Who is behind Practy
Practy is built by me, Liam, a solo developer in San Jose, California. It is bootstrapped and has no outside investors. It has zero in-app advertisements and is funded entirely by subscriptions.
I'm passionate about language learning. In addition to my native language of English, I speak Spanish and French, and I've studied Portuguese, Mandarin and Hebrew. I learned mostly from TV and YouTube, but I found that most tools were disjointed and overly gamified. I created Practy to be a serious language learning app that focuses on comprehensible input and targeted grammar practice.
What is Practy?
Practy is a language learning platform that combines entertainment-based immersion with targeted exercises for vocabulary, conjugation and listening comprehension. Users learn through YouTube, Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+ via the browser extension. As you watch, you see interactive subtitles that display translations and allow you to save unknown words to practice in the conjugation and vocabulary exercises.
Practy was started in 2025. As of September 2026, more than 3,000 learners use it actively every month. Since the start, they have attempted more than 600,000 exercise questions in Practy.
Supported Languages
Practy currently supports 8 target languages although available features depend on the language: Spanish, French, English, Portuguese, Italian, Hebrew, Arabic and Chinese. The app interface is available in English, Spanish and French.
Where can I use Practy?
Practy is available on multiple platforms:
- iOS App - Available on the Apple App Store
- Web App - Available at practy.app
- Browser Extension - Available for Chrome and Edge, adds interactive subtitles and word saving to YouTube, Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+
The mobile and web apps are where you practice with conjugation, vocabulary and listening exercises. The browser extension is where you consume content and save new words from videos.
There is no public Android app at this time. Android users can use the web app smoothly on their phone, with an experience similar to a native app. The currently promoted public app surfaces are the web app, iOS app, and browser extension.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are you doing subscriptions?
While I am committed to maintaining a robust free tier, I also need to cover the cost of developing, maintaining and scaling Practy. Subscriptions let me make Practy a larger platform with more content, exercise types and languages.
Why not do ads instead?
I feel that ads are distracting and harmful to the user experience, while not generating enough revenue to justify the trade-off.
Does Practy use AI (LLMs)?
LLMs are used for translation and definition creation. While AI is helpful for me as a solo developer, it can produce error-filled slop. I take precautions to ensure AI outputs are:
- Auditable and verifiable - Outputs are stored (not generated dynamically every time) so that users can flag errors and outputs can be reviewed and improved
- Structured - Instead of open-ended prompts, the LLM picks from pre-defined options (e.g. parts of speech, verb groups) to increase consistency and reduce errors
Where does the audio come from?
Practy uses Google Cloud text-to-speech to generate audio files.
What is spaced repetition?
Spaced repetition is a technique to improve learning by showing items at increasingly longer intervals as you learn them, right before they're forgotten. Practy uses FSRS (the Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler), the same scheduler now built into Anki and a step up from the older SuperMemo-2 method.
