Basic Settings
Synchronization
Synchronization controls whether you want to keep your deck synchronized with AnkiWeb.
Models
Models are used to group different kinds of information. Anki comes with a "Basic" model that includes a front and a back. Some plugins add extra models you can choose from.
You can create models for each type of information you want to store. For example, imagine you want to study capitals cities and French. You might have one model "captials", which has two fields: "country name" and "capital city", and another model "French", which has three fields: "French word", "translation", and "audio". For more information about fields, please see the card layout documentation.
When you click the add button, you have the choice of creating a new model, or copying an existing one. This is useful to create a slightly modified model - for example when you start learning German you might want to copy your French model.
Priorities
Priorities alter the order cards appear in the review and new card queue. Enter a list of space-separated tags in the priorities area, and any cards with a matching tag will have their priority altered.
- Very high priority
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Cards with this priority are shown first. Reviews with very high priority take precedence over new cards with very high priority if you have Anki set to spread new cards out through reviews.
- High priority
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Higher priority than normal, but does not alter which queue the next card will come from.
- Low priority
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Cards marked low priority will be put at the bottom of their respective queues.
Advanced
This tab allows you to customize some more advanced scheduling options. Please think twice before changing these options, as modifications may reduce Anki’s effectiveness. Some of the options are altered by the settings you make in the study options.
Failed Card Handling
- Button 1 delay
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Minutes to wait before showing a card again. Set to 0 to show failed cards at the end. Influenced by the show failed cards early setting below.
- Button 1 multiplier
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By default button 1 will reset a card’s interval back to 0. Setting this to say 20% will reduce a card’s interval to that percentage - so a card that had an interval of 100 days would have its interval set 20 days. This is not the next time the card will be shown, but the number used in calculating the next correct answer. Assuming no mature bonus, in the above example the card would be shown again in 10 minutes, and an answer of hard would give a next interval of approximately 24 days. An answer of good would give a higher interval.
- Mature Bonus
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Extra days to add to the review time when the card is mature. Mature cards are cards that have an interval over 21 days. If you set the mature bonus to 3 days, mature cards will be shown 3 days after you fail them. Note that to ease upgrades, the special value 600 is treated like an extra delay of 0.
Initial Intervals
A range of time to schedule new cards or failed cards with a sufficiently small interval. Periods under 24 hours will be rounded up if you have per-day scheduling enabled. After an initial answer, future repetitions of the card increase the interval relative to the previous interval and the answer button chosen.
The initial intervals are specified as a range, rather than a single value. For example, the default range for cards answered with the 3rd answer button is 3-5 days. When you answer a card, a random value is chosen within that range, so you may get a next time of 5 days, undo the card, and get an interval of 3 days the next time, or vice-versa. The range is designed to reduce spikes in the number of reviews you have to do each day. If you’d prefer button 3 to always schedule new cards 4 days ahead, you can achieve this by setting the minimum and maximum interval to 4.
Leeches
Please see this page for more information on leeches.
Sibling spacing (new cards)
Imagine you have a simple fact with two cards, front→back and back→front. Without spacing, these cards would be shown one after another, which is usually not what you want.
Spacing reschedules a fact’s other cards when one is answered. By default, the spacing is only one minute - enough to separate the cards, but not enough that new users wonder when the other cards are going to appear. Some people like to enter large numbers here. A delay of 10,000 minutes will ensure other cards of a fact won’t be introduced for at least a week.
Note that this setting is an upper limit. If you have spacing set for under a day, and there are no other cards left to answer, the remaining spacing is ignored and the spaced cards are shown. If you want to ensure spaced cards are never seen on the same day, set the spacing to 24 hours or more. Certain operations like undoing or editing cards will also cause spaced cards to be shown early.
Also bear in mind that each time a card is answered, the other new cards are respaced, so if you have a large spacing and keep failing card 1, card 2 will never be shown.
Sibling spacing (reviews)
Review cards are spaced relative to their interval. The default is 10%, so a card with an interval of 3 months (90 days) will be delayed for 9 days if you answer another card of that fact. Delays of under 1 day are ignored, so with the default settings, other reviews are not spaced until they have reached an interval of 10 days or more. Set to 0% to disable review spacing entirely.
Other Options
- Shift midnight by ~ hours
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By default Anki considers a new day to start at 4am. This is useful if you plan to be studying at night. If midnight started at 12am and you studied from 11:30pm to 12:30pm, at the turn of midnight your statistics would be divided over two days, and another day’s worth of new cards would be shown. This setting is relative to the time zone on your computer, so this setting will be honoured when studying via AnkiWeb. If you want to study while visiting a different timezone, you might want to adjust this setting.
- Per-day scheduling
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Upon opening Anki for the first time in a day, all cards due that day will be shown by default: that is, the cutoff for cards to show is "midnight" as described above. Disabling this option will instead set the cutoff to the start of your review session, so cards with a due date later in the day won’t be shown until later.
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Note
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While Anki stores a card’s next due time in seconds for the sake of ordering, the scheduling algorithms are an approximation of your memory, and are not accurate to such a precise time. Answering a non-failed card a few hours earlier or later than it is due will have no noticeable impact on your memory. The only reason this option is provided is because some people prefer due cards to "trickle in", so that they can space their reviews out through the day. |
- Show failed cards early
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By default if there are no other cards due for the day, failed cards will be shown. If you disable this, the congratulations screen will be shown and the remaining failed cards will not be shown until the full button 1 delay has passed.