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  5. We’ve made course switching e…


We’ve made course switching easier!

  • 1373

If you are learning courses from multiple base languages, they will now all display on the dropdown next to your avatar to allow you to easily switch between them. This is particularly useful for those of you taking the reverse courses! This is one of many features we hope will improve the lives of our most dedicated users. Note this is only available on new website tabs, so it will not be available on the Words or Discussion tabs yet. Enjoy!

Edit: We've changed the dropdown to not display courses from other base languages if you have 0 XP in that course. This means if you want a course removed from the dropdown, you can reset your progress in it to have it not show :)

June 20, 2017



A thousand thanks for doing this! May I suggest that you ask course moderators post this information in other primary languages that the global duolingo learners use? It would seem that non-English speaking duolingoers do not have access to the latest info because posts like this are not readable to them.

  • 1698

Thank you Duo for making the course switching easier!

Please make one step further and move from EASIER to EASIEST :)

Currently the switching works fast once you spot what to click on, but the UX/UI is not so great. Sorry to say this. Now I see a long list of languages grouped into two sections delimited by a line. A scrollbar hides part of the list. In the first section there are the languages that I learn from current base-language. In the second section there seem to be all the other languages that I have ever had a look on from all the other base-languages, some of them I have even forgotten about.

Stop the clutter! :)

The easiest to use design in my opinion would have:

  1. a FROM menu listing all the base-languages from which one is currently learning other languages, and nothing more (not all the base-languages that Duo offers)

  2. a LEARNING submenu listing the languages one is currently learning, for each base-language listed in the FROM menu, and nothing more (not all languages that Duo offers for a base-language)

  3. the possibility to ADD/REMOVE menu and submenu items

Long story short, this design is not new (except for point no.3, which piguy3 already suggested in this thread), and have already been implemented in a userscript by arekolek a few years ago. It worked very nice until the newest website update and it still works on some pages. It is the most intuitive solution, and it can be seen here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/6079283. Images speak for themselves.

I am very grateful for this language learning website. Thank you!


Excellent! Thank you! Pulled the wool over our eyes with this one: wasn't such a feature on the "Under Consideration" list as of four days ago? :) Takes away my biggest gripe from the new website implementation.

Small problem I see: now it actually matters a smidge that there's no way to delete all trees from a given base language. I seem to at some point have clicked on English from Polish, for example, and now that appears as as option to switch to in the menu, despite its not being a matter of current interest to me. Particularly given how easy it can be to accidentally tap incorrectly on a phone and wind up adding languages, it would be nice to have a way to get rid of such entries. (EDIT: mostly addressed! thanks! although remnants may remain on one's profile page)

EDIT: Also, it only seems possible to see how many XP one has in one tree (the one with the highest XP total) into any given target language (except when it's not; the behavior on my profile page seems to be bouncing around a little bit, but mostly it's the one tree per language version), which is confusing when working on a different tree with that target language.

Benefits certainly outweigh the drawbacks, however. Thanks again!


my ocd is flaring up at seeing that one course i accidentally clicked on now displayed on my profile! ability to delete those would be nice indeed!


I agree about being able to delete courses. Since this feature was added, I'm apparently learning English from Dutch and Hindi. I remember being switched to Dutch once by accident, but I have no idea how I got Hindi. Since that is the only course from those base languages, it isn't possible to delete them. It isn't a huge problem, but it does add a little clutter to my list, and now they even show up if I turn the Course Switcher user script back on.


Totally agree with all this. I have definitely never learnt Spanish on Duo and yet for some reason it appears on my list, along with a German course I started and then deleted years ago. It's not a big problem, but just annoyingly cluttered, and also slightly bizarre. I don't know much about this sort of thing but surely it wouldn't be hard to program it so it only shows current courses?


And I see that all courses (from any language) now also appear in the Profile page :-)


Not all: I see only French from German (where I have more points), but no longer French from English. So now there's no way to find out how many XPs I have in French from English. I hope this will be fixed soon.

But I'm really happy that switching languages has been made so much easier!


Wow - that's quite an impressive range of languages, anitramwaju. You're a walking United Nations!


You guys are the greatest! Thank you!!! This is a big change that will make things a lot easier for many, many Duofolk :)


Oh, bless you, bless you, bless you! I'm so thankful for this. I can't wait to see what other changes you will make (hopefully some similar to this). Now, excuse me while I practice English from Ukrainian. <3


This is not only useful but it looks amazing! It was about time, thanks from the heart :DD


¡Muchas gracias amiga!

I like that they scroll too.


An excellent innovation; thank you!

The only small modification I'd suggest would be to make the drop-down box a bit taller, as the scrolling tab is rather small and fiddly.


I got two unwanted courses, none of which I can delete:



Same here! When I go to delete them, they don't show up as languages I'm learning. But when I go to my profile, they're still there! :(


You could try resetting them.

