Does your Duolingo app icon look sick? You’re not alone

By Patrick Hearn Published August 29, 2024

It’s an absolute tragedy: The normally chipper Duolingo owl has fallen ill.

Just kidding. The app icon might have changed, but it doesn’t mean any significant changes are coming to the app. It did stir up quite a bit of conversation on both X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit, though, as users around the world noticed that the Duo owl looked like he needed a heavy dose of DayQuil.

A lot of users discussed the possibility that Duolingo was stalking them, as many people first noticed the icon change on a day when they were also sick. Thankfully, that isn’t the case.

Duolingo changed the app to draw attention to it and to get people talking. The team definitely succeeded, but this isn’t the first time the company has pulled something like this.

In October last year, the company changed the icon to make it look like Duo was melting. Personally, I think making Duo look like he was melting earlier in the year and saving the sick icon for October/November would have made more sense — high temperatures here are still in the mid- to upper 90s.

If you don’t want to wait for the icon to disappear and you are subscribed to Super Duolingo or Duolingo Max, you can replace it with one of those two icons instead. Alternatively, you can replace it with a Streak Society icon. Don’t feel bad if you do; not everyone wants a sniffly owl on their home screen.

Among the more hilarious takes was one user who had a streak of “not using” the app for 100 days and thought the icon change was a targeted punishment and another who pointed out that there had to be a bird flu joke somewhere.