Show HN: Anki alternative with integrated notes and import/export

Anki user here, for about 5 years now studying Korean and to a lesser extent Japanese and miscellaneous topics.<p>This is cool, but I will never base my learning on a closed-source product. I simply don&#x27;t trust anyone with data &#x2F; workflows this important to me.<p>Anki doesn&#x27;t have great UX, but it is -dependable-. It works, day in, day out, and I&#x27;ve had zero issues with it. I trust that in 5-10 years, my anki decks will be there and work exactly the same.<p>edit: I&#x27;m not trying to be negative. I think there is a lack of spaced repetition-based flashcard apps with great UX. However I personally value stability and guarantee of longevity over nice UX. If the developer of Anki quits tomorrow, it being open source ensures that it&#x27;ll live on with new maintainers (even if that&#x27;s just me).

Am I smarter or stupider for not memorizing notes like I did as a student? I still take notes, and sometimes refer to them. (I also take a fair amount that never get read.) And I still learn things. But the learning I do is either because I read something once and it&#x27;s already internalized (&quot;Myanmar&#x27;s anti-military activists have started using bombs,&quot;), or because I&#x27;ve done something a lot and it&#x27;s become ingrained (&quot;docker exec -it phan bash&quot;).<p>There just aren&#x27;t big lists of things I need to memorize, like there once were. Also, I&#x27;m certain I&#x27;m learning slower than I did as a student. But that could again be good or bad -- maybe I stopped learning as fast because I picked all the low-hanging fruit and I&#x27;m busy using it.<p>I certainly don&#x27;t <i>see</i> lots of low-hanging fruit like I used to. But I always wonder if that&#x27;s a failure of imagination.

I&#x27;m going to shamelessly plug my own emacs org-mode extension: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;eyeinsky&#x2F;org-anki" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;eyeinsky&#x2F;org-anki</a><p>Write all your notes to org-mode files in a git repo, sync these (selectively) to Anki. No need to depend on proprietary services.<p>Ironically though, the easiest way to get your cards to AnkiDroid&#x2F;AnkiMobile is through ankiweb.net (a free service) then you could manually export&#x2F;import cards and stats should that disappear. org-anki saves note ID within org-mode, so you can keep updating cards after an export&#x2F;import.

can anyone tell me why anki is implemented so poorly in its core functionality? it works, but its slow, clunky, and error prone. that&#x27;s the drawback for me and reason i am even willing to check out competition in this tech.<p>things like deck syncing, card creation, and the general ui all seem like they can be implemented to be much more user centric and functional. For me personally and my girlfriend in med school have lost data due to anki&#x27;s strange sync pattern.<p>I can&#x27;t be the only software engineer that thinks they can think of an implementation in their head that would make anki as a product much easier to deal with, right? As far as I can tell, people are tied to anki due to Stockholm syndrome and lack of worth-it, well maintained alternatives.

&quot;21st Night attaches your notes and flashcards to the source you originally got them from&quot;<p>This seems to be the main thing that might differentiate this program from Anki (other than the specially made decks for particular subjects, which could also be a big thing). This seems to be done, based on the demo deck, with tagging? This being an important differentiating factor, if possible it might be good if the example decks had more detailed contextual links rather than having just &quot;from textbook&quot; (without indicating which textbook) or &quot;from life&quot;.<p>If there was a more clean explanation of the differences between your software and other similar products it might be helpful.

This app looks pretty good. There&#x27;s also RemNote [1] which serves a similar function. It&#x27;s kind of like Roam + Anki all in one.<p>I&#x27;m really loving the proliferation of good new ideas for note-taking and memorization. I wish I had some of these tools when I was in school. Even if some of them are paid right now, it&#x27;s only a matter of time before solid free and open-source competition emerges. I&#x27;d love to see some Anki-like tools for Athens [2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.remnote.io&#x2F;pricing&#x2F;feature_chart" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.remnote.io&#x2F;pricing&#x2F;feature_chart</a> [2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;athensresearch&#x2F;athens" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;athensresearch&#x2F;athens</a>

So basically the same features as Anki except it&#x27;s paid?

What I really want is templating.<p>Like, the word 暗記 consists of two characters. I’d love to get my notes on each of those characters readily available and updateable when I review that word.

Very very nice! Despite I don&#x27;t feel like I understand the context stuff (because not enough useful examples, i.e. not a single example card having context?) nor why would I need notes (are they essentially no answer flashcards?) this seems the first flashcard app I like. Easy to add a card, easy to retire a card, nice-looking.<p>How do I run through the cards one by one (rather than view a whole deck)? How do I force it to re-show cards I&#x27;ve already solved today?

Does this app provide offline storage or cloud storage? I don&#x27;t want to guess but it was not very evident on your product page.<p>The thing I really like about Anki is I can create a separate profile to store cards related to say private confidential knowledge at workplace and I won&#x27;t sync that profile so those cards stay just there encrypted on my office laptop. Hence offline storage is critical.

Periodically I get inspired to create an Anki deck (or several) for some stuff at work and share it around; I bounce off it because I&#x27;m not sure about updates. In particular, I don&#x27;t <i>think</i> there&#x27;s a way to mark cards as deserving deletion on re-import of a deck? Does anyone know of a way to do that with Anki, or of similar software (this?) with such a feature?

You should also check out IDoRecall[1]. It&#x27;s a great alternative and has the possibility to create recalls out of notes, too.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.idorecall.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.idorecall.com&#x2F;</a><p>(NB: I am not the creator, nor am I being paid to promote it. Just a regular user who found it particularly useful for my studies and personal knowledge.)

Anki is free though..

I&#x27;m not sure why I&#x27;d use this when there are tons of free and feature-rich alternatives to pick from. I <i>might</i> consider it if I could buy a perpetual license, but I&#x27;m not about to drop $5&#x2F;month on a... studying app.

FYI the screenshot of the app has the formula:<p>Revenue = Profit - Loss<p>It should be:<p>Revenue = Profit + Loss (as Profit = Revenue - Loss).<p>Otherwise, cool!

This is a crowded space. Since you&#x27;re charging a subscription, you 100% need a comparison table so we can determine exactly how your product distinguishes itself from the dozens of others (anki, quizlet, etc).

I use ForgetMeNot and its super helpful and even better than Anki in some ways. So, made a switch. Best is that its open source.

Is this OSS?<p>If not, then there are a dozen (also non-OSS) alternatives one could choose from.

No repo link? Anki has theirs on the front page.