Deck Overview

This is what we will refer to as the Anki Home Screen. You will see a list of decks you’ve created and how many cards are due in each deck. For the Anki algorithm to work well, you should aim to study all of your due cards every day.

Browser

The browser is where you’ll find your entire Anki collection. From the Anki home screen, click “Browse” above the list of decks. We’ll use this portion of the application to find cards to study, organize your cards, and make edits to card contents. (see video)

• Search bar:  At the top of the browser window you can find a search bar. This is a field where search commands can be entered to find cards that contain a given term or fit certain criteria. There are ways to modify and specify your search that will be explained in future lessons.
• Sidebar: On the left-hand side of the browser window is a sidebar containing a list of headings that provide organization to your cards. Under “decks” you’ll see the names of your various decks. You can further expand these to view your subdecks by clicking the triangle to the left of the heading. By actually clicking on one of these headings, you’ll narrow your browser search to only show cards within that deck or subdeck. You’ll see that by clicking on a heading on the right-hand side of the browser, a new search term will appear in the search bar within the browser. You can search with multiple criteria by adding terms to the search bar as long as a space separates two different criteria.

Tags

Any number of tags can be assigned to a flashcard. These serve as an indispensable tool in organizing your cards. If we were studying animals, for example, we could have a flashcard on Kangaroos that had the following tags: “Australian_Animals” and “Marsupial.” Another flashcard may contain a fact about Opossums and could contain the following tags: “American_Animals” and “Marsupial.” On the left-hand side of the browser you can click on the tag “Marsupial” and both the flashcards on Kangaroos and Opossums will appear in the browser window. In contrast, by clicking on “American_Animals,” only the Opossum card will show up.

This level of organization is especially helpful when studying from a deck of pre-made cards. When a medical student receives a lecture on cardiac heart murmurs, the user can navigate a well-organized and tagged deck down a hierarchy of tags as shown in the image below. Then, by unsuspending all the cards contained within this subset of tagged cards, they become available to study. Tagging makes the process of finding and preparing cards easy and efficient.

To add a tag to a card, right-click on a card or group of cards and click “add tags” or use the keyboard shortcut that appears next to the “add tags” option. Removing a tag is as easy as right-clicking on a card in the browser window, selecting “remove tags,” and choosing which tags to remove. (see video)

Extra Content from the AnKing YouTube Channel

Anki 2.1 tips and tricks video