Screenshots

Reviewing

The card shown has been reviewed a number of times before, so the next time to see the card is 6 months to 3 1/2 years!

Editing Cards

Complex searches are possible.

Adding Cards

Adding new words or phrases to remember is designed to be as streamlined as possible. Buttons and shortcuts let you add sound, pictures, equations and markup to text. For Japanese learners, hiragana will automatically be generated as you type in the kanji.

Online Synchronization and Mobile Access

Anki allows you to keep your deck synchronized between multiple computers. Changes are sent as differences to your existing deck, so keeping your deck synchronized is fast and efficient even if you have a slow internet connection. No more having to email your deck or put it on a USB stick every time you want to study at both work and home!

Anki also lets you review from any web-capable device, so you can study without installing Anki if you have access to a web browser. There are two mobile phone interfaces (one for new phones, one for older phones) that allow you to study anywhere with reception - while you're waiting for the bus, in the 5 minutes before your next class, or for the adventurous, in the bath!

Inline Editing

You can edit the current card inline, too.

Statistics and Graphs

Anki provides a number of graphs related to your deck: cards due by date in a per-day and cumulative graph, interval distribution of cards, cards added a day, cards answered a day, and ease distribution over new, young and mature cards.

Equation Support

LaTeX integration means support for markup of complex equations in cards.

Multimedia Support

Sound and graphics are also supported.

Display Preferences

Anki allows you to customize fonts and colours depending on the type of text, rather than the position. This lets you display kanji in an easy to read font while keeping English text at a manageable size.

Importing

Anki supports importing text files, Mnemosyne files, and of course other Anki files. You can automatically generate forward and reverse reviews based on a single question/answer pair.

Models

The card system in Anki is very flexible. Starting from a pre-made template, you can customize the number of fields, the fields to display in each card, and the way they should be displayed. Each card can be 'spaced' away from other cards, so that when quizzing "question to answer" and "answer to question", the two sides don't appear soon after each other.

Customizable Scheduling

The scheduler supports 'very high', 'high', 'low' and 'suspended' priorities, in addition to random or in-order new card presentation, adjustable delays on mistakes, and more.

Plugins

Anki has a flexible plugin system, allowing you to change and extend Anki when it doesn't do something you want it to. The screenshot on the left shows Anki's lookup feature calling an external dictionary. More plugins can be found here

Statistics

In addition to the graphs mentioned above, statistics on the current card, daily progress and life of the deck progress are available.

Kanji Report

Anki can analyze your deck and generate a report on which of the standard kanji for daily use (jouyou kanji) you know. This can be quite motivating, as it's often very hard to tell if you're making any progress in a language. Anki gives you hard numbers to reassure you that you are making progress.

Missing Kanji

Along with the kanji report is a list of kanji you have yet to study. Clicking on a kanji will open edict to display the meaning of the kanji and allow you to view words and examples. This makes it easy to find the gaps in your kanji knowledge and plug them.

Integrated Dictionary Lookups

Accessible from the tools menu are menu options to look up the question, answer, or a selected part of text in either ALC or edict. This makes it easy to double check the meaning or nuance of a phrase as you're reviewing it. Edict's kanji lookup is also integrated, so you have stroke order diagrams at your fingertips.


Thousands of hours of work have gone into developing and supporting Anki. Please consider supporting the author so that Anki can continue to improve.

Damien Elmes (contact)