Common questions about using HearBrew. Still stuck? Email info@hearbrew.com.
HearBrew is a language-learning app that turns real English videos into bite-sized listening clips. Each clip comes with bilingual subtitles, key vocabulary you can tap to learn, and a difficulty score matched to your level — so you always get content that's understandable but just a little bit harder than your current skill.
Open the Library tab, paste a YouTube URL into the box, pick how many clips you want (default 5), and tap Submit. HearBrew will fetch the captions, analyse the video, and generate the clips within a few minutes.
Only videos with English captions are supported. You need to own the video or have permission to use it — see the Terms of Use for details.
When you tick Share with all users before submitting, the clips generated from your video are added to the public feed so every HearBrew learner can practise with them. If you leave it unticked, the clips stay private to your own library.
Only tick this if you own the content or have permission to distribute it.
Every submission uses part of your monthly clip quota:
It's a rolling 30-day window, not a calendar month, so a clip you submitted 25 days ago will expire in 5 days and free up a slot.
If you need more, you can buy extra Clip Credits (50 / 200 / 500 packs) that never expire and automatically top up your budget when the monthly quota runs out.
No. HearBrew uses YouTube's official embedded player, which iOS restricts to foreground playback only. When you lock your phone, the video pauses.
This is the same behaviour as the official YouTube app on iOS for users without YouTube Premium. Keep the screen on if you want continuous listening.
Every clip gets a difficulty score from 1–100 based on vocabulary frequency (COCA corpus), speaking rate, and sentence complexity. Your personal level is tracked using an Elo-style rating that goes up when you comfortably finish hard clips and down when you struggle with easy ones.
The feed picks clips slightly above your current level (Krashen's i+1 hypothesis) — hard enough to learn from, easy enough to understand.
Tap any word in a subtitle to see its meaning, pronunciation, and example usage. Tapping "save" adds it to your personal word book. You can review saved words anytime in Me → Word Book, or study them with flash cards (Pro feature).
Yes. You can browse the public feed, tap words, and save favorites without creating an account — everything is stored on your device. When you're ready, sign in with Apple, Google or email to sync your progress to the cloud and recover it on another device.
Because subscriptions are handled by Apple, cancel via iPhone Settings → your Apple ID → Subscriptions → HearBrew, or from inside the app at Me → My Membership → Manage. Your Pro features stay active until the end of the current billing period.
Video processing can occasionally fail (rate limits from YouTube, unusual captions, server hiccups). Clips that never reach the published state don't count against your quota, so you can just submit again.
If it keeps failing, email info@hearbrew.com with the YouTube URL and what went wrong.
Email info@hearbrew.com with the clip URL (or video id) and the rights claim. We review takedown notices in good faith and remove infringing content promptly.
Inside the app, go to Me → Edit Profile → Delete Account. Your user record is soft-deleted immediately and your personal activity (view history, favorites, watch later, word book) is wiped. Videos you shared to the public feed may stay up so other users' favorites aren't broken — if that matters to you, let us know by email.
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