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Show HN: Anki alternative with integrated notes and import/export
- sabco 5y agoSo basically the same features as Anki except it's paid?
- danicgross 5y agoAnki is paid too. ($25 for the mobile app.)
- magnio 5y agoOnly on iOS. Anki is free on Android.
- Blahah 5y agofree and open source on desktop, web and Android
- KerrickStaley 5y agoThis is not correct. The web version of Anki is free to use but is closed-source.
- Blahah 5y agotrue! sorry for my lazy wording
- shadilay 5y agoI use AnkiDroid from Fdroid. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.ichi2.anki/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.ichi2.anki/
- klevertree 5y agoNope! A lot of features Anki doesn't have. Try out the demo account and let me know what you think.
- zaik 5y agoWhat kind of features? Is there a comparision page?
- jan_Inkepa 5y ago"21st Night attaches your notes and flashcards to the source you originally got them from" 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 "from textbook" (without indicating which textbook) or "from life". If there was a more clean explanation of the differences between your software and other similar products it might be helpful.
- siva7 5y agoThat’s already possible with Anki, even without Addons. Just add a new field source to your card deck
- dotancohen 5y agoAll my Anki note types have a field `HiddenNotes` which is never displayed on any cards. In addition to adding information when the card is created, I can also go back and add something to the field while reviewing in Ankidroid.
- klevertree 5y agoNot, not just tagging. Try creating a note, then highlighting a phrase from that note. You'll see that you have the ability to create a card from that phrase, which will then be attached to that note. The next time you pull up that note, you'll be able to see the card and vice-versa. You can also see attached cards and notes side-by-side if you prefer working that way.
- nafizh 5y agoDoesn't remnote have this functionality? Their main focus seems to be creating flashcards from your notes.
- oumua_don17 5y agoDoes this app provide offline storage or cloud storage? I don't want to guess but it was not very evident on your product page. 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't sync that profile so those cards stay just there encrypted on my office laptop. Hence offline storage is critical.
- klevertree 5y agoCloud storage. I didn't expect people to use this for confidential knowledge, to be honest.
- benrbray 5y agoThis app looks pretty good. There's also RemNote [1] which serves a similar function. It's kind of like Roam + Anki all in one. I'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's only a matter of time before solid free and open-source competition emerges. I'd love to see some Anki-like tools for Athens [2]. [1] https://www.remnote.io/pricing/feature_chart https://www.remnote.io/pricing/feature_chart [2] https://github.com/athensresearch/athens https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
- Blahah 5y agoIt's pretty straight forward to integrate anki with almost any tool. For example I use it with tiddlywiki (see https://kebifurai.github.io/TiddlyResearch/ https://kebifurai.github.io/TiddlyResearch/ for an example setup).
- hda111 5y agoHow does it relate to TiddlyRemember?
- sobjornstad 5y agoAuthor of TiddlyRemember here. TiddlyRemember is a plugin for TiddlyWiki with an associated plugin for Anki. TiddlyResearch is a version of TiddlyWiki that comes bundled with the TiddlyRemember TiddlyWiki plugin.
- klevertree 5y agoThanks! Yeah, Remnote is also really cool and a great product.
- knubie 5y agoMochi [0] is another. It is markdown driven with bi-directional links between cards. Templates. Local-first + syncing, and a bunch more. (Also, I made it.) [0] https://mochi.cards/ https://mochi.cards/
- jordanmoconnor 5y agoFYI the screenshot of the app has the formula: Revenue = Profit - Loss It should be: Revenue = Profit + Loss (as Profit = Revenue - Loss). Otherwise, cool!
- esrauch 5y agoI think the nonprogrammer view would be that "loss" is a positive number, then the original format is correct
- jordanmoconnor 5y agoAh, could be.
- jawarner 5y agoRevenue is bigger than profit, so it’s worse than that. I think it’s just plain wrong, or it assumes loss is a negative number.
- klevertree 5y agoOh man, you are correct. Shoot. I don't know how I did that.
- swiley 5y agoNo repo link? Anki has theirs on the front page.
- Freak_NL 5y agoIt looks like proprietary software. To claim to be an alternative for Anki it would have to be free software at least.
- klevertree 5y agoWell, it's an alternative for people who are looking for interesting, useful flashcard apps and found Anki limited or hard to use. Would you say Windows isn't an alternative for Linux?
