Getting started

What is a 'fact'? A 'card'? A 'model'?

See KeyTermsAndConcepts

Adding & editing material

How can I enter accents or foreign characters?

Windows, Mac and Linux provide built-in support for other languages. There is no need to buy a different keyboard. Some flashcard programs try to save you the trouble of enabling support on your computer, and provide a clickable set of buttons for each foreign character, or provide their own conversion utilities. However, this makes input a lot slower. One person writes:

• By the way, if you're learning any foreign language with exotic characters, even just the Spanish ñ, I encourage you to look into how to efficiently type those characters. When I first started studying Japanese, I didn't know how to type Japanese characters. I'd just copy-and-paste things to make flashcards and/or communicate with people. And if I wanted to type something original, that meant painstakingly finding, then copying-and-pasting each individual character. With my U.S.-bought computer, it was kind of a pain to get Japanese IME support (and it involved borrowing a Windows XP disk from a friend since you need one to install Microsoft's Japanese IME). But it was worth it a million times over. In retrospect, I should have done that as one of my very first steps when I first set out to learn Japanese.

To learn more:

• French or other accented languages on Windows

• Japanese on Windows

• Japanese on OSX

How should I format my cards?

Ask ten people and you'll probably get 10 different answers. But there are some general concepts to keep in mind. An excellent introduction is this article on the SuperMemo site. In particular:

• Keep it simple The shorter your cards, the easier they are to review. You may be tempted to include lots of information 'just in case', but reviews will quickly become painful.

• Don't memorize without understanding If you're studying a language, try to avoid large lists of words. The best way to learn languages is in context, which means seeing those words used in a sentence. Likewise, imagine you're studying a computer course. If you attempt to memorize the mountain of acronyms, you'll find it very difficult to make progress. But if you take the time to understand the concepts behind the acronyms, learning the acronyms will become a lot easier.

When importing a text file, it says the file is not in UTF-8 format.

When a computer stores foreign characters in a file, it uses an encoding format. The most common format used these days is UTF-8. If you have download a file from the internet, or saved it using some editors, the file may not be encoded in UTF-8.

• More info

Can I add material from other flashcard programs?

Anki can import Mnemosyne databases, preserving all your scheduling information. You can also indirectly import SuperMemo databases by importing them into Mnemosyne, and then importing that Mnemosyne deck into Anki.

If your old program can export your material as a text file, Anki can import that - however you'll lose your scheduling information. After importing, you may want to open the card browser and choose Actions > Reschedule. Using that, you can give the imported material a longer interval.

I can't find the space to type in things! The window is blank or only shows a list!

See AddItems or Browser.

Reviewing

Are there keyboard shortcuts?

Enter will show the answer. 1, 2, 3 and 4 will choose an answer button. Space will show the answer, or choose the default answer button (2 for cards you failed last time, 3 otherwise).

The reason space and enter behave differently is because some people prefer to be able to show the answer and rate a card with one key, and other people prefer to use a different key (to avoid accidental double-taps, etc).

How can I reverse the order of the question and answer?

Anki chooses the optimum time to review cards based on their easiness. Changing the direction of cards can make them easier or harder, so if you don't track the review intervals separately for the two directions, then this will lead to sub-optimal scheduling times.

Therefore, Anki allows you to create two sets of cards: one set for reviews in one direction, and one set for reviews in the other direction. You can do this up front when you first add your cards.

If you have already added cards, you have two options. You can either add new cards and leave the existing cards, or you can change the way the existing cards are displayed.

If you want to do the former, please see the next question.

If you want to keep the existing cards but change the way they're displayed, go to Settings>Deck Properties>Edit>Card Templates, and reverse the question and answer format (copy the question into the answer, and the answer into the question). This will update all your cards at once.

How can I add extra cards for existing material?

If you added some facts and forgot to enable certain card templates, or if you later want to add more cards (eg. adding a set of cards for reviewing in the reverse direction), select a bunch of cards in the card browser, and choose Actions > Generate Cards.

I made a new card template, but cards based on the template are not showing up!

