Study with Flashcards

A deck is a set of cards owned by the selected Personal or team context. Each card has a question side and an answer side. Study progress is separate from the deck: everyone who studies a deck, including a deck shared by link, keeps their own schedule and history.

Create a deck

On Decks in Flashcards, choose New deck and type a title. The deck's page opens with the Add card drawer ready for its first card. To paste or upload cards instead, choose the import button beside New deck, which names where the deck will go, such as Import into Personal; see Import a deck of flashcards.

Decks lists every deck in the selected context, with how many cards each has, how many are due today and how many you have mastered. Decks without a folder come first, then each folder under its name. A long list is shown 50 decks at a time, with Previous and Next under it.

To find a deck, or the decks a card is in, type in the search field above the list and choose Search. It looks through each deck's title, description, tags and folder, and through its cards: their sides, choices and tags. A deck found through its cards says how many of them match, such as 3 cards match, and opens with those cards showing.

To change the deck's title, description, sharing, folder, source or tags, choose Edit details in the deck's More menu. The line under the title shows its sharing, folder, source and tags. Folder suggests the folders already in use. Decks with the same folder are listed together under its name; there is no hierarchy of folders. The source is a note of where the cards came from, such as a book chapter or a file name.

Card types

Any card can require a typed answer: choose Require a typed answer in the card's More menu, and study asks you to type the answer and checks it before showing the answer side. The check ignores case, punctuation and extra spaces, and counts a one or two letter slip in a longer answer as correct. When the check says an answer is wrong but it was right in other words, choose I knew this anyway.

Both sides take Markdown: bold, lists, links and code blocks. A card can also have an image above its question, chosen from the image library (Use the image library). A deck holds up to 5,000 cards; each side is up to 5,000 characters.

Add and change cards

Choose Add card under Cards on the deck's page. The drawer asks for the card's type and its sides. Add card, or Cmd+Enter (Ctrl+Enter on Windows), adds it to the list and clears the sides for the next card; the drawer stays open until you close it. The card type and Also ask back to front stay as they were for the next card. If a card cannot be added, the reason appears beside the field to correct.

Click a side in the list to change it. Changing a card's text keeps everyone's study history on it. If the card now means something else, choose Reset my progress in the card's More menu so it is studied as new again; it asks you to confirm first. The same menu adds tags, sets Also ask back to front, a typed answer and an image, moves or copies the card to another deck, and deletes the card.

Delete card deletes the card at once, and the message after it offers Undo, which brings the card back with everyone's progress on it.

Each card is one line: its number, front and back. A second line appears only for a card with something more to show, such as its type when it is not Basic, its tags, or a warning. A deck with more than 100 cards shows them a page at a time, with Previous and Next under the list.

To find cards, type in the search field above the list and choose Search. It looks through every page of the deck, on both sides of each card, its choices and its tags; Clear search shows every card again.

To change the order, drag a card by its handle, or use the up and down arrow buttons beside it. The order cannot be changed while a search is showing.

A deck with no cards has no Study button and no Practice band until its first card is added.

Move or copy cards to another deck

A card can go to another deck in the same Personal or team context. In the card's More menu, choose Move to another deck… or Copy to another deck…, choose the deck, then Move card or Copy card. The card will go after the last card of that deck. A moved card keeps everyone's study progress on it; a copy starts with none, and changing one does not change the other.

To move or copy several cards at once, choose Select above the cards and tick them, then choose Move to… or Copy to… in the bar above them. The box at the start of the bar ticks every card on the page; when the list goes on past the page, the bar offers to select every card in it. To choose cards by what they say, search for them first. The cards will keep their order. After a copy, the cards stay ticked, so you can copy them to another deck as well. Choose Select again to stop.

The message after a move or copy names the deck, which opens it, and offers Undo, which will move the cards back to where they were, or delete the copies.

Study

Study, beside a deck's name and on its row under Decks, opens the deck's spaced-repetition session. It shows the cards that are due, then up to the deck's new cards for the day. Choose Show answer, then rate the card Again, Hard, Good or Easy; each button says when that rating will bring the card back. The next card appears at once while the rating is saved. A card you know comes back later each time. A card you miss comes back within minutes, then on a shorter schedule. A new card is shown again after one minute and ten minutes before it graduates to days.

