Decks

Overview

Every deck has a target language (what you're learning) and a base language (what you already know). Cards are grouped into sections, and can go beyond a simple front and back with custom fields, images, and audio. Public decks appear in the community library where other learners can save them and study them alongside their own, while private decks stay visible only to you.

Getting There

The "Decks" link in the sidebar opens your deck library, "Create Deck" takes you to the deck creation page, and "Browse Decks" opens the community library.

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Your Deck Library

The Decks page shows everything you've created and everything you've saved, mixed together in one grid. Each deck card shows the name, cover image, target language flag, and a few key stats so you can spot what you want at a glance.

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Searching and Filtering

Type in the search bar at the top to filter decks by name or use the language dropdown to narrow down to decks in a specific language. If you have a lot of decks, they're paginated 20 per page with navigation at the bottom.

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Creating a Deck

1. Click "Create Deck" from the sidebar or the Decks page.
2. Enter a deck name.
3. Select the base language (the one you already know).
4. Select the target language (the one you're learning).
5. Optionally add a description and a cover image.
6. Choose whether the deck is public (visible to others) or private.
7. Click "Create".

You'll land straight in the deck editor, ready to start adding cards.

Note: the base and target languages are locked after the deck is created. If you need to change languages later, create a new deck.

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The Deck Editor

The editor is where you will be adding cards, editing content, organizing cards into sections, and setting up custom fields. Only deck owners can open the editor for that deck; saving someone else's deck gives you access to study it, but not to modify it.

A floating toolbar stays visible at the bottom of the editor and has quick-access buttons for different actions: "Add Section", "Bulk Import", "Fields" (which opens the Field Manager), "Select" (to enter selection mode for bulk actions), and "Done" (to save and exit).

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Adding Cards

1. Click the "Add Card" button at the bottom of a section to create a new empty card row.
2. Enter the front text (the target language word or phrase).
3. Enter the back text (the translation in your base language).
4. Optionally fill in custom fields, add images, or add audio.
5. The card saves automatically when you click away from the field.

Editing Cards

Click any field on a card row to edit it inline. Changes save automatically when you move to another field or click away.

Adding Images and Audio

Cards can include both images and audio. Click the image icon on a card row to upload an image in JPEG, PNG, or WebP format, up to 5MB. Images appear as part of the card during study sessions.

For audio, click the audio icon and upload an MP3, WAV, OGG, M4A, or WebM file, also capped at 5MB. Audio plays during study sessions and on the card detail view.

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Reordering Cards

Grab the drag handle on the left side of any card row to reorder it within its section. Individual cards can also be moved to different sections by clicking on the three-dot menu button and selecting "Move to Section." If you move every card out of a section, the empty section stays in place — use the trash icon on the section header to delete it. Drag handles are hidden while you're in selection mode, since bulk reordering isn't supported; use "Move to..." in the toolbar instead.

On very large decks each section loads its cards a page at a time as you scroll. If you want to reorder a card that's far down a long section, scroll past it once so the surrounding cards have a chance to load, then drag — the editor only lets you drop onto cards that are currently mounted. For moves across long distances or across sections, "Move to Section" from the three-dot menu is faster.

Selecting and Bulk Actions

When you want to move or delete multiple cards at once, click "Select" in the floating toolbar to enter selection mode. Click individual cards to add them to your selection and click "Move to..." to move them to a different section or "Delete" to delete them in bulk.

To act on every card in the deck at once, click "Select all" in the toolbar before picking individual cards. This works even on huge decks where not every card has finished loading yet, so you can move or delete thousands of cards in one action.

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Deleting Cards

To delete a single card, click on the three-dot menu to find the delete button for the card. For multiple cards at once, use selection mode and the bulk delete action described above.

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Sections

Sections group cards within a deck under named headings like "Chapter 1", "Food Vocabulary", or "Verbs". They're optional, but helpful once a deck starts growing. Adding sections also allows for more focused studying and conversation with the AI tutor, as you can choose individual sections for both.

Creating a Section

Click "Add Section" in the floating toolbar and a new section will appear at the end of the page, below the existing section. Hovering the "New Section" label shows a pencil icon that allows you to edit the name of the newly added section.

