Praxis: Shadowing & Subtitles

If you're studying from a paper textbook, the companion MP3 usually packs twenty or thirty items into a few minutes — word drills, example sentences, listening exercises. You've probably hit this wall: two or three items just won't stick, but the audio has no chapter markers, so every review means dragging the progress bar hunting for them.

Praxis was built for exactly that. Import the track and it splits automatically at the pauses in speech — thirty items become thirty short clips, and you can drill only the two or three giving you trouble.

Traditional textbooks are still excellent. It's the audio tools around them that stayed crude — which is why so many learners end up with "silent" language skills, able to read a page but unable to open their mouth. Praxis fills that gap.

■ Comprehension Is Everything

Listening Mode is built on one idea: listen freely, then with focus. Let language flow into your mind naturally and build the input that matters most.

Sort clips into five mastery levels so the ones you haven't cracked stay together. AB-loop and speed control are always within reach, and every track gets its own palette so long sessions don't tire the eyes.

■ Speaking Is the Breakthrough

Speaking Mode is built on one idea: listen once, speak once. Repeat until pronunciation becomes muscle memory and your mouth truly remembers every sound.

Your recording sits beside the original as two waveforms. The engine extracts pronunciation features and matches them frame by frame, then paints this round's score right on the waveform. Plug in headphones to turn on live monitoring and shadow along with the original, closing the gap round after round.

■ Being Understood Is the Goal

Translate Mode is built on one idea: you speak, it translates. If the translation understands you, so will the person you're talking to.

Speech recognition and translation both run on your phone. Nothing passes through a server.

■ Subtitles, for the line you couldn't catch

Transcribe subtitles for a whole file, shown line by line, editable at any time and exportable as text. Transcription runs on device too — your audio is never uploaded.

■ Three ways to bring material in

Pick an audio file from your phone, record on the spot, or paste in text and let your device speak it — handy for memorizing passages and sentence patterns. Segmentation sensitivity is adjustable; the default is tuned to the rhythm of textbook audio.

■ On privacy and offline use

Speech recognition, pronunciation scoring and translation all run on your own device. Your audio and recordings are never uploaded. No ads, no tracking.

The first time you use subtitles or translation, a recognition model is downloaded once — after that it works offline. These models are free for everyone and require no subscription.

■ System integration

Background playback with media controls in the notification shade, auto-pause when headphones are unplugged, inline remote controls, and a sleep timer that stops playback with a gentle fade. 17 interface languages and three themes (system / light / dark).

■ About the subscription

Every core feature is free and works anonymously: Listening, Speaking, Translate, subtitle transcription, pronunciation scoring, AB-loop, and importing up to 10 audio files.

The only thing a subscription unlocks is unlimited import — if 10 files is enough for you, there's no reason to subscribe. Subscribing is also a way to support continued development; if you find this tool useful, it's the most direct way to say so.

■ A note from the builder

Every feature in Praxis came out of my own day-to-day language study. It is a weapon I forged for myself, and a gift I wanted to leave for every solitary wayfarer on the road of language learning. May it keep quiet company on a journey that is truly your own.