Order of New cards in Due and Interval sorting

Anki Suggestions
1

I am coming from a github issue from where I was redirected here ( feat(card-browser): new UI to select sort order by david-allison · Pull Request #20240 · ankidroid/Anki-Android · GitHub ). This is what I wrote there (minor edits for clarity):

When sorting by Due date or Interval, I think it would make sense to use a different sorting method for New cards within that sorting option. Since a card with a fixed due date and a card without one cannot be properly compared, I think treating New cards differently is warranted/helpful.

What I suggest here is to always put the New cards at the bottom when sorting by Due or Interval, no matter the sort order.

The rationale is this:

If I am interested in cards that will come up soon, I do not want to scroll through all the cards I have not seen yet. The same applies the other way around: If I am interested in the cards that I haven’t seen in a long time, I am also not interested in the cards I have never seen.

This idea comes from a specific workflow: I have downloaded a deck that I want to annotate with custom mnemonics, especially for cards that I recently got wrong. Since this is a lot of work, I want to do this bit by bit, focusing on the cards that I struggle with currently. For that, I need to sort the deck by due date, so I can see the closest cards first. Currently this leads to a long list of New cards coming before the Due cards, which forces me to scroll through all the New cards before I get where I need to be.

I also thought about whether there might be a use case similar to mine that requires to see specifically the New cards first. If such a use case exists, I think it could become a different sorting option that sorts the New cards in the order that they would be shown in Anki, always followed be the non-New cards, no matter the sorting order. So we would have the exinsting sorting paradigms for Due and Interval (slightly modified), and a separate sorting paradigm for New cards (sort by their internal order). I think this would be cleaner and solve the issue that Due and New cannot be properly compared.

Even if a new sorting option for New cards is not relevant, I would argue that changing the sort order in the Due and Interval options is.

2

There’s an easier way for you: search for -is:new. That’ll filter out the new cards. Reference: Searching - Anki Manual.

You can even set the default search (which should come to AnkiDroid eventually) to deck:current -is:new if you don’t want to type that every time.

3

Thank you. I am aware that I can use the search filter and I am currently using exactly this as a workaround.

I wasn’t aware that I can keep a default search (apparently not available in AnkiDroid yet), but that would also just be a workaround, since the workflow I have described may not be my default search, but just one I want to quickly enable with setting the sort order and then go back to the default order.

In any case, this does not resolve the issue that I described: The current sorting is impractical and I would even argue that it is technically incorrect because you can either sort Due cards by due date or you can sort New cards by the order in which they would appear to the user, but both categories overlap in terms of when the card will actually appear in your deck, so I think putting New cards on top when sorting for Due is technically incorrect as it assumes both types of cards are sortable with a common sorting mechanism.

So I would consider my suggestion more like a bugfix request rather than a feature request.

Unless of course there are workflows I missed that rely on New cards appearing on top, then I think this would call for a more extensive change (one that I have outlined as an option in case I am missing a use case).

4

This is you as well, right – Reddit - Sort order in deck browser ?

[Best to include links when the discussion needs to jump channels/sites – so it stays as connected as possible, and we don’t have to keep starting from scratch.]

5

Yes, that’s me.

I linked back to github but forgot the backlink to Reddit. Thanks for adding it. I’ll update my original post so it’s more complete

Edit: I get an error message, it says I cannot add links to my post. But since you linked back to it I guess it’s fine