The schedule uses the FSRS algorithm (Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler), the open scheduler Anki and other study apps use. Every rating is saved as you go, so you can leave at any time and continue later. If a rating cannot be saved straight away, Magpie tries again, and a line under the card says how many ratings are waiting, with Try again now. Leaving the page while ratings are waiting asks you to confirm first. When nothing more is due, the session ends: it says when the next card is due and offers to go through the cards you missed, which does not change their schedule.

Each card is in one of four states for you: New, Learning, Reviewing, or Mastered once its next interval is at least 21 days. The deck's page shows how many cards are in each state and how many are due today. Due today lists each deck in the selected context with cards due today; choose a deck's row to start studying it. Once you have answered a card today, or a card is due tomorrow, the page also shows your answers today and the cards due tomorrow, counting only the decks in the selected context.

Study settings in the deck's More menu apply to everyone who studies it:

• New cards per day is how many unseen cards Study introduces each day after what is due.
• Daily limit caps the cards Study shows in a day; 0 means no limit.
• Study both directions asks reversible cards both ways, as two separate schedules. While it is off, Also ask back to front on a card has no effect, and the card's line says so.

Reset my study progress on a deck makes every card new for you again. The cards stay, and nobody else's progress changes.

Practice

Practice on the deck's page offers other ways through the deck. Choose a row to start it. None of them changes your study schedule.

• Flip through shows each card once. Choose Show answer, then I knew this or I missed this. Missed cards come round again until every card has been known once.
• Quiz asks a number of questions you choose, as multiple choice, written answers or both, and gives a score at the end. With both ticked, the questions are split between the two kinds as evenly as the cards allow, in no fixed order. A basic card can be a multiple-choice question when three other cards in the deck have different answers to offer as wrong ones. A multiple-choice card offers its own choices; with only Written answer ticked, you type the right choice instead. A fill-in-the-blank card, or a card that requires a typed answer, is always a written question, so it is left out of a quiz with only Multiple choice ticked. The quiz settings you chose last are remembered in this browser. With neither kind of question ticked, a message beside the choices asks for at least one.
• Cram shows every card, whatever its schedule.

Shuffle in Flip through and Cram changes the order. Practice one tag flips through only the cards carrying the tag you choose.

Flip through, Cram and a Quiz keep your place in this browser after every answer. Leave or reload, and the same mode on the same deck continues where you left off, which the line under the card says. A place is kept for 30 days. If cards have since been added to or deleted from the deck, the pass starts again from the beginning, and the line under the card says so. Start over, below the session and at the end of a pass, starts the whole deck again; the message after it offers Undo. Back to the deck returns to the deck's page.

With a keyboard: Space or Enter shows the answer; in Study, 1 to 4 rate the card Again, Hard, Good or Easy; in Flip through and Cram, 1 and 2 mark it missed or known; in a multiple-choice question, 1 to 9 choose an answer; Enter goes to the next card. Press ? or choose Keyboard shortcuts to list them. On a phone, every control is a button.

Share a deck and save a copy

A deck's Sharing is Private (only you, for a deck in Personal, or the members of its team), Unlisted (anyone with the link) or Public (anyone, and search engines may list it). Change it in Edit details; choosing Public asks you to confirm first. Once the deck is shared, Share beside its name gives the link, and the deck's row under Decks says Unlisted or Public. Only people who can edit the deck see Share.

Anyone opening the link can read the cards and use Flip through, Quiz or Cram without an account; their place is kept in that browser, and the page has links to create an account or sign in. The study pages of a shared deck are never listed by search engines. Study needs an account, because it keeps a schedule; a signed-in visitor's schedule on a shared deck is theirs alone and does not change the deck.

Save a copy on a shared deck creates an independent deck, with the cards but no progress, in the visitor's current Personal or team context. The button names it, such as Save a copy to Personal. Later changes to the original do not change the copy. Sharing never lets a visitor change the deck: only members with edit access in its team can.

Export

More on a deck's page exports it as Magpie JSON (which imports back unchanged), CSV, TSV or Markdown. Study progress is personal and is not part of an export.

Delete a deck

Delete deck, in the deck's More menu, deletes the deck, its cards and everyone's study progress on it, after you confirm. A deleted deck does not go to Trash.

If a deck shared by link answers "Not found", its sharing was set back to Private or the deck was deleted. For a card that will not save, Contact support.