Combining spaced repetition with meaningful, structured learning — a highly useful and practical improvement for Anki

Anki Suggestions
1

Dear Anki Team,

First of all, thank you for your excellent and ongoing work on developing Anki and its rich add-on ecosystem.

As a user deeply invested in structured, conceptual learning, I’d like to propose a set of features that can greatly enhance the deck tree (left pane) in Anki — turning it into not just a list of decks, but an intuitive, structured, and cognitively meaningful navigation system.

:puzzle_piece: The Problem

The current deck tree is flat, linear, and limited — especially when working with many nested decks. This makes it hard to mentally manage complex hierarchies of knowledge and undermines the potential for meaningful learning.

While Anki is excellent for time-based review (spaced repetition), it lacks tools for understanding and working with conceptual structures. In contrast, tools like Freeplane provide rich support for visual and structural organization — though they lack true review or recall functionality.

:bullseye: Why This Is Important

:brain: 1. Learning is not just memorization — it’s structural understanding

Cognitive science shows that humans retain and process information more deeply when it is hierarchically or conceptually organized.
Many users naturally arrange their learning material as concept trees — especially in fields like philosophy, theology, languages, or systems thinking. Anki currently does not support this style of organization and exploration.

:counterclockwise_arrows_button: 2. Anki has review, but not structure — Freeplane has structure, but no review

Anki excels in time-based recall, while Freeplane excels in concept-based structure. Combining both views — a structured mental model and scheduled repetition — is crucial for powerful, deep learning.

:puzzle_piece: 3. Real limitations in current UI/UX

The current deck tree is extremely limited. Compared to tools like Freeplane, Anki’s UI lacks:

  • Easy keyboard-based navigation across nested decks (e.g., arrow keys)
  • The ability to collapse or expand parent/child levels easily
  • Inline visibility of cards within each deck
  • Ability to review cards directly from within the tree view
  • Option to add new cards directly inside a tree node (deck)
  • No tree visualization (no visual links between parent and child decks)
  • No way to move decks or cards using drag-and-drop or clipboard shortcuts
  • No ability to see card due status (e.g. today’s cards) directly from the tree
  • No visual distinction between decks with due cards vs. those without

These missing features greatly reduce usability — especially for structured, large-scale learning.

:white_check_mark: Proposed Enhancements

Here are several ideas to improve the deck tree panel and make it a powerful learning tool:

  • Keyboard-aware navigation (arrow keys) across and within deck hierarchies
  • Display cards within the tree as optional leaf nodes
  • Start reviews directly from a deck node in the tree
  • Add new cards within the context of the deck structure
  • Move decks and cards via drag-and-drop or Cut/Copy/Paste
  • Visualize tree relationships (e.g., parent → child branches)
  • Show card due counts for each deck inline in the tree
  • Highlight decks that contain cards due today
  • Enable manual ordering of cards — useful for cases where the order of cards conveys meaning (e.g., steps in a process, verses in a passage, or chronological events in history)
    (Example: A user studying a historical timeline might want to manually arrange cards like “World War I,” “World War II,” and “Cold War” in the correct sequence to reflect their actual chronological order during review. )

:counterclockwise_arrows_button: Optional Mode or Add-On

To preserve the experience for current users, this feature set can be made:

  • Toggleable in Anki’s preferences (e.g., “Enable structured deck view”)
  • Or offered as an add-on with all new tree features bundled in

:seedling: Future Outlook

This proposal could evolve into a broader integration of structured concept-mapping with spaced repetition. That is:

Structure + Scheduling = Deeper Learning

This model could transform Anki into a hybrid system — allowing learners to both see the shape of their knowledge and review it intelligently over time.

I would be happy to contribute to the design, testing, or refinement of these ideas in any way that helps.

Combining Anki’s core strength — time-based spaced repetition — with concept-based structured learning could make Anki a far more powerful and comprehensive tool.

Thanks again for your incredible work on Anki!

2

(IMO better to write it yourself, the AI-gen text is just confusing)

5 Likes
3

I don’t know English, I have to use Google Translate, etc.
If there is anything that is not clear, tell me and I will explain it.

4

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1467361433

Special Fields

5

This add-on only covers a small part of the broader idea mentioned above.
The idea actually outlines a comprehensive strategy for Anki — combining spaced repetition with meaningful, structured learning.

I’ve shared some suggestions for improving this add-on at:
https://github.com/DerDemystifier/SwiftAnki_Quick-Anki-Navigation/issues/5
I’d love to hear your thoughts there as well.

6

Your ideas seem good, but I think you used a lot of difficult words to understand, so I suggest you explain it to me as if I were a 5-year-old child.

If you could make a drawing or a GIF, that would be ideal; I have no idea what conceptual trees might be (are they mind maps? I don’t know).

I don’t know Freeplane, which makes it harder to understand what you’re talking about.

Easy keyboard-based navigation - someone already showed an add-on that does this.
As for collapsing or expanding parent/child deck levels, you just click the + or -. I’m not sure if I understood correctly, but here would you use the Enter key to open and close subdecks and Enter to open the deck?

Inline visibility of cards within each deck - I didn’t understand; are you talking about the main screen, the review screen, or the browse screen? It’s a bit confusing. The browse screen already shows the cards in lines.

Ability to review cards directly from the tree view. I’m not sure if I got it, but would the decks/subdecks be in a column on the left side, and the cards would be shown next to them on the review screen?

Option to add new cards directly within a tree node (deck) - would this be like a + button next to each deck, like in the settings?

There’s no way to move decks or cards using drag-and-drop shortcuts or the clipboard. - On the main screen where the decks are, you can drag and drop decks, but are you talking about shortcuts like Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V? Before copying and pasting, you’d need to make it possible to select decks/subdecks.
As for the cards, it’s really not possible to change their position by dragging on the browse screen, unless there’s an add-on that does this, but I don’t know of one.

It’s not possible to see the status of due cards (e.g., today’s cards) directly from the tree - I’m not sure if I understood, but if you’re talking about the browse screen that shows the cards, there’s this add-on that shows their status in the editor. When you say “tree,” I don’t know what you mean.
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1690626281

No visual distinction between decks with due cards and those without - assuming you’re talking about the browse screen? It shows the status of cards as new, learning, review, etc. Did you want the status to be color-coded when you select a deck?

Enable manual card sorting - this can be done with a filtered deck; open the deck, press F.

Maybe there’s already an add-on for each thing you mentioned, but I’m not sure. There are almost 2,000 existing add-ons.

7

I will explain at the appropriate time.

8

Some of the things you suggested are already available in Anki – some of them are far outside the scope of what Anki is intended for.

You can post here in whatever language you want. Or you can translate your text to English using a translator if you like. But please don’t turn your post over to be re-written by a chat-bot. It’s meandering, very hard to understand, and filled with mistakes about Anki (which chat-bots are prone to making).

5 Likes
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Yes, you are right, my text is not clear.
I decided to put my suggestions in several threads.
You can see the first post at the link Bridging Structure and Spaced Repetition: A Proposal to Enhance Anki’s Deck View - Anki / Suggestions - Anki Forums

10

It seems like you missed this part:

I don’t think that spreading more chat-bot generated slop over multiple threads will make it any easier to understand. If you have things you want to suggest, please do that. But I don’t think anyone here cares that much about what the chat-bot wants to suggest.

2 Likes