Introducing Episodes
Mini-documentaries you can read.
Five-minute cultural episodes about everyday life in the language you’re learning. Watch them or just listen — and the subtitles aren’t an overlay, they are the content, synced word by word.
Episode 1/3 · A2–B1
Pfand & recycling
Caption
Für die Flasche bekommst du dein zurück
A quick simulation — about everyday life in the language you’re learning.
Launching with German · Levels A2–B1 · iPhone, iOS 26
The format
A short film’s worth of culture, written to your level.
Each episode is a level-calibrated cultural mini-documentary — a five-minute piece about everyday life, written for a specific CEFR level and narrated in clear, studio-quality dialogue. Not a textbook dialogue from 2009. Not raw footage you can’t follow. Something made to be understood exactly where you are.
Calibrated to A2–B1
Every episode is written for a specific CEFR level, so it stretches you without losing you.
Five minutes each
Short enough to finish, good enough to want the next one.
Everyday life, real culture
The rituals, rules and small print of a place — not tourist phrases.
Caption-native
The subtitles are the lesson.
In most apps the captions sit on top of a video. In Halm they are the artifact itself — owned, and synchronized word by word as it’s spoken. Every word is tappable for an in-context translation, and the words worth keeping flow straight into Halm’s spaced repetition.
Synced word by word
The caption lights up in time, so you always know which word you’re hearing.
Tap any word to translate
An in-context translation, right where you’re reading — no leaving the episode.
Straight into spaced repetition
Saved words feed Halm’s FSRS and come back right before you’d forget them.
One episode, two modes
Watch it. Or slip it in your pocket.
Every episode plays two ways from a single engine: a watch mode where you read along, and a podcast mode for the walk or the commute. Same episode, same words, whichever suits the moment.
Watch mode
Read along as each word is spoken and lit in time.
Podcast mode
Pocket it and listen — the same episode, ears only.
One manifest, both experiences
A single engine drives watch and listen, so nothing is a second-class copy.
Accessibility carries the design
A caption everyone can reach.
Because the captions are the content, accessibility isn’t bolted on — it’s the whole point. Full transcripts are available to VoiceOver from the first second, the transcript honours Dynamic Type, and Reduce Motion replaces every transition.
VoiceOver from second one
The full transcript is available to VoiceOver from the moment an episode opens.
Honours Dynamic Type
The transcript scales to the largest accessibility text sizes without clipping.
Reduce Motion, respected
Turn it on and every transition — including the word-sync sweep — is replaced.
Yours, offline
Downloads once. Then it’s just yours.
Episodes play offline after download — no streaming, no accounts, no tracking. What you watch and the words you save never leave your iPhone.
Plays offline
Download an episode once and it plays with no connection at all.
No account
Nothing to sign up for. Open Halm and press play.
No tracking
No third-party analytics, no telemetry — nothing to leak.
Launching with German
We start where the small print lives.
The format is language-neutral — but every launch episode is German, because that’s our catalog today, not a limit of the idea. Four to begin with: the deposit ritual of Pfand and recycling, the quiet hours of Ruhezeit, the Anmeldung paperwork everyone dreads, and Oktoberfest.
- Pfand & recycling
- Ruhezeit — quiet hours
- The Anmeldung ritual
- Oktoberfest
Timed to the Wiesn
Our Oktoberfest episode ships ahead of the Wiesn — Sept 19–Oct 4.
Ready for the September window, when everyone’s already looking Munich’s way.
Watch, read, tap any word.
Download Halm free and start with German. Your first episode is five minutes away.
Free · iPhone · iOS 26 · Launching with German