The product | Use today’s recall to plan later practice

Anki is a spaced-repetition learning tool for people who need to remember vocabulary, concepts, or facts over time. Users turn material into cards, look at a question, try to recall the answer, and then reveal it. Learning records help the system schedule later reviews, reducing the need to repeat everything at the same pace.

The tool does not decide whether you truly remembered the answer. You provide that judgment after seeing it. This article focuses on that small interaction: how one self-assessment becomes input for later learning. Official study guide

Four recall ratings feed future scheduling, with intervals varying by card and settings

The core flow | Leave room for recall before showing the answer

  1. Choose a deck and click Study Now. Read the question on the front of a card and form your answer mentally or say it aloud.
  2. Click Show Answer. Compare with the back of the card. Judge what you recalled before the reveal, not whether you understand it now.
  3. Rate the actual experience. Choose Again if you forgot or were wrong; Hard if you were correct but struggled; Good for normal recall; and Easy for effortless recall. Hard still means correct and should not replace Again.
  4. Notice the next-review time on each button. It varies with the card’s state and scheduling settings; all cards do not use one fixed set of minutes or days. Choose a rating and continue. If the content itself needs fixing, use Edit and then return to review. Button meanings and review flow

Design lessons | Describe memory rather than award a grade

Recall, check, then assess. Separating these stages creates a chance to notice what you already knew. Showing both sides at once makes familiarity easy to mistake for recall. Interview practice or procedural training can likewise capture an attempt before revealing a reference answer.

A button describes an experience. Again and Hard do not mean “bad” and “slightly better”; they distinguish forgetting from effortful success. If the interface emphasizes success rates and completion counts, users may avoid Again to protect their record, distorting the scheduling signal. A useful lesson is to explain failure feedback as input for later help.

Show the consequence without promising too much. Expected next-review times show that the choice affects scheduling. Intervals still depend on the scheduler, so no button should become a shortcut that guarantees recall. Anki also includes an FSRS scheduling option that can adjust review plans using learning records. FSRS release notes