Drafted with AI assistance and reviewed, fact-checked and edited by hand before publishing - see our AI transparency page for how we use AI across the app.
A shorter update than last month's, but a few of these are things families told us about directly - thank you, as always, to everyone who used the Feedback button or emailed in.
One Smart practice tile instead of four locked ones
The classic home screen used to offer Write it, Type it, Pick it and Say it as four separate tiles, and picking one locked your child into that mode for the whole session. A parent wrote in after their child asked to switch modes partway through and couldn't. Those four tiles are now a single Smart practice tile - it opens the same practice screen, but every mode stays switchable mid-session, the way a teacher-assigned list has always worked. Which modes show is still controlled by your existing "How they practise" settings, so nothing about what your child is allowed to do has changed - only the lock.
Alongside it, a new Learn More row now gives direct, one-tap access to Meaning, Word Parts and a new Look & Remember warm-up - all three previously reachable only as part of a set weekly plan slot.
Paper practice checks before marking a photo as "finished"
A printed word-list handout, photographed by mistake instead of a child's completed worksheet, used to come back from the AI as a perfect 10/10 - because a printed list reads back as "every word spelled correctly." It is the answer key. There was no way for the app to tell "nothing was attempted" apart from "a flawless attempt."
Paper practice now asks first: is this your child's own handwriting, or a printed list? If it's a printed list, the words are still saved to a list for practice - just not recorded as a finished, perfectly-scored attempt that never actually happened.
"Manage settings" is now "Account settings"
Small rename, and it comes with a real change underneath it: opening the screen when credits are running low used to lead straight to a "Top up now" link. It now leads with reviewing where credits went and claiming anything free first, before pointing at a purchase - and for a one-child household, the usage detail is shown open rather than needing a tap to find.
A note on credits
Spelling.Live is growing, and introducing credits helps us keep improving the platform whilst still offering a generous free experience. Every family still starts with a meaningful free balance, and a lot of the app - reports, the weekly plan, every game, printing, adding children and lists - stays free forever. It's specifically the AI behind practice marking, hints, voice and handwriting that has a real, per-use cost, and a credit balance is how we keep that sustainable without it landing on one person's card indefinitely. If you haven't seen it yet, how credits work has the full breakdown.
Smaller things
- Inviting someone to help with a child's account now says what it does: "Invite a tutor, parent or guardian", rather than just "guardian" - the same feature always covered all three, the button just undersold it.
- Bonus game results occasionally failed to save for rounds that mixed a right answer with a wrong one; fixed, so the Game activity view is complete again. Games are visibility-only and this never affected spelling accuracy figures.
- Hints and handwriting checks could fail outright for a small number of families depending on where they were signing in from; fixed.
As always, the help centre has more detail, and the Feedback button in the app comes straight to us.