Evgeny Potapenko (Playphrase.me Developer)

I've added a "Copy practice prompt" button to Playphrase.me. It opens a window with the words and phrases you listened to during your session, so you can choose what to practice and copy a prompt for ChatGPT. Paste the prompt into ChatGPT and turn on Voice. ChatGPT will check your understanding, lis

After sharing the Playphrase.me skill, I wanted to explore what you can actually do with it in more detail. So I built a dedicated website. It brings together 23 ready-to-copy prompts, sample conversations, and visual examples: finding natural expressions, comparing their meanings, practicing everyd

People keep asking how ChatGPT could be integrated into PlayPhrase.me. The funny thing is that there is no need to build a chatbot or a separate AI agent into the site. I made a PlayPhrase.me skill for ChatGPT instead. Once installed, you can start a question with PlayPhrase.me. ChatGPT explains the

I haven't written much lately about what I've been working on. The simple reason is that there has been a lot to do, and writing updates kept getting pushed aside. I've now finished the Mac and iPad apps and completely rebuilt the iPhone app. At the same time, I've been adding more languages and vid

I’ve added country-specific PlayPhrase links for South Asia and Latin America. They use the new India and Brazil mirrors, but open with the appropriate country and interface language. Visitors from these countries should now be redirected automatically. Try yours directly: South Asia: Pakistan, Bang

I’ve opened three new PlayPhrase mirrors for India, Russia, and Brazil. Until now, visitors from India had to connect to servers in Europe, which wasn’t particularly fast. The new India mirror also serves nearby countries, so don’t be surprised if you’re automatically redirected to in.playphrase.me.

Playphrase.me 正在筹备进入中国大陆市场，我们希望寻找一位可靠的长期合作伙伴，共同负责 Playphrase 在中国的落地和运营。 Playphrase.me 是一个通过电影和电视剧片段帮助用户学习英语的网站，在全球已经拥有大量用户，其中也包括许多来自中国的用户。 为了向中国用户提供更稳定、更本地化的服务，我们需要解决以下事项： 在中国已有可用的公司，或共同成立一家中国公司； 网站备案、ICP 及其他可能需要的许可或合规手续； 中国大陆的网站托管、服务器和网络基础设施； 微信支付、支付宝及其他本地支付方式； 中国市场的用户支持和日常运营； 市场推广、商务合作及本地渠道建设； 与 P

I've now started the process of developing an entire series of native Swift apps. This isn't just a port of the web to native development tools for Mac, iPad, and iPhone, This is really a full migration of the codebase to Apple development tools. That way I want to achieve maximum speed and responsi

I have been talking about this one for a while. Testing it, rebuilding it, breaking it, fixing it again. Now it is live. The new PlayPhraseMe search engine is not a small UI update. It is one of the biggest technical changes I have made to the site in a long time, mostly because the old search was a

Quick final work-in-progress update before release. The new PlayPhrase.me search engine is now almost complete. I’ve added filtering by actors, voice actors, and even cast members — so you can search a phrase and narrow it down to exactly the kind of clips you want. I also finished the search setup

Quick work-in-progress update. The new PlayPhrase.me search engine is now in the final stage before release. I’ve already added filtering by genre and director, and it’s starting to feel like a completely new way to explore movie phrases. You can search a phrase, then narrow it down by movies, episo

This is one of the most requested PlayPhrase.me features ever: filtering search results by a specific movie. It’s still very early, still not polished, and it’s not available on the site yet — but today I saw it working for the first time and had to share it. Here I’m typing the IMDb title Once Upon

Small update from the engine room. For the last few days, I have been rebuilding one of the most important parts of PlayPhrase.me: the search engine. Not the search box you see on the page. Not the buttons. The actual thing underneath - the part that has to search through 39.5 million phrases and st

Playphrase.me has never been just a language-learning tool. A lot of people come here to study English through real movie scenes. But there has always been another important group too: people using Playphrase.me to find clips for videos, memes, lessons, edits, and other creative work. That use case

Quick note: this one is for developers. If you're here mostly for PlayPhrase.me updates, feel free to skip it - there's nothing new in the product today. This is about how things get built behind the scenes. I was at a dev conference recently, and one thing kept bothering me afterward. A lot of peop

Until now, the interface was English-only. Now it adapts to your language. Buttons, tooltips, the guest tour, and interface explanations — all of it is now translated, so it’s much easier to understand how everything works. This should make getting started with PlayPhrase.me a lot smoother. If somet

I was just playing around with visuals and asked AI to generate a YouTube script for PlayPhrase.me… and honestly — this turned out way cooler than expected 😄 It’s short, punchy, and actually explains the whole workflow better than I usually do. If you’ve ever thought about making a video about Play

I just shipped a handful of improvements that came straight from your feedback: • Repeat got smarter — you can now add a pause between phrases. Try 0.5s or 1s if you need a moment to process what you just heard. (Off by default.) • New playback speed: 0.75x — a nice middle ground between normal and

I keep getting asked, "Where are the new languages you promised?" Fair question. Short answer: I started working on them, then ended up rebuilding the whole core pipeline. I was close to finishing it when I hit that point where you look at something and think: yes, it works, but it's still not good

Lately I've been using reels with autoplay for language learning, and it's working better than I expected. The setup is simple: pick a phrase or a collection, turn on autoplay, put on headphones, and let it run. I've been doing this a lot while traveling - on trains, on planes, in the passenger seat