Adding a template will only affect the generation of future cards. If you want to generate cards for previously added facts, see the previous question.

Can I toggle between card templates? I want to review 'recall' cards, then 'recognition'

You can turn templates on and off with Settings>Inactive Tags

Another approach is to change the priority on one card template so it always appears before/after the other. See CardDisplayOrderAndPriorities.

Why is Anki only showing me half the cards?

See KeyTermsAndConcepts#Delayed_Cards

Why does the new card count go down by more than 1?

See KeyTermsAndConcepts#Delayed_Cards

Why is Anki showing me the other side soon after the first side?

See KeyTermsAndConcepts#Delayed_Cards

How can I change what's shown on the front or the back of the cards?

1. Settings > Deck Properties > Edit

2. Click the Card Templates tab.
3. Change the question and answer format.

See ModelProperties#CardTemplates for more information.

Can I hide certain fields or show them later as a hint?

If you want to add a 'show hint' button, you drop the text into a separate Hint field, and then add this to your card template (settings>deck properties>edit>card templates):

<a href="#" onclick="document.getElementById('hint').style.display='block';return false;">Show Hint</a>
<div id="hint" style="display: none">%(Hint)s</div>

Another option is to simply leave the field off the card, and you can see it by using edit>edit current. Or you can set the field colour in Settings>Deck Properties to the same colour as the background, so it will be invisible until you select the text (this doesn't play nice with touch screen clients though). And yet another way is to use a plugin on File>Download>Shared Plugin that allows you to show another field with a key press.

I won't be able to use Anki for some time. Can I pause/freeze the scheduler?

If you take a break from using Anki for a few days, it can be quite demotivating to be faced with a large number of cards to review upon your return. It is very natural to want to pause the scheduler, so that you come back to find Anki in the same state as you left it. However, a pause feature would actually do more harm than good, as while it's easy to pause a computer program, it's impossible to pause human memory.

Consider taking a week long break, pausing the scheduler just before you leave and un-pausing just after you come back. Since the progress of all cards has been "frozen" for a week, a delay is applied to every card in the deck. In order to avoid catching up on the work you would have otherwise done during that time, you're increasing the chances of forgetting cards for every single card in the deck. Not a great tradeoff.

Anki schedules cards for review close to the time it thinks you will forget them. If you come back from a vacation and find there are 200 cards to review, Anki is telling you that those 200 cards need to be reviewed soon or you'll forget them. There is no way around this - the cards need to be studied or you'll forget. The best thing you can do is put on some good music and get stuck into the reviews, motivated by the knowledge that your hard work will pay off in the future.

Note there is a 'postpone' plugin available that reschedules the due cards over a specified number of days. It allows you to divide a large number of cards up over a period of days to work through, but you can accomplish the same thing by simply setting a quota of cards to study each day and studying them.

Anki works best if you can use it for a short period of time every day. Taking breaks means that you will inevitably have to do extra work when you return. The following tips can help you use Anki effectively:

1. Don’t add too much material at once. Studying a large number of new cards in one go creates spikes in the due cards graph. Anki sets the maximum number of new cards per day to 20. You're free to change this limit, but bear in mind that the more cards you do per day, the more reviews you'll have to do in the short term.
2. Consider doing no new cards in the week prior to your vacation, and only keeping up with your scheduled reviews.

3. Try to take Anki with you when you go away. Anki can be used on portable devices such as iPhones, PDAs, mobile phones etc.

This issue has been talked about many times on the forums already. Please read those threads instead of starting yet another discussion on the issue.

• http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=9982#p9982

• http://groups.google.com/group/ankisrs/browse_thread/thread/68a9d394333177e8

• http://groups.google.com/group/ankisrs/browse_thread/thread/886c3c64a8238660

• http://groups.google.com/group/ankisrs/browse_thread/thread/3043f479c0fd827

• http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=1338&p=1

I'm studying my deck for the first time in a while, and all the times are too big! I want to reset my deck.

When you use Anki every day, each time a card is answered correctly, it gets a bigger interval. Let's assume that 'good' about doubles the interval. Thus you have a 5 day wait, then a 10 day wait, 20 days, 40 days, and so on.

