Android · 20 languages · in development
The English you meet at work, kept
You already read a foreign language all day — the standup thread, a notification, a page in a notebook, the label on something in front of you. VocNova reads it with you and turns what matters into cards worth studying.
You are on the list. We will write once, on the day it opens.
That does not look like an email address.
Something went wrong at our end. Try again in a moment.
Three ways a word gets in
From the messages you already read
Connect a chat account, or let VocNova read notifications from the apps you tick. It finds the words worth learning and writes the card — meaning, example sentence, pronunciation.
From a photograph
Point the camera at a page and every line becomes a card. Point it at your desk, your lunch or a street and it names what is in the picture — you tap the ones you want to keep.
By coming back
Cards return on the day you are about to forget them, and only then. A dozen ways to be asked — choosing a meaning, finding the word for one, judging a claim about it, spelling it, hearing it, typing it, placing it in the sentence you met it in — so a word is learned rather than recognised.
What it actually does
Reads your working day
Google Chat today, more to come, plus notifications from the apps you choose. Notifications are sifted on your phone first, so only the ones written in the language you are studying are sent at all.
A lock on the pages that need one
Write about your day in either language. Ordinary entries open with no PIN, like anything else in your account. Lock the ones you would not want read over your shoulder and they are sealed with a key made from a PIN that never leaves your phone — those we cannot open. Mark an entry and it is read back to you: how the things you wrote are usually said, and the words worth keeping, after your phone takes the numbers and addresses out and shows you exactly what goes.
Take & Learn
Photograph a page and get its list — named after what is on it, and the page itself kept in the folder so you can read back a word the reading missed. Photograph a room and get its nouns, marked on the picture so you can see which chair it means before you keep it.
Cards that arrive finished
A meaning in your own language, a definition in the one you are studying, a sentence that uses the word, and the sounds it makes.
Review that respects your time
Scheduling built on FSRS. Twenty due words on a Tuesday rather than four hundred on a Sunday.
Folders that hold a word twice
A word belongs to every topic it belongs to. File it under Meetings and Unit 4, study either, lose neither.
Twenty languages, both ways
Pick the language you think in and the one you are learning. Everything — every meaning, every example, every question — is written between those two.
Your messages stay yours
This app reads private conversations, so the answer to "where does that go" has to be short and checkable.
- Notification text is never written to our database. It passes through to be read for words and is discarded.
- Messages are held for about a week, and only until your devices have a copy. After that your phone holds the only one.
- Diary entries you lock are sealed on your phone with a key made from your PIN. We never receive the PIN, so we cannot read those — and there is no recovery if you forget it. Ordinary entries are protected like your messages, with a key we hold.
- A card can keep the one sentence its word was met in, as its example — that is your vocabulary, and it stays until you delete the card.
- The copy on your phone is encrypted, and backups are turned off.
- Verification codes, passwords and account numbers are thrown away on the phone, before anything is sent.
- No advertising, no tracking, no analytics on what you tap.
Questions people ask first
Is VocNova free?
The waitlist is. Pricing is not decided yet, and when it is, this page will say so before anybody is charged. You can also bring your own model key, which means the reading of your words is billed to your own account rather than ours.
What is the diary, and can you read it?
It is a place to write about your day in whichever language you are thinking in — the words you reach for describing your own life are the ones you actually need. There are two kinds of entry. An ordinary one opens with no PIN on any device you are signed in on, and is protected exactly the way your messages are: encrypted on the phone and in transit, with a key we hold, so we could read it. An entry you lock is sealed with a key derived from a six-digit PIN that never leaves your phone, and no, we cannot read those. The price of that is real: forget the PIN and the locked entries are gone, for you and for us. The one exception either way is an entry you switch on for study — that one is sent to be read for vocabulary, after your phone strips the identifying parts out and shows you exactly what is about to go.
Does it read all my notifications?
Only the apps you tick, one by one, and only after you grant Android's permission yourself. Anything that looks like a verification code, a password or an account number is discarded on the phone and never leaves it.
Which languages does it work in?
Twenty, in either direction: English, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Thai, Indonesian, Malay, Hindi, Arabic, Dutch, Polish and Turkish. You choose the language you think in and the one you are studying.
Do I need to be online?
No. Your words are kept on the phone as well as on our server, so the collection opens and a review answers with no connection at all — anything answered offline is sent the next time there is a signal, and the app says where you stand rather than pretending. What does need one is anything new arriving: reading your messages, or a photographed page.
What happens to my pictures if I get a new phone?
That is up to you. A picture on a card lives on the phone that took it, and a new phone brings your words and not your pictures — unless you turn on cloud pictures in Settings, which keeps a copy with your account so the new phone gets them back. It starts off, nothing already on your phone is sent by an update, and turning it off later asks separately whether to remove the copies. A diary photograph follows its entry: one you keep on the phone stays there, and one on an entry you keep in the cloud goes up already sealed with that entry's own key.
Is there an iPhone version?
Not yet. Android first, because that is where the notification reading is possible at all. There is a browser version at app.vocnova.com — it signs in and studies your collection on any phone or computer, without the notification reading or the diary.
When does it open?
It is in testing now. The waitlist gets one email on the day it opens, and no other email at any time.