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.

Met a word in real life? Write it down and make it yours. A street sign, an email from work, a form at the doctor's. When a word stops you, put it in Scribo. Scribo fills in the meaning, the sound and an example. Then it brings the word back as a quick quiz right before you'd forget it, so it sticks without drilling. Save a word in seconds Type it, write it with your finger or Apple Pencil, or snap a photo. You can also share text from another app. Ten words make a step Your words line up on Home as a path. Finish a step's quiz and the next one opens. Keep separate word lists for work, daily life or an exam. Today's quiz, right on time Spaced repetition asks again just before you'd forget. A few minutes a day is enough. Only the words worth learning Paste an article or a YouTube link and AI picks the words worth learning at your level and mixes them into your steps. Only the ones you miss go into your word list. The sentence you met it in Every word keeps the sentence you found it in, and the meaning it had there. On iPad and Mac too On iPad, write with Apple Pencil and read the articles and videos you care about at your level. Sign in and your words follow you across iPhone, iPad and Mac. Free to start Save up to 50 words, then 10 a day, for free. Quizzes are always free. Scribo Pro gives you unlimited saved words and new readings, your full learning insights, and the freedom to switch the language you learn. Subscriptions renew automatically unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Terms of Use: https://scribo.cc/terms/ Privacy Policy: https://scribo.cc/privacy/