Half a million downloads on Google Play

Google Play reports that more than half a million people as already downloaded the app on Google Play 🎉 That is awesome! Thank you very much for your support.

Simple ciphers were added into the online translator

Online Morse code translator has been improved and all the simple ciphers from the app for Android and Windows have been added into it. Now you can do the following in your browser:

• Swap dots and dashes
• Reverse Morse codes
• Encrypt your message with a password (a simple Vigenère cipher is used for that).

Version 7.3 released

This version improved the random text generator. Now you can also generate random texts that contain only characters that you are learning. You can use this to practice receiving longer messages. To do so, you can try following:

1. If you are learning Morse code with this app and you have already learnt a few letters, open the Translator page.
2. There is an icon with three dots in the upper right-hand corner of the page. Tapping on this icon opens a menu with additional functions.
3. Select “Generate random text” from the menu.
4. You can specify how the text should be generated. A new option has been added to the list of the possible methods - Random characters (learnt characters).
5. If you tap on this option a random text is generated consisting of only those characters that are selected on the “Learn” page. There will not be therefore any characters that you do not know yet.
6. You can then practice by selecting “Hide original text” from the tree dots menu and playing the message using speakers. You can try to receive as much of the message as possible and write down the result on a piece of paper. Anytime you can check if your guess was correctly by tapping on the “Show original text” button.

This version contains also other smaller improvements - there have been a few fixes and additions in the words lists and the external libraries used by the app have been updated to their latest versions.

Version 7.2 released

This release fixes two bugs and adds one minor improvement. Because all of them are specific to Android, this release is for Android only:

• Vibrations fix - It has been reported that vibrations in the translator and learning did not work on a device using CalyxOS. This was a very rare problem caused by undocumented requirements of the OS (or the phone). The new version fixes the vibrations so that they would work also there.
• Possible crash fix - A fix for a very rare crash has been added.
• Switching between Morse Codes list and Q-Codes list - Now it is possible to switch between both by swiping left or right.

Version 7.1 released

The release contains the following improvements:

• The application has been translated to Arabic. I would like to thank to Kero Said who translated all the texts. You can select this translation in the app settings (currently it is not selected automatically before it is more thoroughly tested).
• The Arabic version of Morse code (using Arabic script instead of Latin letters) has been added according to the table on Wikipedia. You can choose this version of Morse code in the app settings if you like. Please notice, that there are two separate settings. The first one is for the language of the user interface; the latter one is for the version of the Morse code. You can combine the arbitrarily. So you can have the user interface in Arabic but generate messages in English in the International Morse Code, and, vice versa, you can have the app in English but still be able to translate a message in Arabic version of Morse Code.
• The translator has been improved slightly. Now it is possible to use also an underscore ( _ ) for dashes.
• Learning has been improved - the button for playing sound is kept even when the answer is evaluated. So in case of an incorrect answer, you can play the sound again.
• A few rare crashes have been fixed.

Any feedback to Arabic translation is welcome. If you find a mistake, please write me to pavel.holecek.4@gmail.com. I am still not sure if everything has been flipped correctly. Please be also careful about the direction of the Morse code, if you are using Arabic translation of the UI. It can be confusing and it is easy to swap for example “.-” for “-.”. If you are not sure, play the sound using the speakers.

Very appreciated is also any feedback to the Arabic version of Morse code. I have found no other relevant sources of information besides the table on Wikipedia and I have soon found out that the Arabic script can create much more complex letters than only those listed on Wikipedia. If you believe that some of the Arabic letters are not translated correctly in this version, or if they are not translated at all (for example various accents under and over other letters), please contact me at pavel.holecek.4@gmail.com.

Documentation for Vigenère cipher has been added

The app makes it possible to encrypt messages using Vigenère cipher. Because I have received multiple questions how does it work, I have added a detailed description of the particular version of Vigenère cipher used in the app. You will learn there the why it has been chosen for the app, its pros and cons, and how exactly it works.

Version 7.0 released

There are two main changes in the release:

• There is a new slider in the settings that you can use to customize the amount of the noise added to the sound. You can try using small values to fix problems with some Bluetooth headphones. The higher values can be used to simulate a radio distortion.
• It was changed how time is measured in the learning for listening exercises. For this mode, the time is measured from the moment the playing has finished (it was measured from the beginning of the sound in the previous version, which was not correct). There has been no change for normal mode and silent mode - the time is measured from the moment the code is displayed on the screen.

As usual, there are also plenty of small improvements and bug fixes.