New Hack question - as of today, my hack reads out an example sentence with almost all flashcards. I didn’t change any settings and I don’t see a way to turn this off?
Although it’s definitely a cool feature sometimes, with 400 reviews due, I don’t really want to listen to that for every flashcard - I’m gonna be here for hours, haha. @Hack-Chinese-Daniel any solutions?
@Chloe-Mandarin-HSK_5 the people in this forum are always the first to discover new things! Yes… we are updating quite a lot today. A popular request was to get audio into the study sessions for sentences, which is now implemented. You can turn all automatic audio off by pausing and using the ‘audio’ toggle… but are you saying you want audio on (for words), but off for sentences?
@Feng2.Zhe2-HSK_4_plus given #5 (words you mix up) and #6 (new words) in your list, I think you did the right thing treating these as “new” in HC, not as “assumed known”.
88% retention is higher than average, so I think your guess about your memory being stronger for most of your words at this point is correct!
If you block a word, you’ll never see it in a study session again. This is good for words you know well, or words you thought you cared about but are no longer important to you.
If you hide a word, it will be hidden for two weeks, and then brought back (and treated as a new word).
For words like 太太 that you know you’ll never forget, I think you’re safe to block it. After all, you’re using tools like HC to improve your vocabulary, not to increase stats or earn badges in an app. If you know the word, and you’re sure you’ll never forget it, why waste time with it any further?
On the other hand, reviewing a word that you know takes only a few seconds, and after a bunch of these reviews, the interval will be measured in years… so it doesn’t make a huge difference either way.
We just released (but have not yet announced) a new feature, that I’m hoping some of you can help test!
In Basic Settings, there is a new option on the very bottom, called, ‘Review Mode’.
This lets you choose between the default, “4-click” review mode, and a new, faster, “2-click” mode.
4 Click is good for people new to practicing active recall on each part of a review. It asks four questions, requiring four responses:
The new “2-click” mode is for more experienced learners, who are doing all of the active recall components in their head as soon as they see the character. It asks two questions:
For @Chloe-Mandarin-HSK_5 and others (@Max , @Sonja-Mandarin-HSK_3 ) who are doing many reviews each day, the time savings should be substantial. I’d love if some of you could give it a try and provide some feedback!
Yeah exactly - audio for the word is key for me to learn/reinforce the tones but I don’t want to have to listen to the full sentences too…
Had a few of these recently when starting a new lesson @Hack-Chinese-Daniel - just letting you know.
PS - love the 2 click feature. That is a huge time saver!! Great idea
I still prefer the 4-click review.
The really easy words I can click through very quickly without reading everything.
All the others I like to check the pronunciation and tone separately first. If I got this correct I have the choice to click the rest very quickly if it is clear, if my answer was not correct I have a second chance to think about what and why I didn’t read it correctly and have a ‘second chance of review’ for the given “new” pinyin, sound and tone, before I click “No”.
Sometimes I know the sound and tone of a character, but this does not include immediately that I would know the meaning(s) as quickly as well. So it gives me the time to think about the English (and German) meanings separately if needed.
Overall, the 4-click method is much quicker for me and very convenient and effective for my learning.
But, of course it is perfect to have a choice.
The audio for the sentences: This takes too much time for the daily work, and is distracting me from the pure vocab work. But it is perfect to have it as a choice for some “custom” study time now and then. Actually I have already thought about how to read the sentences more often.
I agree this sentences feature would be perfect for a custom study session - e.g. if you could have a session purely on “hard words” the sentences feature would be perfect for that!
Also - back to the sentences - the speed that the word + sentence is said at is waaay slower than the regular words (on the same speed setting). That slows down things even more.
The 500 error seems to get worse. I couldn’t start a 20min session at all. 5 or 6 times I got the 500 error page. 10 min works.
Hi @Sonja-Mandarin-HSK_3 and @Max , we are working on this now, apologies! Fix to audio coming too. Thanks for the updates!!
Don’t worry at all. We all see that you are working hard and have many ideas and are in “developing mode”. Progress doesn’t work without trials (and errors).
I am really proud of my progress with hc. I like the clear no-frills design, and on the other hand it has this playful addictive style through the stats and colours.
@Sonja-Mandarin-HSK_3 Thanks for your patience! OK… the 500 errors should be gone now, let me know if you experience otherwise.
@Chloe-Mandarin-HSK_5, we’ve removed the automatic audio playback of sentences. You can however press “up” on a desktop to play all the audio (including the sentence), as well as click the word or sentence to play the audio for the word or sentence individually.
We had also turned on native audio for a select set of words and sentences, but after 24 hours of testing, we see that it needs a little work, so we’ve reverted back to the synthesized audio for now.
Keep the suggestions coming!
The new sentence mode is great.
Up - One has the choice to hear everything or click and go on after listening only to the character.
iPhone: One can click on the character or on the sentence to listen to it. 
New sentence mode is perfect! Thanks! Super quick turnaround
Also I really like the 2 click vs 4 click. When I return to more new vocab I will probably go back to 4 click, but for now 2 click is great and speeding up my reviews a lot.
I also echo what Sonja wrote earlier, you are working so hard to add new features and take on our feedback, it is really great to see. Thank you!
After fixing today’s earlier errors, we botched a database upgrade and created 2 hours of the site being down with errors for everyone. We believe it’s all fixed now. Time to spend the evening responding to emails!
What were we doing, you ask? Adding traditional sentences!
1） Is there any way to register if the dictionary’s word definition isn’t quite what we think it should be? E.g. slang words / more modern phrases etc.
2）What about if there is a word that I want to add but it is already included in a longer word? For me, there doesn’t seem to be a way to search for it without searching the longer word that I don’t want. For example I wanted to add 海王 (another slang word… 
) but 海王星 is already there
Since yesterday hc is extremely slow on my iPhone. I’ve tried and changed everything but can’t find out what’s the matter. Laptop hc works fast. Have you, @Hack-Chinese-Daniel , any idea what could be the problem in my system, or in the software? thanks