old features i would love back...

[sammyharxx]

Does anyone remember the feature where you could "talk" to one of the cartoon people? I think it was like an AI but this was years ago! Maybe even before the pandemic? I thought that feature was soooo cool but they removed it pretty quickly.
Getting rid of the words tab online was a huge error- it was so helpful for learning if you wanted to write stuff down, make flashcards etc outside of duolingo.
I am not really even too bothered about the tree and the path works for me but I do miss crowns! It would be nice to have the option to have the tree back and switch between both.

I just wanted to post this because I never see anyone talk about that chat section that used to be on the app- sometimes I think I made it up.

What are some features you want back? The most forgotten about the better!

[Saperlipopette!]

The Duolingo dictionary is something I really missed. If a vocab word was part of the lesson you could look it up and get most of the sentences used in that lesson with that vocab word. This was especially useful if a) you didn't get any sentences, or maybe one sentence with the vocab word in your lessons, or the hearts practices when the lessons were live or b) the lesson was not evident from the vocab word. They did away with this before the snake.

The second were the checkpoint practices. For instance a checkpoint six practice would give me eighteen challenges from one skill between 6.08 Career and 7.15 Adventure. They could give me a section six quiz or section five quiz and what not. They removed this from the app first then got rid of it in all mediums in moving to the snake.

I liked having a short bio on my profile but I also saw how that was abused so I don't fault Duo for getting rid of it. They got rid of that a few years ago.

Sometimes I miss being part of leagues in Duo for schools and sometimes I don't. They were an interesting way to expand your horizon of friends. Now I think it is mostly done through friends of friends. The competition I don't miss and I wasn't a part of it for the last year I was in leagues, except for staying out of the demotion zone. But I think the motivation that came from leagues is now replaced by the cooperative Friends Quest and the self-competitive daily quests.

[SansEspoir]

Well... The TREE!!!!! And forums.

But didn't they also use to have a way to show you how well you did on each circle in the tree?

[SweNedGuy]

This blog : How to make a Gold Duolingo Tree describes Duolingo by the end of 2014. This was before crowns were introduced to the tree. Skill strength was a meaningful indicator back then. Strength lost its significance after the introduction of crowns and ended up being counterproductive. By now it is obsolete, since the snake/path has removed the spaced repetition system of cranking up experience while gaining more crowns per skill. DL Staff will try to make their point that repetition is now ingrained into the path... prove it! That's not what we see when observing the increase in DuoMe of crown totals and their distribution among skills supposed to be equivalent to path progress.

Not everything was better before? Perhaps not, but I don't see the point in paying an extended staff just to deteriorate the learning experience of the vast majority of users.

[Corinnebelle]

I miss individual lessons for reviews.

[Ama Noir]

Well... The TREE!!!!! And forums.

100% agree!

[rudi]

Well... The TREE!!!!! And forums.

Yes. The path doesn't work for me. Seems as if everybody needs different cycles for repetition.
And I miss the tips&notes a lot. Without it, grammar is only guessing and needs wayyy longer to learn. Learning like a child is not the most efficient way. But mother nature couldn't do better because she didn't know about exercise books and pens. But that doesn't mean children's learning is perfect.

[sagetm]

DL Staff will try to make their point that repetition is now ingrained into the path...

As far as I see the new repetition system really sucks. The have some lessons a the couple of last topics and practice lessons that also touch just a couple of last topics. So if you don't do the heart practice or the challenges, this system slowly renders your past skills obsolete.

Also, even though there are no limited hearts in my region right now because you can't basically pay for super Duolingo (thanks to DL staff for that), I miss the times when there were no hearts. Someone can argue that hearts make you repeat previous lessons and stuff, but you can't actually choose what topic you want to practice (not after the new path update at least, which made repeating previous lessons require hearts for some reason last time I checked, and that also makes absolutely no sense to me) so you are most likely to practice some unrelated stuff and continue to make the same mistakes again and it doesn't even let you finish your lesson, which can get really frustrating and make you want to quit DL. I know DL is a free app and requires money to exist, but I think this system could be implemented in much more better and thoughtful way than it was.