- la_fayette 5y agoNo, it should at least mention "a paid alternative". E.g. one would say LibreOficce is a FREE alternative to MS.
- jhgb 5y agoAnki already is an alternative to SuperMemo, so a proprietary alternative to Anki doesn't make sense unless it somehow improves over SuperMemo.
- ahmedalsudani 5y agoIs this OSS? If not, then there are a dozen (also non-OSS) alternatives one could choose from.
- IAmMaulik 5y agoPlease name one
- Anon1096 5y agoI'm not sure that there's a dozen, but one very well-known one is the third word of the post title. :)
- hda111 5y agoTiddlywiki is Open Source and has an Anki plugin (TiddlyRemember)
- hamburga 5y agoorg-mode with org-fc for spaced repetition
- itake 5y agohttps://github.com/burtonator/polar-bookshelf https://github.com/burtonator/polar-bookshelf https://github.com/Yvee1/hascard https://github.com/Yvee1/hascard https://github.com/amy6/delern https://github.com/amy6/delern and anki
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Kelamir 5y agohttps://mnemosyne-proj.org/ https://mnemosyne-proj.org/ - The Mnemosyne Project
- nathanasmith 5y agoLeitner Box. Syncing kind of sucks though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system
- smoldesu 5y agoI'm not sure why I'd use this when there are tons of free and feature-rich alternatives to pick from. I might consider it if I could buy a perpetual license, but I'm not about to drop $5/month on a... studying app.
- josho 5y agoI find these types of comments interesting. It shows just how much VC money has distorted the value of software. Google/Facebook/etc all provide amazing software to us for free. Because they had hundreds of millions raised from investors to give away value while the businesses figured out how to build a business. Yes I agree that the unique value prop for this is a little muddy compared to other apps. But at the heart, if a student’s gpa is going to improve from use of this then yeh that’s clearly worth $5/mth, and should be a no brainer to purchase.
- notdang 5y agoI don't think the VC money distorted anything. People are not opposed to paying for what they are using. People are opposed to paying monthly.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoAm 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's already internalized ("Myanmar's anti-military activists have started using bombs,"), or because I've done something a lot and it's become ingrained ("docker exec -it phan bash"). There just aren't big lists of things I need to memorize, like there once were. Also, I'm certain I'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'm busy using it. I certainly don't see lots of low-hanging fruit like I used to. But I always wonder if that's a failure of imagination.
- Groxx 5y agosince I'm largely in the same boat: I think it has more relevance in some fields than in others. E.g. programming is relatively good at naming things descriptively, but less-so many fields that name tons of things based on the discoverer, e.g. biology-related things have a fair bit of this. And obviously there are numerous exceptions in both directions. For programming: I'm quite happy saying "learn concepts, not terms/frameworks". There's obviously some value in things you use a ton daily, but you'll naturally remember those through use - for the rest, thankfully, programmers are great at making things searchable, and there are loads of tools to search even when not (e.g. grep). Terms can be useful for communication purposes, learn them as needed and meh beyond that. Frameworks though are basically the programming-world equivalent of fashion, they change with the weather / at the whims of popular tweets. Yolo - learn how it works instead of the API, that's waaaay more useful, and is probably transferrable to dozens of other frameworks. But as an example: I routinely forget the argument order and finer details of the various "split a string" funcs in the 3 or 4 languages I use ~weekly. Because I only use them every few months. And in my next language, quickly-recall-able memory of those other-lang patterns won't help me in the least (if anything, they might slow me down). Splitting a string though, and choosing which end to start from, and how many times to split, and the various i18n complications, is a general concept that's applicable in all languages.
- 5y ago
- wodenokoto 5y agoWhat I really want is templating. 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.
- klevertree 5y agoHuh, not entirely sure what you mean. When you say readily available and updateable, what are you hoping to accomplish?
- Diti 5y agoHaving access to the notes you had written for each of the characters (provided the deck owner wrote that word card by including the cards of each character).
- wodenokoto 5y agoI hope to be able to update my note on either of the characters such that it will propagate to all cards that contain either character.
- knubie 5y agoYou can do this in Mochi (https://mochi.cards/ https://mochi.cards/).
- aye01 5y agocan anyone tell me why anki is implemented so poorly in its core functionality? it works, but its slow, clunky, and error prone. that's the drawback for me and reason i am even willing to check out competition in this tech. 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's strange sync pattern. I can'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.
