How do I change my Scribe Origins settings?

Choose the study content, new-card pace, decks, audio and appearance that suit you. Sign in to sync your progress across devices. You can adjust one section at a time.

Difficulty

Difficulty: Easy or Hard

The Easy/Hard toggle changes how much help you get mid-session. Easy keeps reading and translation hints visible while you work through a card; Hard trims those hints, pushing you to recall more before anything is revealed. It doesn't change your review intervals - that scheduling comes from your again/hard/good/easy rating after each card, a separate concept covered below. Think of Difficulty as a study-comfort dial, not a scoring dial: switching between Easy and Hard mid-course doesn't reset progress or penalise your accuracy stats, so it's safe to try Hard for a week and switch back if it's too demanding.

Pacing

New-card pace and New card cap per study

New-card pace (Slow, Normal or Fast) and New card cap per study control how many new cards enter a study. Cards per game sets the size of a game, including new cards and reviews. Daily goal sets your daily card target.

• Pick Slow with a low cap (say, 5-8 new cards) if you have limited daily study time or you're just starting a new deck and don't want to feel overwhelmed.
• Pick Normal with a moderate cap as a sensible default for most learners studying a few times a week.
• Pick Fast with a higher cap to front-load vocabulary quickly and let spaced repetition bring items back on its own schedule.
• Lower the cap temporarily any time your review queue (the items due today) is already large, so new material doesn't compete with catching up on reviews.

Use a low New card cap per study with the pace you prefer. Change Cards per game to fit the time you have for each game.

Decks

Deck selection: single level or all decks

For languages organised into levels - JLPT for Japanese, HSK for Chinese, and similar tiers elsewhere - Settings lets you study a single level, such as JLPT5 or HSK1, or switch to All decks to pull from every level cumulatively. Your choice is saved per language and per module, so you can run a single level for characters while using All decks for vocabulary in the same language. Here's the practical difference:

1. Open Settings and find the Deck selection group for the language and module (characters, vocabulary, or conversations) you want to change.
2. Choose a single level (like JLPT5) to keep your review queue tightly focused on material at your current stage.
3. Or choose All decks once you've cleared earlier levels, so reviews pull from everything you've studied instead of requiring you to manually advance a level setting.
4. Repeat separately for each module - deck selection doesn't have to match between characters and vocabulary in the same language.

Audio

Audio

Audio settings cover volume, a Normal/Slow playback speed for pronunciation practice, and toggles for sound effects (correct/incorrect chimes, completion cues) plus generated background music and ambient soundscapes that follow your current language and theme. Slow playback is worth trying for any language with unfamiliar tones or consonant clusters - hearing a word at half speed a few times often fixes the pronunciation faster than repeating it at normal speed. Turn effects and music off individually if you'd rather study in silence, or keep just the pronunciation audio and mute the decorative sounds.

Appearance

Appearance: font size, 12 themes, and animated backgrounds

Appearance settings answer how do I switch themes? directly: they include a font size control (Small, Medium, or Large) and twelve decorative colour themes, arranged as six palette families in two shades each -

• Black — two dark, high-contrast shades
• Grey-blue — two cool, muted shades
• Grey-white — two light, neutral shades
• Yellow — two warm, parchment-leaning shades
• Green — two calm, forest-leaning shades
• Pink — two soft, warm shades

Tapping any theme applies it across the whole app instantly - no reload, and nothing about your study progress or settings changes when you switch. Appearance also includes animated backgrounds, which add extra motion behind scene conversations, or can be turned off for a static, distraction-free background if the motion is more distracting than helpful during focused review.

Language

Interface language

Choose your preferred App language for menus, buttons and page titles. Your selected study languages stay the same.

Spelling

British or American English

This toggle switches the spelling and wording style of the app's own interface text between British and American conventions - for example "colour" versus "color." It only affects Scribe Origins' own copy, not the language content you're studying, so switching it won't touch translations, example sentences, or anything inside a lesson.

Backup

Sync and auto-sync

Your progress and settings save on this device. You can study offline after loading the app and study content. Sign in and sync while online to continue on another device. Use Export backup and Import backup for manual transfers.

Reference

All settings at a glance

If you already know roughly what you're looking for, this table is the fastest way to find the right group before opening Settings.

Recommended starting points

Which Scribe Origins settings should I change as a new learner?

If you are asking which Scribe Origins settings should I change, change only settings that remove a real obstacle. Keep the default review behaviour long enough to understand it, then adjust one category at a time. Changing answer count, audio speed, subtitles, new-item limits, and review organisation together makes it difficult to know which change helped.

A setting is useful when it changes the learning task in a way you can name. “Hide translation so I must listen first” is a clear reason. “Change everything until the app feels harder” is not.

Safe change order

How can I test whether a settings change improves learning?

1. Choose one repeated difficulty, such as relying on translation, rushing through choices, or accumulating too many new cards.
2. Record a small baseline: due count, accuracy, time, or the exact behaviour you want to change.
3. Change one relevant setting.
4. Use it for several short sessions rather than judging one unusually good or bad day.
5. Keep the change if the target difficulty improves without creating a larger problem.