The menu drop down has two sections. The top section seems to show all courses from the current UI language. The bottom section seems to show courses using the same rule book as the forum flags by your username. So courses below Level 2 are not shown. This the way it is for me - none of my 0 XP courses are shown. (Also courses in second section are hidden if they are in the first section - to avoid duplicates).


This should definitely make things easier, but I think I see a glitch on my account. In addition to listing Spanish and the reverse tree (both of which I am working with), the drop-down list indicates that I'm at level 1 in another language (French?) which I have not started and in which I have no immediate interest.


Update: the extra course no longer appears. Thanks for taking care of this!


Many, many, thanks. This is the best news in a long time.


I added the English for Spanish speakers course to test the feature, but the delete course button is disabled and now I can't remove it. Help!


This is the issue referenced in my post: you can't delete (nor has it ever been possible to delete; before, however, it didn't matter, as resetting achieved the desired outcomes in every practical sense) a course when it is the only one you have from a given base language.


Are we automatically switched to the new website?


Yes, everybody should be in it. However, the Discussion and the Words tabs are still on the old infrastructure so this change won't be visible from there.


Thank you everyone at duolingo who reduced the previously inconvenient number of steps required to change courses - this is an elegant solution to a truly annoying task.

Perhaps if each and every course moderator would be so kind as to announce the easier course switch setting in the native language of each duolingo learner, then everybody can enjoy this improvement!





Although it was invisible it was able to access. marvellous

A flower in my chest pocket to radiate joy and happiness







THANK YOU for finally making this native to the site!!!!! Any chance of bringing this feature to the apps as well?


THANK YOU!!!! Better late than never! Duo is improving!!!


bunny high fve! :D


Thank you very much for this feature !!!!


That's a nice feature!


That is awesome! Thank you very much for doing this! :)


Thank you so much! This is wonderful. :-) I love that I can see my English level on my profile too.

(Also, thank you for bringing back the 'Review Lesson' button at the end of exercises!)


That seems good, but on the home page I have the new version and on the discussion page I have the old version! How that come?


Please read Luis' response to JackMartian (-‿◦)


Oops I didn't notice his replay, thanks :)


Is there a way to remove base languages like I have no need for the English for German speakers.


Thanks! Much appreciated!

  • 2218

Thanks! However, it doesn't seem to work with all courses. Five courses are actually not showing up.



I thought this ... but then I remembered that the course/flags drop-down menu had a scroll bar added to it recently, and although I can't see this initially, I can scroll it (on a tablet with my finger ... I guess the scroll bar might show up if the mouse hovers over it).

(Or maybe there is a bug as well. It's always a possibility.)


Bravo! Are any plans being considered to integrate the functions of other popular userscripts into the new site's native code/infrastructure?

  • 1438

That's great! Thanks

  • 1650

Very useful indeed, thank you guys!


That is marvelous. It's a huge improvement. Thanks to everyone who implemented it, ant to you for posting about it.


That was such a quick response on the 0XP problem that I cannot express my thanks enough. Thank you, thank you, thank, you... etc.


This only works for me when my base language isn't English.

When I switch to learning English from German for example, I can see the courses I am learning from English, but when I switch to one of those courses, all courses that have a base language other than English disappear. Any idea why? Is there a limit set on the maximum number of courses that can appear in the list? I am learning 8 languages from English. Could it be that this is not leaving enough room for reverse courses to show up?

PS: I made sure to earn new XP in reverse courses, and they still don't show up when the base language is set to English.


This is a nice feature, but I think it should work more like the userscript at https://github.com/arekolek/DuolingoCourseSwitcher.


Hi, switching does not work on the application. It's only displaying courses from the same source language and we have to go to the site to switch.


There are some English courses for other language (such as: Korean, Hindi, Japanese,...). What does that mean?


For example, Korean-> English means that the learner's mother tongue is Korean and they want to learn English. Note that you would need to be able to read and write (or at least type) in Korean in order to take that course

  • 1266

It's interesting that Duo included in my list of courses German, Spanish and English from Russian, though I don't remember that I ever declared in my profile that I speak Russian, only in Discussions. And both my desktop and my iPad have Ukrainian settings. How did it guess that Ru to De, Es and En might be relevant to me? Ah, yes, perhaps some years ago, I did register at Duo from a desktop with Russian Windows. But I wouldn's say that I like this Big Brother's approach ((


Good, good, good. It also seems like the switching process has been sped up (seems to switch faster).

  • 1302

Thank you very much.


This is welcome, but the scrollbar seems a bit overly zealous, you can show way more than seven languages before the length becomes a problem. Here's to hoping that the app will support this, too!


It is very much useful. Thanks. :)


Great! Thank you Duo for this new option!


I love it! Thanks a million! It makes things so much easier, also for those who aren't native speakers of English, but learn languages that are only available from English as a base language, as well as languages with their native language as base language.
