For families & friends
ASL is a language you use with other people — so ASL Buddy is built around private groups that let your whole household learn, practice, and remember together.
The heart of ASL Buddy
Over 90% of Deaf children are born to hearing parents, which means an ASL learner is almost never alone, they're part of a family or friend group who all need the same signs at the same time. So instead of bolting social features onto a solo app, ASL Buddy makes the private family or friend group a first-class part of the experience: its own tab, its own shared rituals, and a way to actually teach each other. No public profiles, no strangers, no global rankings, just a private circle for the people you want to sign with.
Create a group, then tap Invite to share a join link and a prewritten message through your own Messages, Mail, or WhatsApp, scan a QR code at the dinner table, or read out a short code like FRMK-2683. Family groups use People I approve so you personally approve each person at the door, even if the link gets forwarded; class groups can let anyone with the link join instantly. The app never touches your contacts.
Each group has a streak that only grows on days when every active member reviews, so your daily practice keeps the whole household's flame alive. It's an all-for-one mechanic that rewards showing up together rather than competing, with celebrations at milestones like 7, 30, and 100 days, and a daily Sign of the Day that gives everyone the same small ritual to open the app for.
Sign comparison finds the vocabulary your group has in common, highlights the signs each person could teach the others (Mom can help you with these twelve signs), and surfaces signs nobody knows yet as a let's-learn-these-together goal. It turns we're all using the app into we can teach each other, the most natural way a family actually learns to sign.
The live review session is built for exactly how families learn ASL: over video, one person leading and one signing to the camera. Because the leader's screen shows the answer key, a hearing parent can quiz their kid without knowing ASL themselves, while a fluent or Deaf relative can run a round at its best. A Practice only toggle keeps it low-stakes and playful with young children. (Multi-device sessions over SharePlay turn on once the app is provisioned with an Apple Developer account; the full flow is already usable as a demo today.)
Family Wordlists let any member curate the signs that matter to your group, your names, camping-trip words, inside jokes, and any member can add the whole list to their own reviews in one tap. No generic course covers your household's vocabulary, so you build it once and everyone studies it on their own schedule.
When a family member's streak is about to lapse, you can wave at them, a gentle one-tap nudge capped at once a day per sender. Combined with cooperative challenges that celebrate every finisher instead of crowning a winner, ASL Buddy deliberately protects the slower learner in a mixed-age family, the very person it most wants to keep going.
Each member chooses how much they share with the group, full progress or counts only, and can change it anytime. There are no public leaderboards, no discovery, and no follower graph anywhere in the app, and your per-sign weak spots never leave your device except inside a session you chose to join. It's accountability without exposure, which matters when kids are in the group.
Create your account and bring ASL into your home — one private group, one shared streak, one sign at a time.
Coming soon to the App Store · iPhone & iPad
