Glisten 2: Going Beyond Learning to Teaching

Sep 23, 2024

Get 6 months of Glisten 2 for half price by opening this link on an iOS device.

Glisten 2 has just launched alongside iOS 18 with a strong focus on translation. You can now read inline translations in your own language as you listen, together with the native transcript. But it is another translation-related feature that I want to focus on here, because it is the start of something much bigger.

Glisten 2 is about taking a big step forward, beyond learning to teaching. To this point, Glisten has been a podcast player that can help you learn to hear a foreign language, but it didn't add much more than some control over playback. Glisten 2 is different, because it is the first version to augment your playback experience.

See, the new version includes so-called "Guided Workouts". These are listening workouts where you get to hear more than just what is in the podcast. Glisten 2 uses the new translation features, and text-to-speech technology, to give you an audible translation of each sentence before or after you hear the native audio.

That may not sound like a big deal, but try it, and you'll see. The context you get from understanding what a sentence will be about — before you hear it — completely frees you to listen to details of the language, and hear exactly how concepts are articulated. It is the sort of thing a teacher would normally help you with, translating or explaining something you are hearing.

This is just a first step in this direction. We have many more ideas for augmenting playback to help you understand a foreign language. Glisten will become more and more of a teacher over time, rather than just an audio player.

Glisten 2 has many other improvements too. A few of the tent-pole features are…

  • Inline translations

  • Improved text extraction with Whisper from OpenAI (on device)

  • Ability to control aspects of the playback experience, like scrolling, blurred text and underlining

  • Full transcript generation and sharing (PRO)

  • New podcast categories like News, Stories, and Conversations

  • A category for popular podcasts from relevant countries (PRO)

  • New welcome screens

  • Easier to follow Listening Workout menu

Glisten 2 is available now from the App Store on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Watch and Vision Pro.