them had become mine. What I eventually understood is that the problem was not recall — it was writing. Reading a word ten times does less than writing it once. Psychologists call this the generation effect: producing the answer yourself leaves a far stronger trace than reading it. So Etch does one thing well. It makes you write the word. Capture without leaving what you're reading A Shortcut pulls the selected word in along with the sentence it appeared in. The sentence where you met the word is the sentence you'll see again at review time — words stripped of context are the hardest to keep. The entry fills itself in Pronunciation, definitions, example sentences, morpheme breakdown and common collocations arrive a few seconds after you add the word. Senses are ordered to fit the sentence you captured, rather than copied from a dictionary in fixed order. Review by writing, not by recognizing Write with a finger or Apple Pencil, get judged the moment you finish, and see letter by letter where you went wrong. Three modes: write from the meaning, write from the pronunciation, or fill the blank in a sentence. Recognizing a word is not the same as being able to write it — that difference is the whole point of Etch. Scheduling is handled for you Etch uses FSRS-5. It schedules each review from the word’s difficulty, stability, and current retrievability, aiming to bring it back as memory weakens rather than promising an exact moment of forgetting. One vocabulary across Mac and iPhone Capture on the Mac, review on the iPhone, progress syncs both ways. A home screen widget keeps today's words in front of you, and the ink darkens as you finish them. Etch is free, carries no ads, and does not sell your data. You can export your whole vocabulary at any time, and delete your account from inside the app.

Learn the language. Keep the knowledge. Paste a link to an article or video, add a PDF or ebook, or paste any text. Scribo rewrites it in the language you're learning, at your level, in sections you can finish in about five minutes. There's no placement test and no level to pick. Scribo works out your level from what you do and writes the next piece to fit. Learn from what you care about Start from the articles, videos and books you actually want to understand, not a fixed course. Long books come in parts, so nothing is too long to begin. Get unstuck without leaving the page Tap any word to see what it means and save it with one tap. Select a sentence you don't follow and Ask Scribo about it. Make it yours At the end of a section, answer one question in your own words, typed or spoken. Putting it into words is what makes it stay. Practice in a few minutes a day Practice brings back the words you saved right before you'd forget them, and mixes in building sentences, listening to lines from your videos, speaking and writing. When you speak or write, Scribo shows what to fix and how it would sound more natural. Save words from anywhere Write a word with Apple Pencil, type it, point your camera at a page, or share it from another app. Scribo fills in the meaning and examples. A model of you that keeps growing Scribo measures five skills (reading, vocabulary, listening, speaking and writing) from what you actually do, maps the fields you learn in, and describes how you learn. That picture decides how your next piece is written. Free to start Scribo Pro gives you unlimited new readings, unlimited saved words, your full learning insights, and the freedom to switch the language yous renew automatically unless canceledat least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Terms of Use: https://scribo.cc/terms/ Privacy Policy: https://scribo.cc/privacy/