When people return to their deck after weeks or months of no study, they're often surprised by the length intervals have grown to. This is because Anki considers the actual time the card was unseen, not just the time it was scheduled for. Thus if the card was scheduled for 5 days but you didn't study for a month, the next interval will be closer to 60 days than 10 days.

This is a good thing. If you have successfully remembered a card after a one month wait, chances are you'll remember it again after a longer wait, too. The same principles which make SRS effective in normal use apply when you're studying after a delay, too. It also makes little sense to schedule a card for 10 days in the future if you were able to easily answer it after a whole month's wait - you'd be going backwards.

Resetting the deck is an even worse solution. When returning to a deck after a long absence, you may have forgotten many of your cards, but chances are you haven't forgotten them all. Resetting the entire deck means you have to waste time studying material you already know.

Now you may find cards that you were able to recall, but not comfortably, since they were not reviewed when they should have been. To counter this, Anki treats the delay differently depending on your answer. If you find a card easy, the last interval plus the full delay are added together, and then used to calculate the next interval. When you answer good, only half the delay is used. And when you answer hard, only a quarter of the delay is used. So if a card was due in 5 days, and it's answered 20 days late, the next times you'd end up with are approximately:

• Hard: (5 + 20/4) * 1.2 = 12 days
• Good: (5 + 20/2) * 2.5 = 37.5 days
• Easy: (5 + 20) * 3.25 = 81.25 days

(the factors will actually vary depending on your performance in the deck)

So you can see that if you find a card hard, the next interval is quite conservative and is less than the last wait (25 days). If you find it good, the next interval is only about 50% higher. And easy increases the interval aggressively as usual.

So it is recommended that you study as normal when you return to Anki after a period of absence. But if you absolutely must reset the deck, you can either file>export and not include scheduling information, which will export a fresh version of your deck, or you can use actions>reschedule in the item browser to reset your card progress but leave your deck statistics alone.

Can I show a card's tags when reviewing?

1. Settings > Deck Properties > Edit

2. Click the Card Templates tab
3. Edit the question or answer format, and add one of the following.
%(tags)s
displays user tags
%(modelTags)s
displays the model tags
%(cardModel)s
displays the card model name

Can I change how many failed cards there are at once? 20 is too much!

Anki, by default allows up to 20 failed cards at once. You can change this number in Settings>Deck Properties>Advanced. But before you do, consider the following:

It's often cited that we can only hold about 7 items in our short term memory - or "working memory". (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two). It may be tempting to reduce the number of failed cards to 7 so that you can more easily remember card 1 by the time you get to card 7. But by doing this, you are simply testing your short term memory, and not encouraging the memories to become stronger.

Contrast the default value of 20 cards. By the time 20 cards have been failed, card 1 is less likely to be in our working memory. We won't be able to instantly recall it, because it was not seen shortly before, and so we have to think harder: either by making mnemonics, spending more time memorizing, or straining more to recall. When we do recall it, we know that memory lasts at least 10 minutes. This is important, because the next time the card will be seen is in 1-5 days. A card that you successfully recalled 10+ minutes later has a much higher chance of being recalled the next day than a card you answered correctly 1 minute later.

I asked Anki to show me failed cards in 10 minutes, but they're coming up early!

Anki limits failed cards to a maximum of 20 by default. See the previous answer for more information.

Anki needs a 'learning mode'

Anki has a learning mode. Press button 1 when you don't know a card, and it will be shown again to you until you learn it. The default delay of 10 minutes / 20 failed cards is designed for learning efficiently. Cards you are able to remember after 10 minutes stand a good chance of being remembered again the next day. Cards you're not able to remember after 10 minutes require you to put more effort into generating a strong memory: generating mnemonics, rephrasing the question, or even just thinking about the question for a while.

The alternative is Pimsleur-like intervals - showing again in 10 seconds, then 1 minute, then 5 minutes, etc. These are sometimes also called microintervals. They may reduce the stress of learning since you're less likely to fail the difficult questions, but they result in a net increase in study time, and they are particularly wasteful for the questions you would have gotten correct on the first go.