Moving Cards Between Sections

Enter selection mode, pick the cards you want to move, then click "Move to..." in the toolbar and choose a target section.

Deleting a Section

You can delete a section from the editor by entering selection mode, selecting the sections you want to delete, and clicking "Delete" in the toolbar. You can also delete sections by clicking the trashcan icon in the top right of the section card. Keep in mind that deleting a section deletes all the cards inside it too, so move anything you want to keep before you do this.

Viewing a Section

From the deck overview's Cards tab, click a section name to view just the cards in that section.

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Custom Fields

Beyond the standard front and back, decks can have custom fields for any extra information you want on a card: part of speech, gender, example sentences, pronunciation readings, etymology notes, or whatever else that you would like to add. Each deck supports up to 10 custom fields.

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Managing Fields

Open the Field Manager by clicking "Fields" in the floating toolbar. Inside the Field Manager, you can create new fields, edit existing ones, reorder them, or delete any you no longer need.

Deleting a field permanently removes that field's values from every card in the deck. If you later re-create a field with the same name, cards will start empty rather than carrying the previous values.

Suggested Fields

At the bottom of the Field Manager, you'll find suggested fields tailored to your deck's target language; a Japanese deck might suggest "Reading (Hiragana)", "Kanji", or "Part of Speech", whereas a German deck might suggest "Gender" or "Plural". These suggested fields are configured for each of the 40 featured languages. Click any suggested field to add it instantly. These suggestions are fully customizable once added; you can rename them, change their type, or adjust any of their preset values.

Field Types

There are two field types:

• Text gives you a free-form text input.
• Select gives you a dropdown with options you define. If you create a "Part of Speech" field, for example, you might set its options to "noun", "verb", and "adjective". You manage the options in the Field Manager when you create or edit a select field.

Required Fields

Mark a field as "Required" if every card in the deck needs a value for it. Cards with an empty required field get flagged with a validation error in the editor upon clicking "Done", which helps keep your deck consistent and ensures all required fields have content. A card is considered incomplete until its front, back, and all required fields are filled in.

Study Visibility

Each field has a Study Visibility setting with two options:

• "Always shown during study" keeps the field visible throughout the learn and review phases.
• "Behind toggle during study" hides the field behind a collapsible toggle, shown only when expanded.

You can also hide fields on a per-deck basis in Settings > Per-Deck Settings.

Audio for Fields

Enable "Show Audio" on a field to add audio playback for that field's content during study.

Filling In Custom Fields

Custom field inputs appear below the front and back fields on each card row in the editor. For select-type fields, you pick from the dropdown options you defined. For text fields, type whatever you want.

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Bulk Import

If you have a lot of cards you want to add all at once, bulk import is faster than adding them one by one. Click "Bulk Import" in the floating toolbar to open the Bulk Import modal.

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Supported Formats

Import Settings

If your deck has multiple sections, the modal shows a "Target Section" selector. Pick a section from the dropdown, or click "New" to create a new section on the spot. The target section is the default for cards whose row or object doesn't include a "section" value.

If your file includes a "section" column (CSV) or "section" field (JSON), cards go into those sections instead of the default. Any section names that don't match existing ones are created automatically (matching is case-insensitive).

Files can be up to 25MB, and a single deck can hold up to 5,000 cards. If an import would push your deck past that limit, the upload is rejected before any cards are added and the error tells you how many slots remain — split the file into smaller imports to fit.

Import Results

After the import finishes, a results dialog shows how many cards were added and how many rows were skipped. The Summary tab lists counts for imported cards, skipped rows, and any sections or custom fields that were auto-created. If any rows failed, an Errors tab shows each skipped row alongside the specific reason (for example, "Missing baseText or targetText value" or "Front text too long"). Use "Download error report" to export the errors as a CSV so you can fix the source file and re-import only the problem rows.

Common reasons rows are skipped: missing front or back text, a row with too few columns, text longer than the allowed limit, or an unknown Anki note type in an APKG file. Valid rows are still imported even when some rows are skipped.

