Hullo!
I’ve just heard about Anki and FSRS and my mind is truly overwhelmed!
The problem is that I don’t even know where to start. I think I’d use Anki for memorizing historical dates and learn new words to expand my vocabulary.
My question is: How would you create the decks? One deck for one historical topic? eg. WW2, American Civil War etc.? How would you organize and categorize foreign vocabulary decks?
Thanks for helping, and sorry if this thing had been previously discussed before!
Berc
I suspect a single deck for history would be all that you need, and then use tags for things like topic or era – Adding/Editing - Anki Manual . Think of decks for organizing a study session – as the place you click to study a group of cards together. Unless you’re going to regularly study WW2 separately from other eras, it wouldn’t need a separate deck.
One deck for the language, and then tags for anything else you want to be able to find them by – part of speech, topic/category, chapter in your curriculum, etc.
General advice for beginners –
[Duplicate post: Reddit ]
Thanks for the detailed reply! I’ve read the manual and I’ve got some questions!
You don’t give parameters to FSRS. You click Optimize and it determines the parameters for you based on your review history. [See #4 above.]
If you don’t have very much history, start studying using the default parameters, and you can try optimizing in a few weeks.
If you tag them, as I suggested, you can use a Filtered deck to study cards outside of their usual grouping. You can build your search filter in the Browse window, so you know what cards to expect, then Edit > Create Filtered Deck.
Thanks for the reply!
Studying the filtered decks counts in the stats and in the algorythm, or FSRS ignore them?
When you read the link about Filtered decks, you’ll see there’s a reschedule-based-on setting that controls that. In almost all situations, you want to have that enabled, so that the algorithm knows about those reviews.
Any way to give colors to the tags in the browser? Also, I want to highlight the tag’s fonts on the card with a color (apart from the basic black, which is for the content of the card)
There may be an add-on to change that in Browse. Add-ons - Anki Manual
I’m not quite sure I understand, but start here – Styling & HTML - Anki Manual – to learn more about adding formatting in card templates. [And I recommend W3Schools, if you need quick help with basic HTML or CSS.]
Is it possible to learn cards in order in costume study? I think it would acutally make sense when it comes to memorize historical dates close to eachother. What I’m trying to do is select a specific topic in my history deck(with tags), let’s say WW1 and then I want to learn the WW1 cards in chronological order.
You can introduce cards in-order through Filtered decks [1] – but you can also introduce cards that way in your regular deck, and that’s easier. If you suspend all of your New cards, then you can search up a specific tag and unsuspend just those. They are the only cards available to be introduced, so that’s what you’ll get next. When you run out, you can unsuspend a new batch/topic.
You control the specific order by making sure they are in that order already (based on their New-queue numbers), and using New card gather and sort orders that follow that.
Custom Study is just a menu of a few filters you can use to create Filtered decks. ↩︎
I don’t think I quite get what you’ve written… I’m sorry! My english is bad. Can you write a more detailed explanation?
Also, if I use a fix order, the algorithm won’t be affected, right?
I’m only talking about how to introduce New cards in a certain order – that’s when you study them for the first time in Anki. You shouldn’t try to study them in a certain order when they come back for Review – see: Can I study my cards in a particular order? - Anki FAQs . Since it’s only about the first time the cards appear, it doesn’t affect the algorithm at all.
There’s no need to apologize for not being fluent in English, but I’m not going to do that right now. These things are explained in more detail already at the links I’ve given you. I’m certain you have access to machine translators on your computer, like Google Translate, DeepL, most AI/LLM chatbots, etc. You should re-read the answers and the links, run them through a translator to help you understand, and look at the app to see what they are talking about. If you have more specific questions after that, or you feel like there’s something I skipped over, you’re welcome to ask then.
I’m not fluent in English either—Russian is my native language. But whenever I use a page translator that refers to the admin using masculine pronouns, for some reason he gets annoyed about it 
So, Google’s translation quality is pretty crap. I still use it, though, but there’s also an AI extension that can generate a literal translation with better quality.
As mentioned above: “You shouldn’t try to study them in a certain order when they come back for Review – see: Can I study my cards in a particular order? - Anki FAQs.”
But read the words there: “For this reason, you should design your cards so that they do not rely on context or certain other cards having been seen first, or you’ll find it difficult to review them.”
So, if the cards are perfect, Anki will work. But what if the order in which the cards are studied matters?
