This Is Why the Duolingo Owl Sometimes Looks Sick on Your iPhone

Something weird is happening with Duolingo. The green owl on your iPhone sometimes looks depressed or sick, even if you haven’t changed anything. This is why the Duolingo icon changes randomly.

Duolingo icon on iPhone changes randomly

The green owl from language learning app Duolingo has a reputation for being a bit manipulative. If you leave during a lesson, the bird will appear crying. If you don’t open the app for a while, you’ll get emails about how you made the owl sad.

It’s fertile material for countless memes, in which it seems like the owl will do something to your family if you don’t keep up your streak. Duolingo plays into that nicely, by using the app icon to compete for your attention.

Depressed or sick

The Duolingo icon on your iPhone is usually a cheerful Duolingo owl face with big sparkling eyes. But sometimes the icon looks completely different, without you changing anything. The owl looks very sad or seems to be melting.

The last few days it’s happened again: the owl on your iPhone is sick. One eye is half closed, its beak is open and a huge drop of snot is coming out of its nostril (beak hole?). As if it were a Tamagotchi that really needs to be taken care of.

Please open me

The goal of this change is primarily to get you to open that app again. It’s a smart strategy, because most people’s home screens look the same day in and day out. Icons rarely change design, so it’s noticeable when one looks very different. Oh yeah, and that icon also changes if you’ve been on a streak for more than 100 days. That’s the Duolingo owl on firewith flames in his eyes.

But a sick or depressed owl certainly stands out, because of the big difference with the happy bird you normally see. Then it is very tempting to tap the app to see what is going on. Before you know it, you are doing your daily lesson again to tell someone in Spanish that your sister is wearing a red dress, or the elephant is eating an apple.

Marketing of Duolingo

In addition, it is also a marketing trick of Duolingo. On social media, screenshots of the icon are shared en masse to ask what is going on. As a result, everyone is talking about Duolingo again, or at least sees the app passing by on the screen again.

It’s a very clever trick to use the icon that everyone sees in this way. Let’s hope that more app makers won’t be inspired by this. A sick owl is still doable, but we don’t need Instagram with a runny nose.