For iPhone and iPad
The chart fades as you learn
Every Morse app gives you a chart to read from. MorseHero is the one that takes it away.
The card teaches the code
Morse is a tree, and reading a letter means walking it — left on a dit, right on a dah. The card is that tree in gold pads on a dark board, with a lamp in every pad. Key dit dah dit and E, A and R light in turn, so you watch the code narrow to an answer instead of being handed one.
A route, not a lookup
Every lamp on the way stays lit, so the letter arrives with the reason it was that letter.
One black key
Press duration is the whole signal, so it is timed against the hardware clock rather than a gesture recogniser.
Three charts
Letters as a tree. Digits and punctuation as tables, one row each, because their codes carry a pattern a tree hides.
And then the chart erases itself
Reading Morse off a chart is the habit that stalls most people at around twelve words a minute: the eye gets fast and the ear never starts. So as you come to know a character by ear, its pad fades off the board — while you are receiving, never while you send. Miss it for a while and it comes back. Nobody has to decide when you are ready; the board is watching every answer, and it decides.
Free is the whole card, both directions, the live decoder and the first eight characters — far enough to watch them fade off the board and to know whether this works for you. One payment unlocks the rest. It does not renew, and there is nothing to cancel.
Three ways to use it
Key it yourself
Send on the black key and watch the route light from the antenna down. Every dot and dash comes out as a tone, as a tap you can feel, and — if you ask for it — as a flash of the camera light.
Point it at a radio
The app decodes what it hears through the microphone, working out the sender's speed on its own as it goes.
Answer the app
Single characters you key straight back. Words, callsigns and a whole two-way contact you type — keying a sentence back would cap you at your own sending speed.
It can hear what you cannot
The key is timed against the hardware clock, so the app can see whether your dahs are really three times your dits, whether your spacing holds, and whether you drift as you tire. It names one thing to fix, the way an experienced operator sitting beside you would.
The method is the real one
Koch and Farnsworth, done properly. Characters always at full speed, so there is no slow sound to unlearn later. Extra space between them at first, closing on its own as you keep up. A new character only once you have every one already in play. Speed offered, never imposed — and fifteen minutes twice a day beats an hour once.
Questions people ask first
How long does it take to learn Morse code?
Most people copying at a useful speed got there on about fifteen minutes twice a day for two or three months. The app is built around that dose and stops asking for more.
Do I need a radio?
No. The app sends, scores and reports on its own. Point it at a radio when you have one, and it will decode that too.
I tried before and gave up.
Almost everybody who gives up gave up reading a chart. That is the one habit this app is built to take away from you.
Is there a subscription?
No. One payment, no account, no renewal. What is free stays free.
Does it work without a signal?
Entirely. The app makes no network request of its own — on a plane, in a basement, anywhere.
Can it flash the camera light?
Yes, alongside the tone and the taps. It is how Morse was signalled between ships, and it is how somebody across a room can read you.
Nothing leaves the phone
No account. No analytics. No network. The app makes no request of its own — the only server it ever talks to is Apple's, and only when you buy or restore. The microphone is measured for a tone and discarded, never recorded. The privacy policy says exactly what stays where.
The app speaks eleven languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Greek, Ukrainian and Russian.
MorseHero
Free to try, unlocked with one purchase. iPhone and iPad, eleven languages, nothing uploaded.