My AnkiDroid app shows “42 cards due” at the top. On my Mac when I search in the card browser using ‘deck:_* is:due’ I see “Browse 1 of 400 cards selected” in the browser header. They both decrease by the proper amount as I study, but they clearly differ.
I have done full and forced one-way syncs on both devices and nothing helps. Searching on AnkiWeb shows 100+ cards due so I think the Mac is right.
I have compared the review settings on both devices and they are identical.
Any suggestions?
I think you’re comparing apples and oranges by looking in those different places. That figure at the top of the screen in AnkiDroid is more of a “forecast” than an inventory. For instance, it includes your New-card allowance, in addition to your Due Reviews.
Thanks for responding Danika. I suspect you are right, I’m still trying to sort out what the various card states mean. I applied the same search (is:due) on both platforms and I do get identical numbers for both notes and cards. I guess I was confused by the statement in AnkiDroid “42 cards due”, which is far fewer than the actual count of cards matching ‘is:due’ query (i.e. 400).
I guess I’m trying to reconcile the feeling that ‘I’m almost done…’ on my phone with the ‘I’m not even close…’ feeling I get when reviewing on my Mac.
But when you compare the counters on the main decks page, are you seeing anything that doesn’t match between the platforms? If not, you’re not going to be studying a different number of cards today and you’re the same “almost done” on both.
I think the more interesting question here is – Where are you hiding the rest of those due cards? You generally want to study cards when they are due, so if you have hundreds of due cards that your decks are set up to ignore, it seems worth understanding whether there is a good and sensible reason, or something has gone wrong.
There aren’t very many card states – Getting Started - Anki Manual – but ask if you have questions.
Thank again for the feedback.
My goal in using these numbers is to focus on the cards that are due first. I did create a custom deck using the ‘is:due’ query, but the cards come in a random (sort) order and I spend a lot of energy on context switches between unrelated cards (within that custom deck).
I guess what I would like is to be able to create a custom deck based on ‘is:due’, but sort by deck name (path?) to keep related cards together. I don’t see a way to accomplish that.
Yeah, there is a way to do that. In that samee search query, instead of using just ‘is:due’, use 'is:due deck:(path of the deck)" [like ‘is:due deck:Languages::English’ will select all the due cards from the subdeck English present in the deck Languages]
Thanks SuhasK, unfortunately I think that I have too many decks for that approach to scale effectively.
I did find a workable solution for me. I added the {{Deck}} field to top of all my card templates. That way when reviewing the custom deck I at least know the deck from which each card came.
Does that mean – Focus on the due cards first before something else? – or – Focus on the cards that were due first, and are now most overdue?
It’s pretty rare that you would need to use a Filtered/Custom study deck if what you want to study are the cards that are currently due for study. Regular decks are pretty great at that already!
Perhaps it doesn’t go without saying – you would only need to specify the parent deck that contains that subject, not every subdeck separately. [The same deck you see by using the {{Deck}} special field on your template.] If you end up needing this, there are also fairly easy ways to build that quickly as a Filtered deck through the Browse window, or through the Custom study screens. And if you save it, you won’t need to create it again.