Support

Help with DoodleLearn

Answers for grown-ups setting up and playing DoodleLearn with their children. DoodleLearn is in beta on TestFlight right now and is coming soon to iPhone and iPad.

How do we play?

Every word your family adds becomes a star in your galaxy. Drag a star to move it, and drop one star on another to connect them with a bridge: a sentence your child hears in all of your family’s languages. Pinch to zoom, and tap ✨ to tidy the layout.

Then play short games together: Star Hunt (hear it, find it, say it in another language), Doodle Telephone (your child draws, a grown-up guesses in another language), Voice Memory, Bridge Builder, Story time along the bridges, and a daily Wonder Walk. A wrong pick is marked so that even a child who can’t read yet sees “not this one”.

A word earns a stamp when it is won on 3 different days. A full stamp card opens the treasure chest: fireworks, balloons, a sticker for the album, and an optional surprise message from home.

How do we add a word?

Find a picture by typing or saying a word in any language, draw it, or take a photo. Then name it by typing or saying it, and the built-in dictionary fills in the other languages offline. Mark a person or pet with “It’s a name” so the name keeps its capital letter and isn’t translated. Finally, drag the new star onto a related word to give it a place in the galaxy.

How do we add or change languages?

Open the grown-ups’ corner and go to Family languages. You can choose 1 to 4 languages, including one of your own that isn’t on the list.

The built-in dictionary knows 560 everyday words in English, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic and Hindi. When you add a language later, the words it knows are filled in for every star.
Ready-made bridge sentences come in English, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Spanish. For any other language, choose “Our own” on a bridge and write the sentence yourself.
You can record your own voice for any word or sentence: press and hold 🔊, or tap 🎙. Your recording plays instead of the device voice.

What is the grown-ups’ corner?

It holds the family settings, behind a parent gate: a short multiplication question (a two-digit number times a one-digit number) that a grown-up answers to get in. Inside you’ll find:

family languages and the “Look up unknown words online” switch;
the stamp card size: 5, 10 or 15 stamps to open the treasure chest;
a surprise message to hide in the next chest;
family voices and game sounds;
the how-it-works tips and picture credits;
starting over, which removes every word, bridge, doodle, stamp and family recording and can’t be undone.

What does “Look up unknown words online” do?

It is off until a grown-up turns it on in the grown-ups’ corner. When it is on and the built-in dictionary doesn’t know a word, “Fill the other languages” sends the typed word to the MyMemory translation service. Words found this way are marked 🌐 so you can check them. With the switch off, the words you type stay on your device.

Why does the microphone button sometimes show a little cloud?

The 🎙 button turns a spoken word or sentence into text. Languages your iPhone or iPad recognizes by itself stay on the device. For other languages, DoodleLearn uses Apple’s online speech recognition, marked with a little cloud, with short time limits.

Why does it ask for the camera, microphone and speech recognition?

The camera is used only when you take a photo for a star’s picture. The microphone is used when your family records a word or sentence, or says a word to add it. Speech recognition turns a word you say into text. Photos and family recordings stay on your device.

Which devices does it work on?

iPhone and iPad with iOS 16 or newer.

Contact

Still stuck, or found something odd in the beta? Write to hello@snowbreak.app. It helps to tell us which iPhone or iPad you use and its iOS version.