I want moving notes on mobile to be easier

tl;dr I’m sharing my pain of moving notes when using the mobile app. I don’t expect a response or resolution.

I have a workflow (which is probably an anti-pattern) that goes like this.

A top-level deck “Japanese” has a structure like this (trigger warning for heavy tag users):

The deck “Japanese::ref” has something like 100,000 cards, all from shared decks that I have downloaded. I never study from this deck directly. My workflow is to move cards from this deck into one of my other decks as needed. This separation is great for a number of reasons that I won’t go into.

The problem is, the moving of notes from the “ref” deck to other decks is really painful on mobile. It goes like this:

  1. Come across a new vocab word in my daily life and decide to learn it.
  2. Click on my “Japanese” parent deck, click “Browse” then search for the new vocab.
  3. I find the vocab in the “ref” deck, usually in the form of two cards (recall and recognition).
  4. Click “Select”, then click the two cards, then click “Actions” then click “Change Deck”, then scroll down pass about 50 other decks until I reach the “Japanese::context::[somesubdeck]” that I add the cards to.

This process is obviously quite tedious and it has me concentrating on my phone for quite a while I should be listening to the friend or colleague who I was talking with at the time.

A search bar will be added to the deck list view in the future. In the mean time, one alternative approach you may wish to consider is tapping on the search icon from the deck list, searching for the cards, selecting them, and then applying a flag to them. Then later when you have time, you can search for the flagged cards, and move them into the deck in one go.

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