Tip: Each format has its own instructions built into the Bulk Import modal, so you can reference them while prepping your file.

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Deck Overview

When you open a deck, you land on the overview page. It shows the deck cover image and info, a stats card summarizing the deck's community activity, a "Your Progress" card (if you've already studied at least one card), and three tabs below: Cards, Leaderboard, and Settings.

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Stats

The stats card shows eight community-wide numbers for the deck, not your personal activity:

• Cards: number of flashcards in the deck
• Sections: number of sections, if the deck is divided into any
• Learners: users who have studied at least one card from this deck (not just saved it)
• Sessions: completed study sessions on this deck across all users
• Total Points: points earned by everyone studying this deck
• Study Time: cumulative time everyone has spent studying this deck
• Created: month and year the deck was created
• Updated: month and year the deck content was last edited

Your Progress

If you've studied at least one card, a progress card appears below the stats with three personal numbers:

• Learned: how many cards in this deck you've learned, with a progress bar toward the total
• Review: how many cards are due for review right now (not all unstudied cards)
• Difficult: how many cards you've rated "Hard" during study or explicitly flagged as difficult

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Cards Tab

The Cards tab shows every flashcard in the deck, paginated 48 per page. Click any card to open a detail modal with the full front, back, custom fields, images, and audio. Once the modal is open, use the Left and Right arrow keys to step through cards without closing it.

If the deck has sections, each of the sections are shown. Clicking on a section will show you all of the cards for that section.

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Leaderboard Tab

The Leaderboard tab ranks everyone who has studied this deck. See Leaderboard for how timeframes and scoring work.

Settings Tab

Per-deck study settings that override your global defaults live on this tab. It's available to both deck owners and anyone who has saved the deck. For the full reference, see Per-Deck Settings.

Starting a Study Session

Click the "Study" button on any deck to open the mode selection modal. You'll see six options:

• Learn for studying new cards you haven't seen before.
• Review for cards that are due based on spaced repetition scheduling.
• Practice for studying learned cards without affecting their review schedule.
• Difficult for focusing on cards you've flagged as difficult.
• Speed for a timed multiple-choice challenge.
• Practice with AI for a conversation with the AI tutor using this deck as context.

If your deck has multiple sections, you can narrow the session down to a specific section. If you already have a session in progress for this deck, the modal will give you the option to continue or end it.

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For the full breakdown of each mode, see Studying.

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Browsing Community Decks

The Browse Decks page is where you discover decks from other learners in the community.

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Searching and Filtering

Search by deck name or topic and narrow results down by language. You can also sort the results in other ways:

• Trending surfaces decks that have seen the most saves and study activity recently.
• Popular sorts by total saves all-time.
• Recent puts the newest decks first.

Saving a Deck

Click "Save" on any public deck to add it to your library. Saved decks appear in your Decks page and can be studied just like your own.

Unsaving a Deck

To remove a saved deck from your library, open it and go to the Settings tab. The unsave option is at the bottom of this page.

Unsaving a deck permanently deletes all your learning progress for that deck, including SRS scheduling data, study history, and daily goal tracking. This action cannot be undone, so be sure before you confirm.

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Sharing Decks

Making a Deck Public or Private

The "Public Deck" setting is a toggle you can flip when creating or editing a deck. Public decks show up on the Browse page and can be saved by anyone.

If you switch a previously public deck to private:

• The deck disappears from the Browse page, so no new users can find or save it.
• Anyone who already saved it keeps full access in their My Decks library and can continue studying, with their progress intact.
• Your creator info on the deck is anonymized for those saved users. Your name and photo are replaced with "Anonymous," and the creator link no longer points back to your profile.
• The deck is hidden from the Learning grid on profile pages (including your own). It still appears in My Decks.

You can flip the toggle back to public at any time; your creator info returns once the deck is public again.

Sharing a Deck

Click "Share" on the deck overview to open the share modal. From there you can copy a direct link, share to X (Twitter), Facebook, WhatsApp, or Reddit, or share directly into a study group you belong to.

The share link works for everyone, logged-in or not. Visitors who aren't signed in see a public preview with sample cards and a signup prompt.

