Duolingo doesn't work.

A Former User

Since the latest update, the app doesn't work. When I try to access lesson, whether in Spanish or Welsh, a message comes up saying it can't connect and to try to reconnect later. What is going on? I'm ready to quit.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer

In Opera (55.0.2994.44 x64 on Win 10 Pro x64 1803 17134.228) and Chrome (stable), if I start with fresh cookies, pick "get started", pick Spanish, pick casual, click "set goal", click "not now", click "start at the basics", complete the first intro and go through intro 2 https://www.duolingo.com/skill/es/Intro/2, I get a page asking me to use the mic.

Clicking the mic icon on the page in Opera does nothing. No errors in console or anything. Masking as Chrome doesn't help. Microphone is availabe in settings (3 different choices for the same microphone, tried them all with a restart). But, nothing helps.

Tried in Chrome with the same setup. Clicking the mic icon on the page pops up the notifcation asking if I want to allow access to the microphone. Allowing completes (as in, successfully adds the site as an exception), but I get a message from the site saying there's a problem accessing the microphone and it might be due to a Chrome bug. I fixed that by enabling the microphone in "start -> settings -> privacy -> microphone". That setting is only supposed to affect apps, but it was needed for Chrome. It didn't help with Opera as the button on the page still does nothing.

Tried in Firefox and completed a zillion exercises multiple times and I never got a page asking me to speak something. So, I couldn't test there. Same with Edge. But, for both of those, that was before I enabled the microphone in the Windows app settings. It was already enabled in the sound control panel. I'll have to try again later with the app setting enabled too. Edit. Still never get a microphone page in Firefox and Edge.

For Opera, I also manually added:

"https://www.duolingo.com:443,*" : {
   "last_modified" : "13180163291935854",
   "setting" : 1
}

to profile/content_settings/exceptions/media_stream_mic in the Preferences file so that the site shows up as an exception in Opera. But, that didn't help. Clicking the mic button on the page still does nothing.

Saving the page with the mic option as webpage complete or an mhtml file doesn't produce a working page to test with.

I'll try more things later. At least I got it to work in Chrome.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer @burnout426

@burnout426 Tested Opera Developer too. Same issue with the button.

A Former User This post is deleted!

A Former User

Well well, go figure... Duolingo itself states that speaking exercises work only on Google Chrome.

Don't know why, seems like a strange business decision. This must be technology-related imperative.

See: https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/articles/204642264?input_string=duoling+speaking+exercises+aren't+working+on+manh+browsers+on+windows

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer @Guest

@sullemulle I saw that but was hoping by "Chrome" they meant Chrome and other Chromium browsers (like Opera and Vivaldi). But, it's definitely possible that Opera doesn't implement some API that Chrome does. If that's the case, it's something Opera should implement. I'm not really sure if it's something extra that Chrome implements that's not in base Chromium.

Hoping Opera already implements what's needed and it's just a simple bug Opera's implementation.

So, there's still a chance.

A Former User @burnout426

@burnout426 Curiously Duolingo works perfectly with Chromium on Debian.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer @Guest

@sullemulle Does Opera on Linux behave any differently compared to Windows?

A Former User @Guest

@sullemulle Thanks, this is answer for all my questions. It is sad that duolingo only works good in Chrome

A Former User @Guest

@xillegas said in Duolingo doesn't work.:

@sullemulle Thanks, this is answer for all my questions. It is sad that duolingo only works good in Chrome

No prob, I'm glad this discussion is helpful to you.

@burnout426 said in Duolingo doesn't work.:

@sullemulle Does Opera on Linux behave any differently compared to Windows?

I'll check it out and get back to you when it's done.

burnout426

burnout426 Volunteer

This issue has been analyzed by Opera. Duolingo uses the Web Speech API to handle microphone input. The speech-to-text engine in the Chromium source code for the Web Speech API uses a specific service on Google's servers. However, API access to the service is limited to official Chrome builds. Other builds of Chromium aren't allowed to have the access keys to use the service, which is why it breaks in Opera. To make this work, Opera would have to write their own engine that uses a different speech-to-text service (that they write and provide themselves, or one from another company that they pay to use). Or, Duolingo would have to use a different method to analyze the speech to convert it to text.

A Former User @burnout426

@burnout426 said in Duolingo doesn't work.:

This issue has been analyzed by Opera. ---

Interesting news. Let's see if either one of those will work on the issue. Meanwhile, it seems we're limited to using Duolingo on Chrome or Chromium.

Thanks for the head up! This case seems to be closed until we have either of the solutions you outlined.