It’s funny how the world can change quite quickly.
When we launched our Bitesize Irish Gaelic program in 2010 publicly (all with about 30 lessons!), using your mobile to surf the internet was still in its infancy really.
Roll on 2015, and more emails are accessed on mobile devices than on computers. You expect sites to work nicely on your phone or tablet.
For the last few months, our online Bitesize Irish Gaelic lessons had a problem playing audio on Chrome for Android.
I’m now pleased to say that the audio buttons have been fixed for Android.
If you quickly want to test how our audio buttons work:
- Open our About Us page (or access a Bitesize lesson if you’re a member)
- Click “Eoin”
- You should hear how it’s pronounced
If that audio doesn’t play for you, don’t despair! Please contact us so that we can step through it with you, since each device and computer is different.
For all you Apple device users too, if the audio doesn’t play for you using the steps above, please also do contact us so we can work through it with you.
There are still some open issues with our audio buttons on Android:
- Older Android versions (like version 2.x) likely won’t play our audio recordings (that’s a shame, you’re missing out on thousands of our recordings!)
- On some buttons when you click them to hear the audio, the top of the text gets chopped off so you only see the bottom part of the line. We’re aware of that issue, and may be able to fix it.
- On Firefox for Android, when you click a button, it will play but the button does not change from the “playing” view of it until you scroll down the page. There’s not much we can do about that browser bug.
Here’s a question to you Bitesizers: Do you mainly access our Bitesize lessons on your computer, your phone, or your tablet? Leave your reply below.
Bonus tip: Write in Irish on your iPhone
Levi emailed us recently with this excellent tip:
My computer keyboard makes it difficult to add a fada, so I won’t be including Irish in this message, sadly. Fortunately, If you wanted to let the other users know, they can change their phone’s language to Gaeilge if they have an iPhone. You also have the option of just changing the calendar settings, which has really helped me fluently learn days and months. Settings –> General –> Language and Region –> Add Language. It allows them to download Gaeilge and apply it!
10 thoughts on “Mobile Bites: Accessing Bitesize Irish Gaelic on Your Phone”
You can easily type with a fada on a Macbook Pro (and probably other Apple computers) by changing your Input Source.
Go to System Preferences (under Applications) and choose Language & Text. Click the Input Sources button and a list of languages appears. Scroll down and check the box next to Irish Extended. This allows you to type a fada by pressing alt and the vowel you wish to type. alt + a = á
If you check the box next to Show Input Menu in Menu Bar, a small Irish flag will appear on your menu bar. If you click on the flag a drop-down menu appears and you can choose Show Keyboard Viewer which will allow you to see what changes there are on the Irish Extended keyboard.
Hope this helps!
Go n-éirí libh!
Basya
“alt” is also know as “option”
Hi Basya,
Thank you for writing these detailed instructions. I am sure that many will find it helpful.
Yes, the fixes for Android phones really work. Not only can I now play the pronunciation links, but I can play them a second time, which I was unable to do before, unless I logged out of the lesson and logged back in. When I very first started lessons I was using a Kindle Fire tablet, and had trouble with the links. I have not tried that again, so I don’t know if that is fixed (Kindle isn’t exactly Android), but I do know everything works beautifully now on my Samsung. Thanks!
Hi Renee,
Thank you for letting us know that everything is working now.
I use my phone only because my laptop takes an eternity to start up, & I can write in Gaeilge on my phone.
Go n-éirí leat, mo chairde!
Changing the calendar to Irish — how smart! I might try the same thing…
How do you only change your iPhone calendar to irish? I downloaded both irish and scottish but can’t get one or the other to apply only to my calendar. Thank you!! 🙂
I mainly use my computer but when I get a tablet, I think I would really like using the tablet better.
Hi Rachel,
Thank you for your response. We appreciate it.