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Sharing to Groups

From the Share modal, pick a study group to share the deck with everyone in that group. For more on how that works, see Study Groups.

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Exporting Decks

You can export any of your decks in three formats:

• CSV for spreadsheet compatibility.
• JSON for structured data.
• APKG for the Anki flashcard app.

Exports live in Settings > Data & Storage. See Settings > Data & Storage for the details.

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Deleting a Deck

To delete a deck, open the deck editor and go to the Details tab. You will see the "Delete Deck" option at the bottom of this page.

What happens after confirming deletion depends on whether other users have saved your deck:

• No one else has saved it. The deck, all its cards, sections, fields, and study data are permanently deleted. This cannot be undone.
• Other users have saved it. The confirmation dialog tells you how many people have it and may be actively studying. The deck disappears from your library, is hidden from the community, and can no longer be saved by anyone new. The people who already had it saved keep full study access with their progress intact, and your creator info is anonymized for them: your name and photo are replaced with "Anonymous."

If you delete your whole account instead of a single deck, saved learners see "Deleted User" rather than "Anonymous" so the distinction is clear. See Settings > Delete Account for the full account-deletion flow.

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Reporting a Deck

If you come across a deck with inappropriate content, click "Report" from the deck overview. You'll be asked to select a reason (spam, inappropriate content, copyright violation, or other) and you can optionally add a description. Reports are reviewed by moderators.

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Deck Settings

Each deck can have per-deck study settings that override your global defaults. Test direction, text size, visible fields, daily goals, and per-mode tweaks all live here. For the full reference, see Settings > Per-Deck Settings.

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Tips & Troubleshooting

"No cards available" when starting a study session. The mode you picked doesn't have any eligible cards right now. Learn mode needs unlearned cards. Review mode needs cards with a due date. Difficult mode needs cards flagged as difficult. Speed and Practice both need cards you've already studied at least once. Try a different mode, or add and study a few more cards first.

"I can't edit a deck I saved." Only the deck owner can edit. Saving someone else's deck lets you study it, but not change its content.

"My imported cards are missing fields." Custom fields only get auto-detected when the import file follows the expected format for its file type. For CSV, extra columns beyond front and back become fields. For JSON, custom fields go in an "attributes" object. The Bulk Import modal has format-specific instructions you can reference while prepping your file.

"I deleted a deck but others can still see it." If other users saved the deck before you deleted it, they keep a read-only copy with your name removed. This preserves their learning progress.

"I unsaved a deck and lost my progress." Unsaving a deck permanently removes all study progress for that deck. The confirmation dialog warns about this before you confirm, and it can't be reversed.

"Can't add another custom field." Each deck is capped at 10 custom fields. Remove or repurpose an existing field in the Field Manager before adding a new one.

"Deck update was rejected for community guidelines." Deck names and descriptions are checked by automated moderation whenever they change or when a private deck is switched to public. If your edit is rejected, revise the flagged text and save again.

"Import failed with a 'text too long' error." Card fronts and backs are each capped at 100 characters, and every custom field value is capped at 200 characters. Trim long entries or split them across multiple cards.

"Import failed because I had too many cards." A single bulk import is limited to 5,000 cards, and any one deck is capped at the same total. For larger sets, split the file into multiple imports or additional decks.

"Out of storage" when uploading images or audio? Your total media usage is capped at 2GB across every deck, card, and profile image on your account. Warnings appear at 80% and 95% full. Free up space from Settings > Data & Storage by removing unused media.

"Image upload rejected." Card, deck cover, and profile photo uploads pass through automated image moderation. If an image is flagged, it's rejected at upload time and never saved. Use different artwork or retry with a different image.

"Can't save a section name." Section names are capped at 30 characters. Shorter is better anyway, since the name shows up in the mode modal and the sidebar study filter.

Related

• Studying walks through how to study your decks with the five study modes.
• Chat covers using deck context in AI conversations and generating cards from chat.
• Settings > Per-Deck Settings is where you customize study behavior per deck.
• Settings > Data & Storage is where deck export lives.