Launched this week
FlashCard
Anki, but simpler.
23 followers
Anki, but simpler.
23 followers
FlashCard brings spaced-repetition flashcards to macOS with zero setup: no account, no cloud, no scheduler to configure. Your cards stay on your Mac. Reviews are fully keyboard-driven (Space reveals, → mastered, ← again), cards keep coming back until you've learned them, and you can import any CSV in seconds. It feels native: vibrancy window, automatic dark mode, emoji collection icons. Anki's power without the intimidating setup. Free and open source (MIT).
How does the spaced repetition algorithm compare to Anki's SM-2 under the hood, or is it a simpler custom scheduler?
@caksen87596 It's deliberately much simpler than SM-2 — no ease factor, no intervals in days. A session queues all unmastered cards shuffled; "again" sends the card to the back of the queue, "mastered" removes it and persists across sessions. So it's closer to Leitner-with-two-boxes than Anki. That's a conscious trade-off: zero scheduler to configure, but no long-term interval spacing. If there's demand I might add an optional SM-2/FSRS mode, but the "no setup" simplicity is the whole point of the app.
Curious how it handles large decks over time since everything is local only, does performance stay snappy once you're sitting on a few thousand cards?
@azizalegzftqg Good question. Right now everything lives in localStorage as a single JSON blob, rewritten on each mutation. For a few thousand plain-text cards that's still milliseconds on any modern Mac, so reviews stay instant, but I wouldn't call it battle-tested at 50k+ cards. If people actually hit that scale I'd move persistence to SQLite (easy in Electron) — the UI layer wouldn't have to change. Curious how big your decks are?
Would love a quick toggle to suspend a deck for a set number of days, super helpful when going on vacation so old cards don't pile up.
@elizabeths37473 That's a really thoughtful suggestion — vacation mode is a classic Anki pain point too. Since my scheduler is session-based rather than date-based, cards don't actually "pile up" while you're away (nothing becomes due), but a per-deck snooze that hides it from the home screen for N days could still be nice to reduce guilt-clutter. Noted!
The keyboard-only review flow is genuinely thoughtful, Space to reveal and arrow keys to grade keeps you in the material instead of hunting for buttons. Really nice that it just respects your Mac and your data without trying to sign you up for anything.
@bayramblrn Appreciate it! "Stay in the material" was the design goal — every action in a review session is reachable without leaving the home row, and your data never leaves ~/Library/Application Support. No accounts, ever.
Love the no-account, local-first approach and the keyboard shortcuts feel snappy. One thing that would help me a lot: add a quick "stats" overlay (maybe hit a key like S) showing today's reviews, accuracy, and how many cards are left in the queue, so I can pace myself without leaving the app.
@glayeg2g Love this idea. The review toolbar already shows mastered/total, but a proper overlay with today's reviews, accuracy and remaining queue on a single keypress would fit the keyboard-first spirit perfectly. Adding it to the roadmap — S it is. Thanks!
imported a CSV of Spanish vocab in about ten seconds and the keyboard flow genuinely feels right, jumping through cards without lifting my hands off the home row.
@ece1080217 That's exactly the workflow I built it for — thanks for trying it! The CSV importer auto-detects the delimiter and header row precisely so a quick export from Sheets/Anki "just works". Enjoy the Spanish deck 🇪🇸