And because they make it less necessary to make mnemonics or spend some time thinking about the questions, they also tend to encourage "learning without understanding" (see the first point of http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm). This can lead to more forgetting down the road.

So please give the default Anki system a go with the above in mind. But if you still find yourself wanting Pimsleur-like intervals, you can fetch a "learn mode" plugin from File>Download>Shared Plugins that provides a Pimsleur-like introduction to cards.

I want to look words up in my preferred dictionary

If you have a deck with a target word in a field called Word, you could add something like this to your card template (Settings>Deck Properties>Edit>Card Templates):

<a href="http://my.dictionary.site/search.php?q=%(text:Word)s">Lookup word</a>

That would add a link on your card to look up the word on the dictionary site. These links can be accessed from the desktop, AnkiOnline, and various mobile clients.

Can I customize the background colour or next interval font?

Use Settings>Fonts & Colours to customize the fonts, colours and background of cards.

Other parts of the Anki interface use your system settings for colours and fonts. You can customize the colours and fonts for all programs, and Anki will inherit those settings.

If you want to force Anki to use different settings to other applications:

1. Choose Settings > Plugins > Open Plugin Folder

2. Go up on level. You'll see a few folders and a 'config.db'.
3. Create a new text file called 'style.css'. Edit it as follows.

To change the system font:

* { font-family: your_chosen_font_name; }

To change the background to a light blue (including study options screen/etc):

#mainText, #mainTextFrame > *, #welcomeText { background: #ccccff }

The colours are standard HTML colours

To make the next interval area bigger:

#easeLabel1, #easeLabel2, #easeLabel3, #easeLabel4 { font-size: 20px; }

To change the font of the 'type in the answer' area:

#typeAnswerField { font-family: arial; font-size: 40px; }

Managing your deck

Help! I can't open my deck

See DeckErrors for information about recovering broken decks and deck backups.

I reset the progress of my cards, but Anki is not showing me them!

By default, Anki shows a maximum of 20 new cards per day. If you have already studied that many cards, your reset cards will not be shown until the next day. You can cause them to be shown immediately by clicking 'learn more'.

One big deck or lots of little decks? One tag at a time or many?

Separate decks work best for dividing your knowledge into broad categories. For example, you may have a deck for studying "Japanese", another for "German", and another for "Computers". Tags are more appropriate for finer-grained categorization: "food", "lesson10", etc. You can use the deck browser to switch between decks, and Settings>Active Tags to change which tagged cards are shown.

Many people prefer to study one broad category at once - for example, only German, then only computers. Whether you choose to do this or keep everything in one deck is up to you, and is a matter of personal preference.

However, it's recommended that you don't try to study subcategories like "food" one by one. Switching between small groups of cards is fiddly and wastes time that you could be using to study. It also carries the risk of forgetting to activate certain categories. But most importantly, it leads to sub-optimal memories. If you know you are studying "food" or "lesson10", it's much easier for your brain to guess the meaning of items, as you have context to work with. By making it easier on yourself, it makes it more likely you won't be able to recall the words when the context is removed.

How can I merge or split decks?

Use File>Import to import another deck into the current deck. Use File>Export to export your deck to a different file. You can use the 'limit to tags' option to export only part of your deck to the other file.

Media

Anki is renaming my media!

When you add media to Anki, it takes a copy of it, renames it to a series of numbers and letters, and puts it in the deck's media directory. It does this for a number of reasons.

• The original names are not necessarily portable. Characters like /, \, and : may work on some systems but not others.
• Third party software is not always unicode aware. Python's win32 subprocess module depends on the user having properly set 'encoding for non-unicode aware programs', for example. If they don't, things will break.
• Checksums make it easy to check if the files are damaged, and easy to check for duplicates, even if they have a different name.

Anki records the original filename in the deck when you add files. In the future, there will be a media browser that allows you to search for files for a given file name, edit files in an external program, etc.

Since Anki always copies your files on add, never moves them, your originally named file still exists.

Anki repeats audio from previous cards!