Also, this is not really a feature, but still, I see some courses switching from the grammar-based lesson approach to a topic-based approach, which I don't really like that much. In example the old vietnamese course had skills where you practice some grammar topic to a full extent and the new one, as far as I've seen, is like "going to cafe" or similar stuff, where grammar is being introduced too slowly. I see a lot of old courses with the grammar approach and courses with a high rate of updates having a topic-based approach so I guess it is common stuff for Duolingo. Like the most bare example of the topic-based approach, as I see it, is the German course, which while being quite an annoying course overall introduces grammar so slowly and inconsistently that the whole course becomes nothing more than a side practice and requires you to learn a lot from another resources (I know Duolingo is not a sufficient resource to learn a language but hooly mother of God not to that extent). Well, on the other hand, the Spanish course has a somewhat similar approach but it is much more useful for learning, so, I guess, it depends on how it is being implemented.

Also, yeah, forums and tips and notes, as it was mentioned before. Removing both of them have literally made 90% of the courses a puzzle game, which is not the kind of genre I expect when downloading a language learning app. It may be not that noticeable for now, but if Duolingo is going to stick to updating old courses without adding tips and notes I can guarantee that a lot of courses without preserved comments will become a bunch of puzzle games, where you will have to come up with grammar explanations for yourself making them even less sufficient for language learning. I know Duolingo had to pay for forum servers, but the at least could keep the comments.

Next is the old tree. I've mentioned some problems with the path before but ehh, it gets worse. Technically, as I see, path nerfed progressions and now you get to the crown level of three in the tree equivalent on the skills which is also lame IMO. It makes you do much more word-tapping than typing, which is not very good to memorize the words and stuff.

Also I miss the times when there was no match two challenge for popular courses. It totally needs more rework than it had for now, otherwise it is going to stay the comically unfair minigame that requires some kind of godly speedrunner skills from you. The golden lightning challenge (which is replaced by the match two) of course provided ridiculous amounts of XP for low effort which was unfair for the punishing ramp-up challenge but it at least was completable without having any supernatural abilities.

Furthermore, the times when there were volunteers creating and updating niche courses were nice, but as I know discontinuing the volunteer program was not the choice of Duolingo but result of some legal changes, so can't really blame them for that.

To sum it up: path bad, hearts bad, forums good.

[Saperlipopette!]

I don't know if I want this back, but here is a not so old feature that I think they junked...

The first-four-lesson-of-the-day-on-the-app scorecard.

[SansEspoir]

I don't know if I want this back, but here is a not so old feature that I think they junked...

The first-four-lesson-of-the-day-on-the-app scorecard.

Oh that was probably the only thing I liked on the app vs browser. If they scrapped it, it just goes to show, I did the right thing by uninstalling when they made the SnakePath mandatory.

[Thomas.Heiss]

Well... The TREE!!!!!

I did the right thing by uninstalling when they made the SnakePath mandatory.

Why don't you simply install an older Android app version to get the old tree design back?

Here is a comparison table for several versions: viewtopic.php?t=15622-differences-and-c ... p-versions

[Thomas.Heiss]

But didn't they also use to have a way to show you how well you did on each circle in the tree?

You mean the skill strength bar (25/50/75/100) from the 2016/17 pre crowm era where a skill (round circle) was gold when it was re-strengthened to 100%?

Exactly this is what Duome competition tables per course like www.duome.eu/en/pt or www.duome.eu/de/fr define as legend explanations at the top right corner and how many people have a "golden tree".

[SansEspoir]

Why don't you simply install an older Android app version to get the old tree design back?

Here is a comparison table for several versions: viewtopic.php?t=15622

Because I prefer using my computer, with a big screen and an actual keyboard. I only used the app for repetition on the go, like if I was stuck in traffic or something and figured it was better to do some duolingo than scroll facebook.
(And no, I'm not the driver, don't worry )

You mean the skill strength bar (25/50/75/100) from the 2016/17 pre crowm era where a skill (round circle) was gold when it was re-strengthened to 100%?

Exactly this is what Duome competition tables per course define as legends at the top right corner how many people have a "golden tree".

Yes. It was before my time on duolingo, but it looked like an excellent feature.

[Thomas.Heiss]

Because I prefer using my computer, with a big screen and an actual keyboard.

I hope I can get a 16" new Laptop one day.
I had some fun with my old 14" Laptop on the Duolingo Web portal because of FULL typing support (both Portuguese and English) in 2016-2018+.

But on a borrowed 15.6" 1080p Laptop screen I noticed that everything is too width. Text is more difficult to read from left to right.
And the new Duolingo website may only offer English word banks (or have they changed it again for EN prompts??) which are much more difficult to read left to right for my eyes on this 15.6" screen than by simply using my 6.67" 1080x2040 pixel smartphone with Super Amoled / Oled screen and super 1300 nits brightness.

