Toisto is an app to practice languages that runs in the terminal. It is developed in Python and available for Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, and iPadOS.
It uses spaced repetition to help you memorize vocabulary and phrases. It comes with a limited set of words and phrases in Dutch, English, and Finnish.
Toisto is Finnish and means reiteration, playback, repetition, reproduction.
Warning
Toisto is currently in beta. The progress file format may change occasionally, causing your progress to be lost.
Here's what a typical practice session looks like:
demo.mov
On Linux, Windows, and macOS, install uv:
$ curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | shWith uv you can install tools developed in Python, such as Toisto. Advantage of uv is that it also installs Python, if needed.
On Linux and Windows, you must have an mp3 player installed so Toisto can speak. By default, Toisto expects mpg123 to be available. If you want to use a different mp3 player, you can configure Toisto to do so, see configure a different mp3 player below.
On macOS, Toisto works best in a more modern terminal than the default macOS terminal. We test with iTerm2. Toisto should work mostly fine with the default macOS terminal app though, so installing iTerm2 or another terminal is optional.
On iOS and iPadOS, install the free a-Shell app. a-Shell provides a Unix-like terminal for Toisto to run in. It has Python and pip (Python package manager) pre-installed.
On Linux, Windows, and macOS:
$ uv tool install toistoOn iOS and iPadOS:
$ pip install toistoTo practice:
$ toisto practice --target fi --source enSupported languages at the moment are English (en), Finnish (fi), and Dutch (nl).
To stop practicing: type Ctrl-C or Ctrl-D.
To prevent having to specify your target and source language every practice session, configure them as follows:
$ toisto configure --target fi --source en- User guide.
- Background information on why Toisto exists and what the future plans are.
- Concept files describes the format of the concept files.
- Software documentation describes how Toisto works.
- Developer documentation provides information on how to develop, test, and release Toisto. This is aimed at people who (want to help) develop Toisto.