Ubuntu's mplayer package has a buggy implementation of slave mode. Install the latest version of mplayer by following these instructions: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1081070

The last part of my audio files are not being played!

Anki uses mplayer on Linux and Windows to play audio files. The default mp3 player uses libmad, which has troubles with some audio files. To use a different encoder, edit ~/.mplayer/config and add a line:

ac=mp3,

If you're on Windows, you'll probably find the file in the \Program Files\Anki directory.

If you still have problems, consider installing a different version of mplayer. You can get it here: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html

Why isn't Anki exporting my media?

Anki will only copy media files it knows about. If you have added media by clicking on the 'add picture' or 'add sound' button, then everything should work out of the box - but if you have manually added media by typing in [sound:] tags yourself, you need to run Tools>Advanced>Check Media DB.

Anki is not playing my audio!

If you're on Linux, make sure you have installed mplayer. On a Mac, audio requires OSX10.4+ or a special plugin.

How can I make Anki stop the audio at card transition?

Anki will stop the audio if you have moved to another card that has audio on it. If you don't want the audio to continue when you switch cards:

1. Create an mp3 with 1 second of silence
2. Add it to a card, note down the text that appears (like '[sound:abc327da3...]')

3. Put the text at the bottom of Settings>Deck Properties>Edit>Card Templates>Question Format. This will add the audio to every card's question.

Anki Online and Syncing

Anki tells me my clock is wrong.

Syncing requires your clock to be set correctly - if it's not, cards would be scheduled for the wrong time. If your clock looks like it's set to the correct time, then chances are your timezone or daylight savings setting is set incorrectly. It is not possible for Anki to work around problems with the clock - the clock must be set to the correct time. If you're using XP: 1) double-click the time in the taskbar ... the Date and Time Properties dialog should appear 2) select the "Time Zone" tab 3) locate the correct timezone for your location in the drop-down box. 4) hit the Apply button (also recommended but not absolutely required) 5) click on the Internet Time tab (in the same dialog box) 6) make sure "Automatically synchronize with an Internet time server" is ticked. 7) click "Update Now" 8) click Ok to close the window

I'm behind a proxy, how can I sync or download decks?

Settings>Preferences>Network

How can I sync audio and pictures?

See MediaSupport.

The online interface has the wrong due count!

If an error occurs, the counts may be wrong. Make sure you're fully synced, then use Tools>Advanced>Full DB Check on the desktop client, and sync again.

Anki says there are no changes, but a different question shows up!

In order to make syncing efficient, Anki only looks at what has changed since the last time the deck was modified. If you find your online and offline version fall out of sync (due to a bug), you can fix it as follows:

• If you last studied online, use File>Download in the local client to download a new copy of the deck, which will be exactly the same as the one online. You should then run Tools>Advanced>Full DB Check to make sure everything is ok, and sync again. This will send the checked deck back to the server.

• If you last studied locally, use Tools>Advanced>Full DB Check and then sync. This will force the full local deck to be sent to the server.

I get an error! Syncing doesn't work.

If you receive errors while syncing, chances are you have antivirus, antispyware, adblocking, firewall or proxy software installed which is not correctly filtering your network connections. Disable the software, or add an exception for Anki. Alternatively, your internet provider is having problems and your connections are being terminated abruptly.

I downloaded 'iAnki' from the app store, but I can't log in to AnkiOnline!

The app called 'iAnki' in the app store was written by a Japanese developer and has no relation to the Anki project. There is also a web-based offline client for Anki called iAnki, which was released before the iAnki app was released, so the the iAnki app authors either didn't do their homework or chose to reuse the name anyway.

If you want to use Anki on your iPhone, you have a choice of the official AnkiMobile client, or the offline web-based iAnki.

Is the source code to AnkiOnline available?

Most of the functionality in AnkiOnline is in the freely available libanki library. AnkiOnline itself is not made publicly available, as it will be used in the future to fund the further development of Anki. If you are a business or school that would like to buy the rights to use AnkiOnline in your organization, please contact the author.

See also:

• http://groups.google.com/group/ankisrs/browse_thread/thread/94fbe219276ad87d

• http://ichi2.net/anki/wiki/StudyOnlineLimits

Using Anki on the move

Can I run Anki from a flashdrive?

