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Theshutdown of the third - party Reddit app , Apollo , hasn’t stopped developer Christian Selig from continuing to publish iOS apps . Instead , he ’s moved on to an Apollospinoff app called Pixel Pals , which put cute little practical pets on top of your iPhone ’s Dynamic Island — that is , the black bar at the top of the covert surrounding the camera hardware . But Pixel Pals is shape up to be more than just a virtual pets plaything . The app has also been roll out an eclectic collection of iOS widgets , ranging from interactive games to a playable fidget thread maker to transparent convenience for iPhone customization and more .
Today , Selig is adding one more to the list — a language - learning widget that set up vocabulary from a variety of languages on your Home Screen .
At launch , the widget plunk for French , Spanish , Italian , Japanese , Mandarin Chinese , German , Arabic , Korean , Hindi , and . . . Canadian ? The latter will teach you Canadian slang and common words , with a bit of humor . For example , “ deplorable ” means “ hello , ” the widget informs you .
Will it beat Duolingo ? Nope . But is it super ready to hand to be able to breeze through a ton of vocab whenever you unlock your phone ? Yeppp 😊
Download link : https://t.co/7RbXTRxlCb
— Christian Selig ( @ChristianSelig)October 18 , 2023
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The language learning widget could have been bundle up as a freestanding app , given it has nothing to do with virtual pets or games . In fact , many of the widget could have been split up out of the main app into dedicated apps of their own . But Selig explained , in a post on X , he ’s been have playfulness with the interactive widgets in Pixel Pals , so he added the late feature of speech there . That way of life , drug user can get all the widgets in one download , he said .
all , but I was own so much fun with the interactive thingmajig in Pixel Pals that it kinda just felt at home , and that manner you’re able to get all of them in one download !
The theme is n’t just a mode for Selig to delight his apps ’ drug user with excess goodies — it ’s also an interesting and fairly successful strategy to court iOS subscriptions . With the loss of Pixel Pals 2.0 last calendar month , which contribute more societal networking features for the pixelated pets , users could also choose to upgrade to unlock more pets and other features for $ 1.99 per month or $ 14.99 per year .
Along with the interactive widgets — like those for your virtual pets and interactional games — the app include its own versions of standard iOS widgets , like calendar , clock , battery percentage , time , countdown , weather , prognosis , and cite whatsis in different sizes that also often have the virtual pets . There are also half-baked variations of these , like a “ magic clock ” that spell out “ It is five to four , ” for example , in a obscure countersign scramble ; an “ emoji clock ” that register the sentence using a assortment of emojis to form the numbers ; and a well-disposed “ Jarvis ” thingmabob that include a greeting alongside the date and time and various system of measurement , like the barrage fire percentage and storage space .
The scheme to bundle gizmo into an all - in - one app seems to be work . Though Pixel Pals is only a year older , Selig says the app has just under 50,000 endorser at nowadays . datum from third - party app intelligence firmApptopiasays the app has been set up 3.33 million times since its October 2022 launching and averaged $ 625,000 in receipts from July through September .
The language widget is included with theupdated variant of the iOS app , out today .
Pixel Pals delivers a cute and clever update that take advantage of raw Io features
