The Wordify Blog
A quiet space dedicated to the exploration of vocabulary, learning methodology, and the craft of shipping a calm software product.
Your home screen is the most-seen screen you own. Here's how to turn it into a vocabulary trainer with two widgets - a word widget and a streak widget - on iPhone and Android, and what makes a learning widget actually work.
Wordify's streak widget now shows your week at a glance, today's goal, and a countdown when your streak is at risk. And a streak day now takes a daily goal of 10 to 50 words, not a single card. Here's what changed and why.
Testing yourself beats re-reading. Spacing beats cramming. Context beats lists. The memorization methods ranked by a century of memory research, the popular ones that quietly don't work, and a 15-minute daily system that combines the winners.
The exact steps to get a word of the day on your iPhone lock screen, plus the honest answer for Android (and the workaround that's actually better). Takes about two minutes.
Every IPA symbol used in English, explained in plain words: /ʃ/ is the sh in ship, /θ/ is the th in think, /ŋ/ is the ng in sing. Full consonant and vowel charts with example words and how to actually make each sound.
1,000 words is enough for everyday conversation. 3,000 covers 95% of daily life. The real numbers for every CEFR level from A1 to C2, and how 10 words a day gets you conversational in 3 months.
A step-by-step guide to putting vocabulary on your lock screen and home screen - the exact taps on iPhone and Android, how often the word changes, and what to do when a widget stops updating.
Wordify's widgets just got a significant update: a new streak widget with a GitHub-style heatmap, smarter layouts that adapt to widget size, and a small button rename that says a lot about how spaced repetition should work.
Reading 'forth' doesn't tell you it sounds like /fɔɹθ/. Spelling lies, especially in English. Here's why I added International Phonetic Alphabet transcriptions to every word in Wordify, and how it changes the way you learn.
Six months after shipping Wordify 1.0, I redesigned the whole UI from scratch. Here's what was wrong with the original, what changed in 2.0, and the design decisions behind the new look.
An honest comparison of 10 Duolingo alternatives for 2026. What each app does well, what it doesn't, and which one is right for you.
Duolingo works for millions - it didn't work for me, and not for the reasons you'd expect. Why I quit, what I tried instead, and what I built to replace it.
Most lock screen widgets show clocks, weather, or battery. A few teach you something every time you glance at your phone - here is an honest 2026 comparison.
A practical guide to spaced repetition - how the SM-2 algorithm decides when to show you each word, plus the mistakes most learning apps make. In plain English.
The honest backstory behind Wordify - how a Spain vacation turned into a side project, and what I learned building a vocabulary app for iOS and Android.