I’ve added content filtering to https://playphrase.me You can now control: • Explicit nudity — hidden by default • Offensive language — optional (off by default) This is part of a larger content rating system I’m building — including versions suitable for school use and younger learners (like 13+),

I’ve added a new Statistics section to Playphrase.me. Some people don’t care about statistics. Some people love statistics. And some people say they don’t care about statistics… and then immediately check them anyway. 📊 Now you can see things like: • How many phrases you watched in the last 30 days

Today I added something that many people have been asking for — import and export for Favorites collections. Until now, Favorites in Playphrase.me were basically just one list. You clicked the ⭐ and phrases or words went into a single collection. Simple, but not very flexible. After talking with a f

A small but important update: Reels mode now works for all languages available on Playphrase.me, not just English. You can explore phrases, watch clips, and study translations the same way — but now with the language you’re learning. The idea is the same: short, real movie examples in a continuous f

If you enjoy seeing how Playphrase.me evolves behind the scenes, this post is for you. If not — feel free to skip it. No hard feelings. I realized something recently: I almost never write summary posts here for the people who actually support the project — not because nothing is happening, but actua

Today was one of those quiet but important improvement sessions. I spent some time polishing the mobile interface on Playphrase.me — small things that aren’t very visible in release notes, but make everyday use nicer. The repeat, speed, and a few other player controls are now placed in the top actio

Yesterday I spent a few hours improving how the video player works on Playphrase.me. While building Reels, I discovered a few things that needed to be brought back to the rest of the site — especially for mobile. The main improvement is more stable autoplay behavior. Because of that, I revisited som

I just added Autoplay to Reels, and it turned out to be surprisingly fun to use. Now Playphrase.me can automatically move to the next reel after a chosen number of clips or after a certain amount of time. In other words, you can simply let phrases, words, and translations play one after another with

While using Playphrase.me myself with keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl + Space to drill random phrases, words, and favorites, I realized something simple: during practice, the interface should disappear. When you learn this way, you don’t need the input field or extra UI — just the phrase and the video.

Another small upgrade inspired directly by users. Several people asked for the ability to repeat clips more than just a few times — sometimes you really want to drill a phrase until it sticks. So I updated the playback panel: now you can choose Repeat x1, x3, x10, or ∞ (infinite). I also redesigned

Users have been asking me for this for a long time — and I kept not having time to implement it. Now I finally did. And honestly… I should have listened earlier. It’s incredibly useful. In every video player — Desktop, Mobile, and Reels — you can now right-click (or long tap on mobile) to access two

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how people actually use Playphrase on mobile. We have desktop. We have the standard mobile interface. But while working on kids content, I realized something: The current interface is not kid-friendly. And honestly — it’s not mobile-native enough either. Too ma

I slightly improved the logic of mixer.playphrase.me to remove a common confusion. Some users were downloading already-processed karaoke videos from playphrase.me and then sending them back into the mixer — which resulted in an empty file. Now the mixer understands what you want: either combine alre

Translations are now supported in: Common Phrases Vocabulary Favorites In all languages available in Settings. Previously only a few languages were supported, and Favorites had no translations. Now everything is consistent across all learning modes. You can try it right away on playphrase.me. That’s

Something clicked while I was using Playphrase.me myself. We already had: Random learning in Common Phrases (ctrl+space) Random learning in Vocabulary (ctrl+shift+space) Keyboard flow Progress tracking Page completion logic But Favorites? It was just… storage. Now it’s not. Now the loop is complete.

After building random phrase learning, I noticed something. The mechanic works. The rhythm works. The shortcut flow works. So I asked myself: Why am I not doing the same thing for words? Now it exists. And honestly — this might be one of the most practical vocabulary training modes I’ve ever used. ⌨

Last week I introduced a new feature in Playphrase: you can now explore Common Phrases in a more dynamic way. Hit the 🎲 Dice button — get a random phrase. Press Ctrl + Space — instantly jump to the next one. Simple. Fast. Slightly addictive. I’ve been using it myself for a week… and then I realized

Now you can see all Playphrase.me features at once — with keyboard shortcuts, hidden search tricks, and those “ohhh, that’show it works” moments 😄 If you’ve ever missed a feature or used Playphrase only halfway — this tour fixes that. Explore, press keys, and enjoy the shortcuts 💛

Hey friends! Today I shipped a bunch of small (but mighty!) UI improvements to the site, and I wanted to share what I’ve been cooking lately — straight from the developer’s kitchen, where coffee is strong and feature ideas appear at 2 a.m. 1. A New Button Has Appeared: Guest Tour 🧭 There’s now a sh

It finally happened. Playphrase.me is officially on Android 🚀 This is not just the website wrapped into a browser. It’s a proper native app with the same core functionality as the website — but on mobile it’s more stable, smoother, and just nicer to use. Less friction, more movie quotes 🎬 👉 Get t

Hi everyone — quick update based on your feedback. Some of you mentioned that the Video Mixer limit of 3 karaoke videos per minute felt a bit restrictive. I’ve now increased this limit for Patreon supporters to 10 generated karaoke videos per minute. In practice, it should feel almost unlimited — yo

2025 was a big year for Playphrase.me. I made a lot of improvements to the website, added new tools, and expanded the database with more content — all with one main goal: help you learn English faster by hearing real phrases in real scenes. Here’s a quick overview of what was added and improved over