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 Flashcards, choose New deck, type a title, and the deck's page opens. Add cards there, or choose Import to paste or upload cards; see Build a deck by pasting JSON.

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. 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.

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. The same menu moves the card up or down, adds tags, sets Also ask back to front, a typed answer and an image, and deletes the card.

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.

Search cards above the list shows only the cards whose text or tags contain what you type. To change the order, drag a card by its handle, or choose Move up or Move down in its More menu.

Study modes

Open a deck and choose a mode under Study:

• Flashcards 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. The review schedule does not change.
• Review is spaced repetition. See the next section.
• Quiz asks a number of questions you choose, as multiple choice, written answers or both, and gives a score at the end. A basic card becomes a multiple-choice question when three other cards in the deck can supply wrong answers. The review schedule does not change.
• Cram shows every card, whatever its schedule, and does not change the schedule.

Shuffle in Flashcards and Cram changes the order. Study one tag on the deck's page runs Flashcards with only the cards carrying that tag.

Flashcards, 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 were; Start over begins again. A place is kept for 30 days, and is dropped if cards have since been added to or deleted from the deck. Review always continues where you were, because each rating is saved as you go.

With a keyboard: Space shows the answer; 1 and 2 mark a card missed or known; in Review, 1 to 4 rate it Again, Hard, Good or Easy; in a quiz, the number keys pick a choice and Enter checks a typed answer. On a phone, every control is a button.

Spaced repetition

Review schedules each card with the FSRS algorithm (Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler), the open scheduler Anki and other study apps use. Rate each card Again, Hard, Good or Easy; each button shows when that rating brings the card back. 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.

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 what is due across every deck in the selected context that uses spaced repetition.

A deck's Scheduling, under Study settings in the deck's More menu, is either Simple study or Spaced repetition. It changes what the deck's page and Due today count as due and which mode its Study button opens; Review is available, and keeps a schedule, in either case. The other study settings also apply to Review:

• New cards per day is how many unseen cards Review introduces each day after what is due.
• Review limit caps the cards Review shows in a day; 0 means no limit.
• Study both directions asks reversible cards both ways, as two separate schedules.

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

Share a deck and save a copy

A deck's Sharing is Private (members of its Personal or team context only), 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 on its page gives the link, and the deck's row under Decks says Unlisted or Public.

Anyone opening the link can read the cards and study them as Flashcards, a Quiz or Cram without an account. Review 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.

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.