Duolingo: interface changes and tech support

[redbird]

A couple of days ago, Duolingo (on the web) went from expecting me to enter my answers either with a keyboard or via "word bank," saving its state from my previous session, to word bank only. Last week, if I was using the keyboard it would occasionally offer "use word bank" and vice versa.

kaberett posted about this on their journal, so I knew it wasn't just something about my settings. After poking around the "help" pages, I put in a tech support request, asking them to either go back to making keyboard the default; make keyboard/word bank an option on the "settings" screen; or at least put back the use keyboard/use word bank at the bottom of individual questions.

Tech support sent me a poorly written reply (below) and, better, when I logged in earlier today, they seemed to have reverted the changes.

"You may see some changes when translating from your learning language to your base/UI language. We removed the toggle when translating from learning language to base language, but you can still type your answer on web. Simply start typing and the word in the word bank will be automatically highlighted. You still should be able to type in your learning language. You will see a toggle for the keyboard to type free-form in the learning language."

I'm posting this here in case it's useful to other people, or if I want it in a few days.

I'm passing it along in case they fixed my defaults, and nobody else's.

Comments

[otter]

I haven't been on Duolingo in a year or two, but I remember well enough that I prefer typing to word bank myself. Thank you for contacting tech support.

[lauradi7dw]

For languages I do on the laptop, it is now allowing me to type in French and Spanish, but gives me the wordbank for English (if you start to type the word, it jumps up from the word bank to the answer line).
I use the app on the phone for languages with a different alphabet. I think I learn less, because it becomes multiple choice, but it means that I don't have to mess with different keyboard mapping.

[redbird]

The phone app became a lot less frustrating after I told my iPhone to enable a French keyboard, and I was taking advantage of the autocomplete. It does mean I am offered French words as autocomplete when I'm texting or posting something in English, but so it goes.

I switched Duolingo from French to German a couple of months ago, and there are a lot fewer special characters in German.

[kaberett]

It appears to be fixed for me too! HURRAH AND THANK YOU.

[ethelmay]

I had no idea this was a changeable thing. I thought you just got what they gave you. Typically I get some questions where I have to type in the answer, and some with a word bank. I can tell it that I "can't listen now" or "can't speak now" and shut those options off for a bit, but that's it.