This simple Duolingo trick brings back hearts and gets rid of the annoying ads

Even as one of the last remaining Duolingo holdouts on the team, I can see how much worse Duolingo has become in recent years. The once-motivating gamification certainly appears to have been kicked up a few notches, and it’s the free users who’ve had it much worse. On the free plan, you’re bombarded with adverts for Super Duolingo and third-party games that you can’t skip for several seconds. Even worse, the heart system that allowed you to keep practicing until you made five mistakes was replaced by an energy bar that runs down even if you’re nailing the answers.

That’s why I was excited to learn about a very simple trick that returns you to a simpler version of Duolingo — one with the hearts system, no ads at all, fewer clicks between lessons, and less gamification.

Thanks to a Reddit post by user OverallPlatypus9880, I learned that you can create a Duolingo web app to do just that. That Redditor is a Super Duolingo subscriber like me and saw some benefit from this hack on that tier. I went a step further by trying the web app on my account and on a free account, and comparing the experience with using both on the standard Duolingo app.

Our Platypus friend is on to something — the Premium version is less gamified and requires fewer between-lesson clicks — but the real benefits are much more apparent for free users. I’ll explain how you can try this trick for yourself, the range of upsides I found, and the trade-offs that, in my view, are certainly worth it.

How to set up a Duolingo web app

A web app is essentially a website that you install so that it behaves more like a regular app. Instead of opening Duolingo in a browser tab every time, you get a dedicated icon on your home screen and can launch it in its own window. Under the hood, though, you’re still using the web version of Duolingo, which you’d be forgiven for not knowing actually existed.

Setting the web app up is very easy. On Android, open Chrome and head to Duolingo.com, then sign in to your account as normal. Tap the three-dot menu in the top-right corner, select Install and create shortcut, and then choose Install. Chrome will add a new Duolingo icon to your home screen. If you use a different browser on your phone, the steps will be very similar, but the options might be named slightly differently.

From then on, just launch Duolingo using that icon instead of the standard app. It looks and feels close enough to the regular version that you shouldn’t need much time to adjust, but you’ll be using Duolingo’s web experience instead.

Freedom for free users

The web version of Duolingo seems very much like a previous iteration of the app, perhaps from two or three years ago. Given that almost every user I know agrees that the app has become worse over time, a rollback like this would naturally feel like an improvement.

We’ll get to the more subtle ways that both paying and free users might feel that using the Duolingo web app is preferable, but the latter group will first notice that the energy bar is gone. As a long-time Super Duo user, my testing with a new account was the first time I’d encountered the energy bar firsthand, and it was even more maddening than I’d heard. I ran out of energy near the end of my third lesson despite making just a few mistakes, which is unbelievably restrictive for an app that claims to want to help you learn a language. On top of that, you get several animations each lesson in which Duo flies in and doles out a meager top-up to your energy in some faux showing of generosity.

The web app version reverts to the heart system, where it’s the number of mistakes you make, rather than the number of lessons you want to do, that limits your sessions. At least under those circumstances, if your learning session is cut short, I’m afraid to say that’s largely due to your own failings.

And oh boy, the ads are gone. I got sick of them in the short time I tested the normal app as a free user, so I can’t imagine how grinding they must be if you’re dutifully aiming to hit your daily practice goals. To me, either of these two improvements for free users is well worth any trade-offs we’ll get into shortly, and if you disagree, I’d love to hear why in the comments.

The other potential benefits for all users are more subtle. The original Reddit post’s claim that the Duolingo web app has “No chests, gamified and forced elements” wasn’t quite accurate in my testing, though the gamification is certainly more curtailed. For example, there are still chests, but you come across fewer of them, and they aren’t the new ones that you have to tap three times to open, thus sparing you some time. The league and daily quests are still there, but there aren’t any further side-distractions, like the pointless Junior’s Toy Chest jigsaw thing that’s invaded my app version at the moment. In fact, there are fewer animations in general, making it feel like you can whip through lessons faster and tap away annoyances between them.

The trade-offs

As much as it might sometimes feel that way, not every change Duolingo has made over the years is a downgrade to the app. As such, rolling back to something like an earlier version has downsides. There are some genuinely useful touches that disappear, such as getting an explanation of your answer after each question.

You also really have to only care about learning, not about racking up XP, as points and multipliers are in shorter supply. It’s not a crazy thought that someone might only want to use a language-learning app to learn a language, but it’s worth making the XP thing clear anyway. Unless your main objective is defeating Kevin from Ohio in the Diamond League, this may not trouble you too much.

As you’d expect, the web app version is a little clunkier and less visually appealing. As an example of that, when you’re asked a question that requires you to type the answer, you have to dismiss the keyboard after typing, as it hides the ‘Check’ button. None of this is particularly annoying, but if you give it a go, you’ll see what I mean.

Finally, while the absence of all manner of animations and side questions means you do get fewer clicks on average between lessons, you are periodically asked if you want to switch to the normal app version, which requires a click to dismiss. Naive little Duo doesn’t seem to get the hint that you’re intentionally using the browser version.