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Duolingo Used iPhone's Dynamic Island to Display Ads, Violating Apple Design Guidelines
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It’s ok, the twitter account will post a picture of the funny owl getting spanked and everything will be forgotten
Go nuclear. Remove their app from the store and pause updates for a month. The only language they speak is $ and they took a calculated risk.
Whilst this is bad, all sorts of apps, including apples own, are abusing the notifications system more broadly to display ads. Just got one over new years asking my to subscribe to apple fitness.
We need some way of controlling what notifications we see that is more granular than simply “off/on.”. Why do I have to endure this from every app I install. I should be able to forbid commercial offers.
Mind you, Apple profits from this. They get their 30% cut of subs. Hence they’ve been turning a blind eye for years.
We need some way of controlling what notifications we see that is more granular than simply “off/on.”. Why do I have to endure this from every app I install. I should be able to forbid commercial offers.
Mind you, Apple profits from this. They get their 30% cut of subs. Hence they’ve been turning a blind eye for years.
You quit Duolingo and justifies that because of an ad you never saw? Sheesh.
That is the most insane statement of 2026. You saying the same about political parties and people you disagree with?
It’s popular to bash it online. Nobody reasonable expects to learn a language entirely through one way. I use Duolingo for building vocab, Genki for writing practice, Anki for kanji, Pimsleur for speaking, podcasts and tv shows for listening.
The most important one out of all that for me? Duolingo. It got me excited to learn Japanese and made it fun. That is the only reason I stuck with it. Then I started adding other study materials.
No, it’s not a joke. It’s keeping me hooked (2100 day streak, family subscription). I started with French, can now have decent discussions in French, both vocal and in writing. I even started reading French books. Then started with incomprehensible Danish. Guess what, it does make sense and I can have a chat with anyone in Copenhagen, in Danish. Also using it to strengthen my English (I’m a Dutch native) and my german. Did give Arabic a try, but gave up. Recently starting Spanish, quite fun. And I do like their chess course. I’ve learned a lot from it - only that course already justified the costs).
I’m a full beta, I suck with language learning unless I have fun with it. There’s Duolingo. I did try several other methods but none managed to stick for more than 3 weeks.
Duolingo can do better though. The gamification jas become too much prio #1 whereas learning should be. All kinds of tricks to double or even triple your score aren’t helping. I totally ignore friends streaks but I do try to stay in the Diamond League as it pushes me to do 4 to 10 lessons a day.
Nah, I left because of the "AI first" kerfuffle and general direction of the company... as perceived by a customer... and some of the (more or less subtle) changes to the app, that - even for a paying customer - made the user experience worse...
This ad is just one more little hint that this isn't a good company for the customers, they seem to be overly focused on monetization and shareholder value.
Okay. I want to learn some Greek before travelling next year. What would you suggest?
Second Language Transfer. It’s astonishingly good, especially considering it was done by essentially one person, and it’s free.
Haha, I purchased Rosetta Stone (the lifetime package) and I hate to say I hate it but I really hate it. It is so boring, but more importantly sentences don’t get more complex than “a child is standing far away from the house” or “she is going to purchase some jewelry”. I will keep using it because I shelled out $190 but darn it. Lol.
From what I read it is a love hate situation, some people love Rosetta Stone and some hate it. I happen to be in the latter category, except I found out too late.
The reason why is because a lot of people... Especially young students who are not serious about language learning... They think they can simply learn a language fast—and by "fast," I mean "in less than a year" instead of actually working hard.
Regardless of which way you cut it, research has shown, on average, it takes ten years to fully master a language well.
A lot of people see these videos online where you can "learn a language in less than six months." Those aren't real.
A lot of people try to replace real language learning with Duolingo. While Duolingo isn't a bad resource for some things... Basic grammar and vocabulary... It will generally not suffice on its own for teaching a language.
The problem with Duolingo is that it's a "shortcut" when people don't want to work hard and actually learn a language. They think it'll solve their language-learning problems or that they'll get to skip real academic learning.
There are some things you cannot replace. AI cannot fully replace human beings for full and real conversations—not even now. (Not to mention AI conversation bots are really creepy...)
None of this is to say your own six years of language learning are invalid, but if you've been practicing for six years, you've likely been interacting with native language speakers at some level—not just playing games the entire time.
I've used Duolingo for years and it's not terrible. But I quit Super Duolingo recently because the app has so much focus on gamification, childish cartoons, and cringy snark. I'm trying out Babbel, which is pretty straightfoward. I'd love recommendations of other apps to learn Spanish from anyone who has used one they like.
Throwing dirt at Epic at every opportunity to protect the multi-trillion corporation, eh?
There is an important distinction between what Epic does and Duolingo is doing here. Apple sells apps and does not allow third party to sell apps. That's unequal treatment. Apple does not display ads on Dynamic Island and does not allow third party to display ads. That's equal treatment. Duolingo has no basis to sue.