For example, reducing multiple-choice options may make a beginner session less overwhelming, while increasing them later can sharpen discrimination. Neither value is universally correct. The suitable value depends on whether the current choices reveal knowledge or encourage random guessing.

Devices and progress

Which settings affect local progress, sync, and offline use?

Scribe Origins saves progress locally on the current device. Account sync can copy supported progress and settings between devices when a connection is available. Offline use depends on the app shell and content already loaded into the device cache; community activity, sign-in, new server data, and unopened material still require a connection.

What should I do before changing devices?

If you use an account, confirm the current device has completed its latest sync while online before relying on another device. If you use manual transfer, create a fresh bundle and keep the original device unchanged until the receiving device shows the expected progress. A settings screen is not proof that every content file has been cached.

Will changing a display setting erase study progress?

Appearance, subtitle, sound, and similar presentation choices should not erase card progress. If you are about to clear browser storage, uninstall site data, or reset the app, treat that as a separate data operation: sync or export first. Browser controls that clear cookies and site data can remove local progress even though the app setting itself is harmless.

Troubleshooting

What should I do if Scribe Origins settings do not seem to apply?

1. Return to the affected mode and begin a fresh item or scene; an already-open session may keep the options it started with.
2. Confirm you changed the setting for the relevant category, language, or review mode.
3. Reload the app once while online if the interface appears stale.
4. Check whether another device synced an older settings snapshot after your change.
5. Record the setting name, old value, new value, device, browser, and screen where the mismatch appears before contacting Support.

Why did my review count change after a setting adjustment?

A setting that changes the selected language, active deck, new-item allowance, due filters, or progress grouping can change what the session includes without deleting records. Compare the current filters and language first. If the count remains unexpected, inspect whether the same item progress is shared across the selected modes.

The stable answer to which Scribe Origins settings should I change is therefore conservative: change the smallest control that addresses a measured problem, test it for several sessions, and protect local data before any browser-level reset.

Avoid over-adjusting

Which Scribe Origins settings should I leave unchanged at first?

Leave scheduling and progress organisation unchanged until you can explain how a normal review moves through the app. Defaults give you a baseline. If you change a setting before observing the original behaviour, you cannot tell whether the new value improved accuracy, reduced distraction, or merely made sessions feel different.

Presentation settings such as subtitles, audio speed, and optional sound are easier to test immediately. The answer to which Scribe Origins settings should I change still begins with the smallest reversible adjustment tied to one observed problem.

Learning-setting questions

Should I use subtitles when learning a language?

Use subtitles in stages. Begin with native text and translation when the scene is new, remove the translation once meaning is clear, and attempt audio first before showing native text. Permanent translated subtitles can make reading faster than listening and hide whether the sounds are understood.

Native subtitles are useful for locating a sound or word boundary. After checking, replay without looking. The goal is not to remove support immediately; it is to prevent support from becoming the only route to meaning.

Is slow audio good for language learning?

Slow audio helps identify unfamiliar sounds, tones, endings, and word boundaries. Return to normal speed after the difficult part is clear, because natural rhythm includes reductions and linking that slow playback can distort. Use slow speed diagnostically rather than as a permanent comfort setting.

A good sequence is normal once, slow once or twice, speak with the model, then normal again without text. If normal audio remains incomprehensible, reduce sentence length or learn missing vocabulary instead of slowing it indefinitely.

When should I increase language-learning difficulty?

Increase difficulty when accuracy is stable and the current cue makes the answer automatic. Hide translations, reduce choices, type instead of recognise, move from isolated words to sentences, or use unfamiliar contexts. Change one dimension so a new failure has an identifiable cause.

If performance falls to guessing, restore one support. Productive difficulty should require effort while preserving a path to correction. Confusion alone is not evidence of effective learning.

How many new words should I learn each day?

Choose a limit based on tomorrow's review capacity. Begin conservatively and observe the total due queue for a week. Reduce new items when reviews take too long, accuracy falls, or words never reach meaningful context. Increase only when old reviews remain manageable.

Different weeks can use different limits. Travel, exams, illness, or a backlog justify a temporary pause. A new-item setting controls input flow; it should not become a streak target that overrides honest learning.

Interface language

Should I change the app interface to the language I am learning?

A target-language interface creates frequent exposure to navigation words, but it can also make important settings and error messages harder to understand. Change it when common controls are familiar and you can recover the original language if needed. Beginners can keep the interface clear while studying target-language content directly.

Do not count repeated menu recognition as broad vocabulary growth. Use the interface as a small immersion layer, then meet the same words in sentences and real tasks. Preserve a reader language you understand for account, privacy, payment, and data-safety decisions.

Translation support

When should I turn off translations while studying?

Turn off translation after you understand the scene or sentence and can identify the target structure. Attempt meaning from sound or native text first, then reveal translation only to check. Keep translation available for new, dense, or ambiguous material where guessing would teach little. The aim is staged independence, not avoiding your first language at all costs. If comprehension collapses, restore one support and shorten the material before trying again.