Weekly Update #9
First things first – please excuse the radio silence! Over the last four weeks I’ve been traveling and soaking up the final weeks of summer here in Europe.
The idea behind Menu, please! was born directly out of travel experiences, so I hope you’ll forgive me for taking some time to recharge and gather fresh inspiration. It’s been great to step back, see how people are using the app in the wild, and think about where we want to take it next.
Now, let’s get into what has changed in Menu, please! over the last month and what’s coming down the pipeline.
What’s New?
📖 Phonetic Pronunciation for Orders
One of the biggest requests from early users was, “Can you help me say the dish name correctly?” Now you can! Phonetic pronunciation is part of the ordering and live translation features. This means no more playing audio clips over and over before you order – you can read the pronunciation right in the translator and surprise the waiter with a perfect order.
As someone learning Chinese, this has quickly become one of my favorite updates since launching Menu, please!. It’s been genuinely useful on my own trips these past weeks.
📋 Menu-Aware Dish Descriptions
Another common pain point was connecting translations to real menus, especially when the menu asks you to make choices (size, toppings, cooking style, etc.). We’ve updated dish descriptions to include short explanations and hints, making them much less generic. These additions help you spot where options are available and how to find them on the printed or digital menu. It’s not yet perfect, but it’s already a huge step forward.
🎤 Improved Voice Translation
Voice translations have also been tightened up. Recordings that are too short, silent, or unclear used to fail silently or produce strange, “hallucinated” output. Now the app detects these cases and shows a friendly warning instead. It’s a small change, but it makes the voice translation feature much more predictable and useful.
What’s Next?
🤖 Android Version Challenges
This one has been tricky. While the iOS version went live smoothly, releasing on Android has turned into a bigger project than expected. Google Play requires 12 active users over 14 consecutive days plus frequent APK updates for individual developers. Despite having over 40 beta testers, I’m still struggling to get formal approval.
What’s frustrating is that Apple provided very clear feedback on missing requirements, while Google mostly offers links to FAQs and generic “do more testing” advice. It’s not ideal for a web-app-based product like ours.
If you want to help push the Android release forward, send me a message and I’ll invite you to the closed beta. Every active tester helps!
📸 Image Orientation Issues
Despite carefully preserving EXIF data during upload, some Android devices seem to strip orientation information from images before sending them. This results in rotated or flipped menus, which is especially damaging for Chinese and Japanese text, where rotation can make recognition much harder.
I’m working on a fix, but in the meantime, please double-check that your images are correctly oriented before uploading.
🎙️ Taking Voice Translation to the Next Level
While translation quality has been our main focus, voice translation has been slightly left behind. Next, I’ll be improving error handling, polishing recognition quality, and making the resulting speech sound more natural and human. I think there’s a lot of potential here to make live ordering even smoother.
📧 Engaging With the Community
Another focus area is communication. I’d love to connect more with the Menu, please! community in a way that’s useful, not intrusive. That means launching a newsletter with easy subscription management. You’ll be able to choose what updates you want and how often you get them.
✨ Backlog of Quality-of-Life Improvements
Finally, after doing a number of user interviews and calls, I now have a backlog of smaller improvements that can make a big difference. Thank you to everyone who has shared feedback – it’s shaping how we prioritize features and making the app better for everyone.
Weekly Thank You!
❤️ To Nick Kembel of TaiwanObsessed.com and the Taiwan Travel Planning for sharing Menu, please! with a community of 91,000+ Taiwan travelers. Your support means the world and helps us reach the people who need this tool most.
❤️ To Nico for the deep dive into the app and for thinking critically about each step of the experience. When you’re building something solo, it’s easy to develop “blind spots,” so thoughtful user input like this is priceless.
Have a great start to the week and the rest of the summer!
– Krists