Sure. Do it like this:

1. Install Anki.

2. Copy and paste the Anki directory where the program is installed (usually "C:\Program Files\Anki") to the root of your USB stick, so you have a directory like e:\Anki

3. Go to Start->Run, type "notepad," and press enter. Type:

cd \anki
anki.exe -c ankiconfig

Save the file as a .bat file in the root directory of your USB stick, eg e:\anki.bat

4. To run Anki from the USB stick, open the USB stick and double click on the .bat file.

5. To move existing decks from your computer to the flash drive, use File>Save As

6. To move existing plugins from your computer, use Settings>Plugins>Open Plugin Dir, and copy all the files to the ankiconfig\plugins directory on your flash drive.

Starting Anki via batch file might cause problems using the LaTeX compilation subroutines. If you experience problems compiling new or changed cards, consider launching the Anki executable "e:\Anki\Anki.exe" directly.

If you're using Japanese support, you'll need to copy tho reading support too. See the JapaneseSupport page.

If your on a mac then you can follow these instructions

1. Install Anki.

2. Copy and paste the Anki.app where the program is installed (usually "/Appications/Anki.app") to the root of your USB stick, so you have a directory like /Volumes/yourusbstickname/anki.app

3. download the Anki.shAnkiI.sh to the root directory of your usbstick

Can I run Anki from a cell phone?

Yes. If you sync your deck to AnkiOnline, it can be accessed by any phone with a browser. For more details go to the AnkiOnline web site and click on 'Review (other)'. The interface is very basic, so smart phone users may want to get one of the more powerful apps below.

What mobile devices can I run Anki on?

There are Anki apps which work pretty well (once you get past the initial setup) on:

• iPods/iPhones

• Zauruses
• Nokia internet tablets (N7xx, N8xx, etc)

• Android devices

See the download page of the Anki website for more information.

There are no Anki applications for:

• Palm devices
• Windows Mobile devices

• BlackBerries

All these devices can still use Anki through AnkiOnline. There was experimental support for Windows Mobile devices, but nobody stepped forward to make it work properly, so it has been abandoned. The Nintendo DS and Sony PSP are too limited to support running Anki natively. DS users may like to investigate http://digital-haze.net/ndsrs.php

How do I put decks on my device?

The method used to put decks on a device varies depending on your device. Most of them require you synchronise the decks with AnkiOnline. This also allows you to study online. If your decks contain media (sounds and pictures) you will also need to follow the steps in MediaSync.

Plugins

Where can I get plugins?

File>Download>Shared Plugin

I downloaded a plugin, but I don't know how to use it.

Some plugins contain instructions inside them. Use Settings>Plugins>Open Plugins Dir, then open <your_plugin_name>.py in a text editor. You may also need to edit the plugin if it contains options in it. Don't worry if you make a mistake and Anki gives an error on next startup - you can delete the plugin or download it again.

Japanese

How can I use Japanese with Anki?

As of Anki 0.9.9.8.2, Japanese-specific features have been moved into a separate plugin. Please see JapaneseSupport.

How to enable automatic reading generation ?

If you have installed JapaneseSupport, and are using the Japanese model, it should work automatically. The standard model sets the following:

• Model tag: Japanese
• The field with kanji must be called: Expression
• The field the reading will go into: Reading

Note that the reading is not generated until you change focus to another field, or add the card. If you have changed the name of your fields, you will need to update the plugin.

Automatic reading generation will not work on PowerPC Macs.

How should I format my cards?

Because Japanese uses Chinese script, there are three fields to deal with: an expression including kanji, its reading, and its meaning. You can change which fields appear on the front and back of cards to control what you want to study. This usually involves trade-offs - the more cards you make for a given fact, the better you may know it, but the more time it will take to review.

By default, Anki provides two card models once you've installed JapaneseSupport. You can enable/disable them as you wish.

Recognition

Shows an expression with kanji, and asks for the reading and meaning. This ensures you can both read an expression and understand it. There may be times when you can recall a reading but not the meaning and vice versa, but they are usually not frequent enough to justify making separate cards just to test reading, and just to test meaning.

