CapWords

Hi Product Hunt! 👋 I’m one of the makers of CapWords.

We built CapWords to make language learning feel more natural and fun — powered by AI.

With just one photo, our AI instantly recognizes everyday objects around you and tells you what they’re called in your target language. It also gives you native pronunciation and real-life example sentences.

No more memorizing flashcards or staring at word lists. CapWords turns your surroundings into a smart, visual language learning experience.

Currently, we support 8+ languages, and more are coming soon.

We’d love to hear your feedback and ideas! 🙏
➡️ Try it here: capwords.app

Really like the approach here—learning through your surroundings just feels way more natural. CapWords makes language practice part of everyday life, not a separate chore. Smart idea!

Back in the summer of 2022, Ace’s daughter pointed at a plant and asked, “Dad, what’s this?” He pulled out his phone to capture and identify it, then shared its name with her. She looked at him with excitement, as if he possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the world. From that moment on, they embarked on a fun “collecting” adventure, naming plants together.

By the end of the summer, they had identified over 60 plants, and she retained most of their names. Whenever they encountered a familiar plant, she would proudly proclaim its name to us.

Shortly after, she began learning English. Every day after school, he would ask her, “What’s the English word for ‘road’?” or “What’s the English word for ‘tall building’?” She quickly grasped these concepts and would proudly say, “Building!” whenever they passed by one. However, one day, when she pointed at a street sign and asked, “Dad, what’s this called in English?” he was stumped.

This unexpected challenge sparked a realization in us. Perhaps we could learn from the child and find a way to capture real-world language experiences, making learning more natural. This realization became the inspiration for CapWords — transforming the real world into an interactive language learning playground.

We observe children learning things rapidly from life. They remember things by associating them with scenes. Why not we replicate this experience for everyone? We can learn new languages by everyday objects that we are familiar with. That’s how CapWords works. We capture an object, identify it, and provide an example. Flashcards can help us retain these memories more effectively.

The process is simple: Capture, Memorize, and Apply. We hope CapWords can introduce everyone to a new language, inspiring them to start learning.

I really love this animation and the interactions; the flow feels completely intuitive.

When you use the camera to scan objects, reminds me of the scenes from the Pokémon anime in my childhood, where Ash scans Pokémon with his Pokédex. ❤️

This app is incredible — it can accurately recognize everything I capture. Amazing work!

Just one suggestion, I’m currently learning German, and for German words, it’s important to remember their gender in order to use them correctly. If the app could show the gender for each word, that would make it perfect for me.

By the way, I really love the sticker design!

I’ve seen and used many visual approaches to language learning. This method works, legit. And no one has ever done anything to systematically organize what you learn from your surroundings. Good work!