Yes, I'm missing more typing with a good hardware keyboard on the Laptop, but the Portuguese or French paths are no option at the moment (maybe in 1.5-2.0 years when I'm finished with my tree) to test out of all units, by typing.
We have already noticed that later 5.65/5.69/5.7x Android app versions now make more forced use of word banks and don't allow as much free typing as the older app versions on the lower L2+L3 crown levels.

When I go outside my new Redmi Note 10 Pro phone from Xiaomi (2021) is much better readable than more simple Laptop screens based on IPS and which don't offer a satisfying brightness.

Something I need to watch out when I write the spec for a new Laptop!
Maybe I should get a nice OLED screen or something But I'm not on a real budget.

The later 11/12 series of Redmi seem to be using Flow Amoled displays which phone spec clearly say they don't offer 1300 nits anymore. Need to do more research.
Those newer displays might perform not so well than this Super Amoled display in my 10 Pro, not sure.
Super high brightness is for me the rescue if you want to go outdoors and want to use language apps when sun is shining.

[Madness]

Lots of good points mentioned here, and I agree with many of them.

I really liked the tree as well, as I could move on to a different skill if the topic of the previous one was hard to focus on, and I could then go back to that one once I felt more motivated. Now there's nothing I can do but force myself through an uninteresting skill to get to the next one, which is why I sometimes take pauses from one language completely.

There's a different thread for this: but the inability to choose writing for every sentence, even on web. I forgot the word, but DL forces you to pick up the words if you're doing an easy level. They introduced this to the mobile much earlier, which is why I often preferred the browser version as I learn so much better if I can write every word myself. But some time ago this came to the browser version as well, and it's so frustrating and slows down my learning process, or prevents it completely because I don't need to do any thinking anymore. No memorizing words and trying to find them from memory, when they are already there like on a tray. I do not like it, and wish I could choose to use the keyboard at any point I just want. I, also, cannot use the browser extensions as I don't have the motivation for learning to use them, and I still need the option to turn the keyboard off as it helps me a lot especially with the listening exercises. I sometimes can't make sense of some of the words, so I like it when I can think about it a little and then check the word bank (that was the word!) and look for a word that looks like the right one, going back to writing mode and hitting play, and the feeling of the mess of sounds making sense and forming into a word in my head. Then I write it down, or check from the word bank until I get the spelling right. When I only read but don't write, I just forget about everything in second and it's like I never saw that word, unless they give me the word so often I start to memorize it. (Sometimes the repetition is well done, but sometimes it happens way too often and starts to get on my nerves as I'd just like to move on.)

I also miss the ability to skip levels or skills with a test, also related to another thing I haven't seen a while and what I believe Duolingo recently got rid of: when getting 2 perfect lessons in a row, it would ask you if you want to skip to the next level/skill. I haven't had this one in a long time and I really wish I would, because sometimes it's 4 or more completely uninteresting lessons, or lessons that repeat a word I already learned, and have to do so many times. I wish they'd give the option to skip after 2 perfect lessons again. I haven't seen this on mobile nor web in a while now.
It's possible to skip units, but I wish there was a way to skip individual skills instead, as sometimes unit has things I want to learn and need to learn, which is why I can't pass the test for skipping the WHOLE unit, but the uninteresting to too easy content of the few skills is what keeps killing my motivation. With the old tree you could test levels and skills this way, and skip anything that felt like you were already good enough at.

And then of course I miss the tips and notes, as now it only has the key phrases but absolutely no grammar explanations, which means you should look for grammar info from elsewhere and it's difficult to find the exact kind of courses that will fit your learning style and preferences, and would be free and also good for learning. Related to this, I wish the forums were there because I'd often go there to read about things that were confusing me, as you often could find answers natives or others learning the language had written there.

[L-profile]

If Duo itself told me that it would make my wish come true, I would say that I would want a button in the settings that would enable the mode 'Type All Answers on a Keyboard'. That would be the greatest joy for me. What else? A tree where everything is organized into topics, user-friendly, great. Anything else? I'd also like a fix for all the bugs and flaws, which are so many. And why can't we listen to a word with the cursor now? And another great idea would be a button for a quiz that reveals what Duolingo users are happy or dissatisfied with, this feature would be new, but it's worth mentioning.

[L-profile]

Ah, yes, 'Tips and notes' was one of the most valuable things. It was hard to believe it was removed.