Recall

Shows the meaning of a word, and asks for the kanji and reading. If you want to learn how to write, you can look at the meaning and try write the kanji down. If you are not interested in writing, you can ignore that and just try to produce the expression.

Some people expand on this, and when they encounter a new kanji, they add that separately to their deck as well, creating another fact that just contains a single kanji, a list of its readings, and a meaning. They usually do this for one of the following reasons:

• They want to learn how to write the kanji
• They want to learn the meaning of the kanji
• They want to learn how to read the kanji

To learn how to write the kanji, many find the Heisig method the most effective. Other teaching methods that emphasize learning the kanji radicals first are also good. It's also possible to take a less systematic approach and just create a new card every time you encounter a new kanji, but that is not as efficient.

As for learning the vague meaning of the kanji, some people find they are able to understand better if they have a general idea of the kanji's meaning, and it can be helpful when learning compound words. Making a separate card model for this, however, is arguably unnecessary, and there are plugins which will overlay each kanji's meaning as you see it, largely decreasing the usefulness of studying kanji meanings separately.

Learning the readings of individual kanji is the least useful quiz you could be doing. Kanji readings should be learnt in the context of real words. Trying to memorize lists of readings for each kanji is slow and error-prone. Even if you know all the readings of a given kanji, you will still struggle to be able to read a new word with that kanji in it, because even with on/kun, exceptions to the rule are not uncommon.

Far better to learn the vocabulary (which you need to do anyway). You'll pick up the readings automatically, and after you've encountered a new kanji in a few words, you should be just as able to guess at the readings of other word as you would have been had you studied the kanji separately.

Chinese

How can I enable Chinese support?

File>Download>Shared Plugin and install either Basic Chinese Support and/or the Mandarin toolkit.

Why does Anki show me many readings for hanzi?

The default reading generation is based on the unihan DB. If you install the Mandarin toolkit, better readings will be produced.

Mac OSX

Audio doesn't work on OSX 10.3!

Anki uses a program called 'mplayer', which doesn't work on 10.3. You can use a different program called VLC instead. Download and install it, then use File>Download>Shared Plugins, and download the custom media player plugin. After installing, you'll need to go to Settings>Plugins>Open Plugin Dir, edit the plugin, and put in the path to VLC.

LaTeX

LaTeX doesn't work

LaTeX is very large, so it's not included with Anki. You need to install it separately, using a distribution like MiKTeX (Windows) or MacTex (OSX). If you don't install the full package, make sure at least the commands 'latex' and 'dvipng' are installed.

To check wheter latex is installed, on Windows type 'latex' at the cmd prompt, and on Unix-type systems (including Mac OS X) type 'latex -v' at the shell prompt. If latex is properly installed, this will produce some info on the latex installed in your system. (Mac OS X users: to get a shell prompt, start the Terminal utility, found in /Applications/Utilities.)

Similarly, to check whether dvipng is installed, type 'dvipng' at the command line. If dvipng is properly installed this will produce an info screen for the program. (This should work for Windows and Unix-type systems.)

In the case of Mac OS X, even when latex and dvipng are properly installed in your system, you may still get errors when you try to use LaTeX within Anki. The reason for this is that many of the standard ways to install LaTeX on Mac OS X (including the MacTex, MacPorts, and Fink) put these programs in a directory other than the one where Anki expects to find them, which is /usr/bin. The simplest solution is to create symbolic links in /usr/bin, pointing to the real locations of the latex and dvipng executables. For example, if you installed LaTeX using the MacTex installer, then the following shell commands should create the necessary symbolic links:

% sudo ln -s /usr/texbin/latex /usr/texbin/dvipng /usr/bin

I get an error when trying to use some (math-related) LaTeX commands

You need to include extra packages like 'amsmath' to use certain packages. There is a plugin that lets you add custom LaTeX packages.

Linux

I can't input foreign languages! Scim doesn't work!

