we fixed a gate that was quietly making the app frustrating. if you studied 25 words on day 1, you couldn't unlock new vocab for days — the algorithm was waiting for your cards to reach 7 days of stability before opening chapter 2. that's a week of reviews just to get to new words.

• chapter 2 now unlocks as soon as you've rated 80% of chapter 1 words at least once — which happens naturally by the end of your first session's recall phase
• the daily new-word limit already handles pacing, so the stability gate was just getting in the way

the stats page has been pulled out of settings and given its own screen. per-chapter rows show how many words are stable vs total, with a lock/unlock icon. there's a 7-day calendar and an expandable 16-week heatmap if you want the longer view. and yes — this updates screen you're reading right now is new too.

• settings is now just controls — no stats block cluttering it up
• learning stats and dev updates are separate nav rows in settings

big one for new users this week. we rebuilt the whole welcome flow so you see real cards before anything else — no wall of instructions, just the actual experience.

• onboarding now shows two real words from the deck (mhoro + sadza) in the same learn-card style you'll see every day
• tutorial words are kept separate from your progress — they'll show up naturally when you reach their chapters
• your very first session now drills 5 new words before introducing more, so nothing gets lost in a flood of new vocab
• chapter stats now count correctly — the two tutorial words were eating into the daily cap and making it look like fewer words had been introduced

new words now get their own proper screen. instead of just showing the word and asking you to flip, a learn card shows you everything at once — the photo, the word, the meaning, the example sentence, and a grammar note if there is one. audio plays automatically. tap "got it →" when you're ready to move on, and the word comes back later that session for a proper recall.

• the nav turns brown while a learn card is active — a visual cue that you're in introduction mode

the screen you see after a session (or when nothing is due yet) got a full redesign. it now shows chapter progress, a breakdown of your words by state, a streak strip, and a weak-drill button — all in one place, without the nav going dim.

• chapter progress now shows words introduced, not just fully stable words — so the bar shows real progress from day one
• the weak-drill button starts a focused 10-card session on your lowest-stability words

a few adjustments to how the algorithm schedules new and struggling words, based on what we've seen in early sessions.

• tapping "good" on a brand-new word now brings it back in 15 min (same session) instead of jumping to a multi-day gap
• if you forget a word, it comes back in 10 min instead of 1 — retesting after 1 minute was basically pointless
• tapping "easy" on a first-seen card is now 4 days max, not 31 — too easy to mis-tap on a word you've literally never seen

there's now a GitHub-style activity calendar showing 16 weeks of practice history. today gets a white ring. also fixed a timezone bug that was breaking streaks for users in UTC−5 and further west.

if you use a bluetooth keyboard with your iPhone, pressing space to flip a card now actually works. iOS Safari needs the card front to have focus before it fires the keydown event — fixed that.

the "skip image hint, show image" setting in settings was being ignored for learn and review cards — only recall cards respected it. that's fixed. the image hint button on recall/review fronts now looks like a proper pill instead of a broken-image icon.

settings now slides in from the left as a panel instead of covering the whole screen. tap the backdrop to close it. also restored the "learn more today →" button on the all-caught-up screen when you've hit your daily new-word cap.

the settings gear is gone from the bottom nav — it's now a hamburger (≡) in the top-left corner. the nav is a clean three-tab layout. inactive tabs are now readable (contrast was way too low before). also bumped up font sizes across the whole app.

a few visual fixes: the "new word" badge was hiding behind the image, the learn card background was almost indistinguishable from the app background on a real phone, and the broken-image icon on recall fronts has been replaced with a proper hint pill. scrollbars are now hidden everywhere.

tapping the study tab from session-complete now goes straight to new cards if they exist, instead of always bouncing through the home screen first. when nothing is due, tapping study starts a drill session. the tab label changes to "drill" when that's the case.

new words now go through a two-step cycle instead of jumping straight into FSRS. first you see the word (learn card), then you recall it (recall card). the recall comes back 10 minutes later in the same session. if you close the app before getting to it, it'll be waiting next time.

"what do the colours mean?" now opens a full-screen explainer instead of a modal that was getting buried behind the settings panel. there's a short summary view and a detailed view explaining how the algorithm decides when to show each word.

the home/comeback screen got a proper redesign. shows how many words are due, a chapter progress section, streak/today tiles, and the current all-caught-up or session-done state. the mazwi tab got a stats banner at the top too.

you can now set how many new words you see per day (default 20, range 1–200). reviews are never capped. also split the single audio toggle into two — one for the word, one for the sentence. and there's a bug report button on every card back now.

• fixed the audio echo on first play (iOS double-fire issue)
• fixed stale audio playing from the previous card
• raised the volume — it was too quiet on most phones

the search tab is live. type shona or english and it searches across all 108 words, including example sentences. results are sorted by relevance, and each shows a dot for the word's current learning state. tap any result to see the full card.

audio now plays automatically when you reveal a card — the word first, then the sentence once the word finishes. there's a toggle in settings if you'd rather have silence. works in the tutorial too.

the tutorial now explains the rating buttons in context, right after you flip your first card. a second modal shows what your chosen rating actually means and when the card comes back. the first card is now properly scheduled too — it wasn't before.

added settings (streak, word breakdown, daily stats, light mode toggle, reset progress, links to feedback/privacy/terms), a proper interactive tutorial, and a per-word stability bar on the card back.

mazwi is out! 108 shona words across 6 chapters, FSRS spaced repetition, 20-card sessions, chapter unlock gates, a welcome tutorial, and offline PWA support. audio, accounts, and search are coming — this is just the beginning.