The standard assumption is that you study a flashcard for a single day—meaning just two viewings—and then it drops out of the sequential rotation. But in real life, who learns something in a single day and then finds the sequence irrelevant? Real life is more complex: we follow the same routes, perform the same actions, and speak the same words. Repetition is everywhere—constant and daily—which is precisely why things stick in our memory. We even think through associations, following a path where one thing connects to another. So why learn in a way that eliminates those connections? I believe the learning process shouldn’t be limited to just one day; reviewing material out of order is actually beneficial. It is only through such randomized—and, crucially, rapid—question-and-answer exchanges that we can truly gauge whether we’ve retained the information. Plus, it saves time—not just yours, but the teacher’s as well.
Here is what I and some others do: in the deck settings for new cards, instead of the default “1m 10m,” we enter at least 5–7 intervals. Since the time between each step should ideally be about 2.5 times longer than the last, the sequence might look something like this:
“1m 10m 1h 1d 2d 5d”
If you study for an hour or less in the evening, the “1h” interval might fall after your study session has ended; you can simply pick up your smartphone and review the card before going to bed. The card will then appear again the next day, and so on.
This way, you spend at least a week studying the card, which should help you memorize it (theoretically, it takes three weeks to form a habit, so draw your own conclusions—three days might be enough for you).
If you want even more repetitions, you can create a filtered deck based on the order in which cards were added and disable rescheduling based on answers (so that your response statistics aren’t recorded). Some might say this isn’t efficient, but everyone is different and card difficulty varies, so give it a try if you like. However, after reviewing cards in a filtered deck this way, make sure to return them to the original deck so you can resume normal study sessions the next day.
If you don’t want to create filtered decks, you can either hide all the cards in the deck (or leave them visible) and simply move the desired number of cards from one deck to another to study them. Once you’ve studied them, you can add more cards (or unhide the existing ones). I don’t know which method you’ll choose—it all comes down to study strategies. Sometimes, after studying, I would simply use the “Browse” feature to look over the cards I had studied that day, or even all the cards from the very beginning. You can do this in AnkiDroid as well. This is exactly what we do in real life when we write words in a notebook—when we jot down keywords from a text in order to remember the entire passage based on them (verbs representing what happened, and nouns representing changes in the state of the system, a scene, or whatever else the text described).
Consider everything mentioned above as mere advice. You should test these suggestions yourself to see what works best for your card memorization—especially since there are so many ways to create cards: using different fonts or outlines, including audio, deciding whether to type in answers, and choosing whether to use images or stick to text (as images might actually distract you from the word itself). Anki is simply a tool for memorization (or, more accurately, for spaced repetition); before using it, you need to understand a lot of other things, such as how to select information, what kind of cards to create, and which memorization and review strategies suit you best. Various YouTube creators discuss this, and polyglots sometimes write about Anki in books—even sharing their own card templates. Look for information everywhere—even ask AI—but be sure to compare different opinions. All the best!
How can I reposition the cards, so I can learn them in chronological order? The reposition tab doesn’t seem to do any changes. Cards say at their original place. If I would be able to reposition them, then I could use “order added” in the costum study tab.
It only makes sense to change the position of new cards. Afterward, they won’t repeat in that specific order anyway. If you really want them in a specific order, you have to use the “Browse” view, but standard input fields don’t work there. Take a look at my add-ons: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1334324384 and https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1188253433
I had to create them because people like you want to study things in the exact order they prefer.
You can tell what order they are currently in by sorting by the “Due” column to put their New #s in order. The point of repositioning them is so you don’t need to use an “order added” sort.
Get the cards displayed on the screen in the order you want them in – for instance, sort by the “Created” column, Browsing - Anki Manual . Then you can select them, and use Cards > Reposition – start 0, step 1, both boxes unchecked.
Thank you so much for the help! I really appreciate it!
At this point, I think it’s just easier to use Quizlet, where you can drag and drop cards. I guess Anki is not made for this type of usage of flashcards. I mean, using them in order. Perhaps, I’ll only use Anki for language learning, but for History, I’m going stick with Quizlet.
If I have cards, which should appear in order, then I just create a unique ID (a large number) and import the cards into an empty deck from a CSV. Then set the deck options to New Cards, Insertion Order, Sequential. You will see your new cards in the order you desire.
Of course, when you review them, the order will change, depending on how well you remember each card.
Is that not what you wanted?