Some distros ship a scim that does not talk to Qt4 apps by default. You can try:

• making sure your locale is UTF8
• switching to a Japanese locale (or your target language)
• installing scim-bridge-client-qt4
• using the old style XIM instead, by making sure things like XMODIFIERS are defined.
• using a different input method like uim

Contributing

How do I translate Anki's interface?

Please see Translating.

How can I help with documentation?

This page, and the other pages on this wiki are editable by anyone. Please change and add anything you feel is appropriate.

Where can I get the latest development code?

See the download page.

Technical questions

What spaced repetition algorithm does Anki use?

Anki was originally based on the SuperMemo SM5 algorithm. However, Anki's default behaviour of revealing the next interval before answering a card revealed some fundamental problems with the SM5 algorithm. The key difference between SM2 and later revisions of the algorithm is this:

• SM2 uses your performance on a card to determine the next time to schedule that card
• SM3+ use your performance on a card to determine the next time to schedule that card, and similar cards

The latter approach promises to choose more accurate intervals by factoring in not just a single card's performance, but the performance as a group. If you are very consistent in your studies and all cards are of a very similar difficulty, this approach can work quite well. However, once inconsistencies are introduced into the equation (cards of varying difficulty, not studying at the same time every day), SM3+ is more prone to incorrect guesses at the next interval - resulting in cards being scheduled too often or too far in the future.

Furthermore, as SM3+ dynamically adjusts the "optimum factors" table, a situation can often arise where answering "hard" on a card can result in a longer interval than answering "easy" would give. The next times are hidden from you in SuperMemo so the user is never aware of this.

After evaluating the alternatives, the Anki author decided that near-optimum intervals yielded by an SM2 derivative are better than trying to obtain optimum intervals at the risk of incorrect guesses. An SM2 approach is predictable and intuitive to end users, whereas an SM3+ approach hides the details from the user and requires users to trust the system (even when the system may make mistakes in the scheduling).

Anki's algorithm is based on SM2, but differs from it in some respects.

• SM2 defines an initial interval of 1 day then 6 days. With Anki, you have the choice of 1, 3-5 and 7-9 days depending on your initial answer. After that, the intervals are increased in largely the same way. Anki understands that it can be necessary to see a new card a number of times before you're able to memorize it, and those initial 'failures' don't mean you need to be 'punished' by being shown the failed card many times over the course of a few days. Performance during the learning stage does not reflect performance in the retaining stage.
• Anki uses 4 choices for answering, not 6. There is only one 'fail' choice, not 3. The reason for this is that failure comprises a small amount of total reviews, and thus adjusting a card's ease can be sufficiently done by simply varying the positive answers.
• Answering cards later than scheduled will be factored into the next interval calculation, so you receive a boost to cards that you were late in answering but still remembered.
• SM2 does not define a specific order to show the cards in. Anki has support for different priorities, and the user can choose the order that cards due for review are displayed in. The default order shows oldest cards first, which makes the first half of a review session easier and reduces the chances of a user falling behind in their reviews and becoming demotivated.
• Like SM2, Anki's failure button resets the card interval by default. But the user can choose to make the card take some steps back rather than being reset completely. Also, you can elect to review failed mature cards on a different day, instead of the same day.

• Learning new material is integrated into the review process. Failing cards results in them being presented again for review within 10 minutes by default, instead of all at the end like SuperMemo's final drill option. There is also an option to keep failed cards to the end.

• 'Remembered easily' not only increments the ease factor, but adds an extra bonus to the current interval calculation. Thus, answering 'remembered easily' is a little more aggressive than the standard SM2 algorithm.

• Successive failures while cards are 'young' (under 21 days) do not result in further decreases to the card's ease. A common complaint with the standard SM algorithms is that repeated failings of a card cause the card to get stuck in "low interval hell". In Anki, the initial acquisition process does not influence a card's ease as much as it does in SuperMemo.

• Ease factors start off at 2.5 for the very first new card, but subsequent new cards are based on the average ease factor of the deck. Thus in a deck where the average easiness is very low, new cards will start out with more conservative intervals. Note that once a new card has been answered once, future scheduling is independent of other cards and thus its progress is predictable, unlike SM3+.