For the last two days, I’ve tried to download the course Chinese HSK 3 for offline use. But it always ended up in a problem while being about 50% downloaded and it crashed the iOS app.
After many attempts, I gave up. But now, after the failed download, I realized that most of the words in HSK 3 course do not have audio (the audio button is always red, so none of the audio exercises can play audio, nor can I hear the audio associated with a word after guessing).
Even worse, the audio for most of the words from HSK 1 and HSK 2 courses are also broken. Probably because they share a common word database.
I run iOS 11.4.1 on an iPhone X, and I have the latest Memrise version: v2.3.34.7211. I have tried restarting the phone, uninstalling and installing the app, as well as deleting the course and re-adding it. None helps.
What’s funny is that I have found 20 or 30 words out of 1000 that have the audio file and can be played (blue speaker button). Probably because the download didn’t complete and did not touch those words. But the crash after the failed download seems to have broken 90% of my Chinese words and I can’t play/hear/test the audio any more.
Also, I installed a totally different course (Spanish) and the audio plays normally. So I assume the Chinese HSK courses share the same words across them, with the same audio files. And these download failures and consequent app crashes have now corrupted my HSK courses.
Is anyone having a similar problem? I would appreciate some answers!!
Thanks a lot!
–Claudio
No, I have not had ‘corrupted courses’, but I have had situations where a course wouldn’t download, and Joshua said that this was probably because the course was too big. That one did indeed contain a lot of pictures and audio.
But corrupted, no.
I suppose you are looking for a solution. As a workaround, you could logout from the App (make sure that you know your username and password), as this deletes all downloaded courses (and I suppose also some cache). Then login again and try again. Perhaps a fresh start helps… but it shouldn’t happen of course.
PS: it’s said on this forum the courses cannot really share information between each other. I.e. if you learn ‘boat’ in one course, and encounter exactly the same word in another, it’s treated as a different item.
Note that there might be one exception: in the past there was a database for every language and course creators could take items from that pool. I am not sure if old courses that have been based on that pool before that transition, can share the same items or not (i.e. have entries that essentially point to the same record).
Thanks for sharing your experience. I have investigated further and this is what I have found:
- Logging out and in doesn’t help, still most of the words have the audio button in red.
- Any other Chinese course (even new courses) have words with no audio, if the words are also present in the HSK Level 3 course. I don’t know how this is possible, but I have tested with over 10 courses sharing vocabulary.
- I open Memrise on my iPad and everything works magically. I have the audio on every word of every Chinese HSK course. So it is definitely something with my iPhone and the local storage.
- However, I uninstall, install, etc., and nothing helps.
I really don’t know what’s going on, but I can’t study with audio on my iPhone any more 
Now installed Memrise on a new iOS device, logged in and the audio works.
Confirmed: offline download has messed up my iPhone storage for the app, so bad that it won’t even go away by reinstalling.
Any idea when this bug will be looked at?
-thanks a lot!
Not go away with reinstalling? That must be frustrating.
Is there a function in iOS to delete all data/cache or something like that like in Android?
If this means that you cannot use the APP at all, you might consider reporting it directly:
They usually respond is my experience, though not always with a direct solution, but if you cannot study at all it is worth trying.
Exactly, I just would like to go back to normal when I could guess a word and hear it’s associated pronunciation. Nothing more.
I already filed a bug report, so I’ll use the contact form.
Thanks a lot for the help.
I’ve had exactly the same experience as you, also with HSK3.
As a workaround, before the bug gets fixed, I installed a tool (iMazing) on my PC which allows me to browse the file directory on my iPhone.
In the downloads folder there was a 4 MB file, once I deleted it and reinstalled Memrise everything started working again.
Thanks @Finlay_McNicol9d, that is exactly what I was looking for: deleting the “corrupted” downloaded course. Now it works again, THANKS!!
Hopefully they will take care of this in newer versions, cause’ it’s a pain in the ass for the regular user to do this.