Bring the book on your shelf, the episode you’re mid-season on, the song stuck in your head. Photograph it, paste the subtitles, drop in the lyrics — Apera pulls the words you don’t yet know and teaches them in short stories and cards, then gets out of the way, so you read it, watch it, hear it on your own. A song takes days. A chapter, a couple of weeks.
Find your level — two minutes ↓A book, a show, a song. And the way back to each.
the episode
You’re three episodes into a show, watching with English subtitles and calling it learning. You paste episode four’s subtitles. Apera teaches you the words you were missing. By episode five the subtitles are in Italian. By episode eight they’re off.
the paperback
The novel you bought on holiday, still on the shelf two years later. You photograph the first chapter. Two to three weeks later you read it — phone in another room.
the song
A chorus you’ve loved for a year and never quite understood. You paste the lyrics. The next time it comes on, the verse arrives as language, not sound.
Apera tells you the day you can read a thing on your own — never as a notification, only when you look. That’s the only progress it keeps.
First, find where your words run out.
Two minutes, no signup — the result is yours either way.
I’m learning
These are samples. In the app, your stories are written for you — from the words you already know and the ones you’re learning.
Neither too hard nor too easy — here’s text at several levels, so you can find yours.
Each word is shaded by how common it is — the rarer it is, the deeper the blue.
And then they stay. The words you meet don’t fade — Apera brings each one back the day before you’d forget it, in quick cards and short stories, until it’s yours for good.
So the reading compounds: every book, every episode, every song leaves its words behind — ready for the next one.
What doesn’t Apera do? No grammar drills, no streaks, no chatbot tutor with a name. It doesn’t grade you or celebrate you. It arranges words on a page and gets out of the way.
What it does. What it doesn’t.
What does Apera actually do?
It finds the words standing between you and something you want to read, teaches them in short stories and quick cards, and tells you when you’re ready to go read the thing on your own. The reading happens in the real text — not in here.
Can I read my uploaded book inside the app?
No — and we don’t keep it. We read it once for the words you’re missing, then discard the text. The round trip ends outside the app — phone down, book open. That’s the whole idea.
Do I need to already know the language?
A little. Roughly six months to two years of exposure — come back around B1. Below that, you’d spend more time looking words up than reading, and that’s not the experience we’re after.
What languages do you support?
Italian, French, German, and Spanish. The founder-led launch is Italian, so that’s where every example you’ve seen here speaks from.
How long until I can read the book I uploaded?
It scales to the input. A song, days. An episode, about a week. A chapter, two to three weeks. We tell you when your readiness for a given text crosses the line — never as a notification, only when you look.
How is this different from Duolingo, Anki, or LingQ?
It isn’t a game, a flashcard box, or a reader you live inside. It’s a route from a real text in your hands, through a few weeks of tuned reading, back to that same text — read without us. We measure one thing: whether you still need the app.
Learning words you are not going to use is boring.
Erik · founder of Apera
the reward is reading. there is no other reward.
Find your level ↑