Dictionary Library

One must choose which dictionary one is using instead of letting the app work with what one has bought and downloaded. Maybe the search would be too slow otherwise, okay, but then one must still tell the app what language one is inputting. In other words, one has to poke around in the interface twice before one can actually enter a word for look-up. Surely we can expect better by this time.

It's 2024 and PONS Langenscheidt last updated their app 3 years ago! Bugs include an automatic crash on launch whenever there is no Internet connection or a slow cellular data link; disappearance of the icon for the keyword/full-text search toggle (you just have to remember where to tap); and a prompt about pasting permission every time you switch to the app, even if you haven't quit the app since last granting or refusing permission to paste from the clipboard. The German dictionaries (and I bought the whole library, for hundreds of dollars) suffer from the stupidity of German academics who still think they're limited to the printed page. The tilde (~), which stands for the keyword, is repeated 10 to 20 times in each keyword entry, when it would be easy, in a digital medium, to just repeat the keyword in every expression that uses the word. There's no quick way to jump between the different parts of speech, when the same word can be a noun, a transitive verb, and an intransitive verb; you just have to scroll through the long text. And the biggest shortcoming of all (which, in fairness to PONS Langenscheidt's incompetent user interface designers and programmers, also affects the publisher's printed dictionaries): you don't get a full set of verb conjugation tables! (The only company ever to get that right, in any medium, is Bescherelle, for French verbs.) I don't know what to recommend for German dictionaries. PONS Langenscheidt is the best there is, but it's far from good, and the app is unmaintained as of 2024.

I used this to compare the various Pons German-English dictionaries, and then purchased their Advanced edition.