- fny 5y agoIt's maintained by a sole developer who competes against goons who rode off the back of his brand name: https://www.ankiapp.com https://www.ankiapp.com
- Hamuko 5y agoTo be fair, "anki" (暗記) simply means "memorization" in Japanese so it's hardly super original by itself.
- johnmaguire 5y agoWatching my med student girlfriend use Anki the past few years has been horrible. The syncing in particular is bad, as you pointed out - and bad in a "irreversible data loss" kind of way. I've thought about trying to create something better, but Anki itself is so entrenched in some communities that there's a strong network effect - both through shared decks and add-ons. (Also, I don't personally have an application for rote memorization, so someone who does would probably create something better.)
- CodeGlitch 5y agoI use SyncThing [0] to sync my anki databases between a laptop, desktop and a raspberry pi. Fingers crossed nothing has gone wrong yet, apart from problems such as using incompatible versions on the same db. [0] https://syncthing.net https://syncthing.net
- spidersouris 5y agoYou should also check out IDoRecall[1]. It's a great alternative and has the possibility to create recalls out of notes, too. [1] https://www.idorecall.com/ https://www.idorecall.com/ (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.)
- Swaglord333 5y agoAnki is free though..
- markusl2ll 5y agoI'm going to shamelessly plug my own emacs org-mode extension: https://github.com/eyeinsky/org-anki https://github.com/eyeinsky/org-anki Write all your notes to org-mode files in a git repo, sync these (selectively) to Anki. No need to depend on proprietary services. Ironically though, the easiest way to get your cards to AnkiDroid/AnkiMobile is through ankiweb.net (a free service) then you could manually export/import cards and stats should that disappear. org-anki saves note ID within org-mode, so you can keep updating cards after an export/import.
- BeetleB 5y agoQuick question: What's the benefit of this approach vs using org-drill?
- markusl2ll 5y agoorg-drill works entirely in emacs (as does org-fc and pamparam) so you'd need to be near a computer when using it (unless you run emacs on your phone).
- Siira 5y agoPresumably Anki’s mobile frontends.
- prirai 5y agoI use ForgetMeNot and its super helpful and even better than Anki in some ways. So, made a switch. Best is that its open source.
- andrewzah 5y agoAnki user here, for about 5 years now studying Korean and to a lesser extent Japanese and miscellaneous topics. This is cool, but I will never base my learning on a closed-source product. I simply don't trust anyone with data / workflows this important to me. Anki doesn't have great UX, but it is -dependable-. It works, day in, day out, and I've had zero issues with it. I trust that in 5-10 years, my anki decks will be there and work exactly the same. edit: I'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'll live on with new maintainers (even if that's just me).
- joekunin 5y agoCould you give some insight into how you use Anki for language learning? Thanks.
- tastysandwich 5y agoI studied Japanese, and went from 0 to JLPT N2 in 4 years. I attribute a lot of that to Anki/Ankidroid. This is how I did it. Usually when you start a language, you start with a textbook. It might be Genki Vol 1, or Nihongo So Matome 1, etc. I created two decks - a kanji deck, and a vocab deck. These decks were only for this single textbook. Every week when new kanji or vocab was introduced, I'd add those to the deck, and become familiar with them over the next week (while at the same time, reviewing existing vocab/kanji). When that semester was over, and we started the next textbook in the new semester, I'd create two new decks. And so on and so on. I think it's important to create the decks yourself. It gives you control, and makes you feel more invested in the process. For vocab, I'd always include example sentences. For Kanji, I'd actually have representations in two different fonts. One in the standard kanji font on your computer, but another in HonyaJi, a "hand-written" kanji font. For me, I just felt it helped when writing out the kanji to see how it looks handwritten. The great thing about Ankidroid is the whiteboard feature. Use it! If you're not studying a language with logographic characters like Chinese or Japanese, then great, you only need to worry about vocab! (As for grammar, I never relied on Anki for that. Practice speaking, practice writing. Find local "conversation classes", where you meet up with native speakers. They can practice their English with you, and you can practice your new language with them. As for writing, check out a website called Lang-8. Native speakers look over your work for free, and in return you just take a few minutes to read over their stuff in English).
- qwerty456127 5y agoVery very nice! Despite I don'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. 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've already solved today?
- dllthomas 5y agoPeriodically 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'm not sure about updates. In particular, I don't think there'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?
- throwaway675309 5y agoThis is a crowded space. Since you'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).