[Poll] Do you use Anki? What Anki tricks do you use? What Anki mistake do you make?

[polv]

The purpose of this poll is to improve User Experience with Anki and explore features. I think the best way to learn how to learn how to use Anki is to need that feature.

• Current Anki user
• Former Anki user
• Have a plan to use Anki

Anki deck creation

• Get shared deck
• Import *.apkg from other than Anki’s official website
• Import *.txt, *.csv, *.tsv
• Create deck using Anki desktop application / smartphone application
• Create deck using Spreadsheet
• Create deck using scripts / programming
• Change note types
• Tagging
• Filtered deck
• Custom study session
• Other

Anki creation part 2: Formatting

• Default settings
• Textbox / type-in
• Pictures
• Autoplay sounds
• Not-autoplay sounds
• Multiple card types
• HTML/CSS formatting
• JavaScript
• Custom fonts
• Other

Anki reviewing

• Default settings only
• Enable whiteboard, use stylus
• Enable whiteboard, use finger
• Sometimes use default settings
• Custom number of lessons per day
• Custom number of reviews per day
• Multiple reviews (of the same item) per day
• Custom step on new lessons
• Custom step on reviews
• Other

Anki-using platform

• Desktop only (Windows)
• Desktop only (Mac)
• Desktop only (Others, e.g. Linux)
• Desktop version sometimes
• AnkiMobile on iOS (iPhone, iPad)
• AnkiDroid on smartphone
• AnkiDroid on tablet

Anki (frequently-made) mistakes / serious mistakes

• Bugs especially that cannot be killed
• Messed up syncing
• Messed up importing
• Messed up deck creation
• Messed up “Rebuild deck” (in filtered deck / custom study session)
• Other

Do you like or hate Anki? (This one is private, and will not show names.)

• More than like (love)
• Like
• Neutral
• Mixed feeling
• Hate

If you don’t know how to use Anki, I can teach you as much as I can.


Some of my recommendations

• Proper Japanese font
• Kanji Stroke Order font
• Internal Japanese IME (wanakana.js Javascript or variant, wanakata.js) with textbox input {{type:field}}
• AnkiDroid with stylus input, Enable whiteboard
• Core 10k breakdown
• http://wanikanitoanki.com
• I forgot to put in poll on “Custom Note Type” creation

Some tutorials

• Anki Video Tutorials
• https://wanikanitoanki.com/docs

[polv]

Additional tricks.

Deck naming. 0/number get pushed to the top. Kanji/Kana get pushed to the bottom. Spacebar also get pushed to the bottom.

Subdecks. This is a default for hinekidori’s decks anyway. This can be done by naming decks with ::
Furthermore, reorder deck by card types. One note belongs to 3 separate decks.

This is my old topic asking about Anki tricks What is your Anki strategy? / How do you use Anki?. However, there seems to be many Anki haters at that time.

[chrispthompson]

A question for Anki users:

Does anyone use the “download audio” add-on? It pulls native speaker pronunciation recordings from the japanesepod101 database.

Recently it just stopped working – I’m wondering if that’s because jpod101 moved the database to a private server or something.

I had a conversation with the developer on Github and he didn’t know (and wasn’t really willing to spend time investigating). It’s an awesome add-on, just wondering if anyone else had that issue.

[polv]

You can simulate “level completion” / “90% level completion” in Anki…

By using filtered deck, with the settings:

Steps in minutes: 1 10 240 480 1440 4320

After you have finished 3 days’ interval, cards will get automatically knock out of filtered deck… so wait until you have 0 or very few cards left in your deck.

BTW, I use just:

Steps in minutes: 1 10 240 480

So, it becomes one-day level up (if I have time to review).

[jprspereira]

So, for more than one month I’ve been thinking about starting with Anki. Last month or so, I installed the “10k WK Breakdown” created by our friend @hinekidori. Since his decks’ post got archived, I decided to come here to ask for help.

The 10k WK Breakdown basically consists on vocab from the Core 10k. It’s divided by WK level which basically means that I’ll only find vocab on lvl 10 that uses Kanji from the WK’s lvl 10 (for example). Am I correct?

In terms of the example sentences, how do you guys approach them? Do you focus on understanding the whole phrase or do you just focus on the word function? My problem with this is that even though I might be doing reviews from lvl 1, I get Kanji that I haven’t learned yet in the example sentences. I feel that I can only fully understand a word if I can easily read/translate the example sentence. However, trying to read/translate something with Kanji you don’t know might be a huge waste of energy. Any suggestions? Today, @riccyjay recommended me iknow. Would my problem with example sentences be solved there? The iknow vocab and the Core 6k are basically the same, right? I would prefer to get used to Anki though (because it’s free).

Now let’s talk about the time intervals between reviews. I read somewhere (and found it very logical) that if you fully know the answer, you should click on “Good” and if you don’t know it perfectly, you should click on “Again” instead. This makes us learn the items better since it allow us to avoid the excessive time intervals between reviews. This might give me a bunch of extra reviews in the long term, but I don’t really mind.

How many new items/day would do you suggest doing? I’m already a pretty heavy user of WK and KW (leveling up every 7 days with 95% accuracy) and I can be the same with Anki. I just need to find my own way of interpreting and using it.

@polv I think it was you that said that ENG => JP needs more attention than JP => ENG and that you use Anki to solve this. I agree. Do you use your own decks or do you know any decks that could help me with this?

Any suggestions are very much appreciated Sorry for having so many questions.

[Wantitled]

I still haven’t tried the Core 10k yet (I really should), so I can’t help you with advice specific to the Core 10k, but I use Anki pretty heavily everyday. With example sentences in Anki, I ideally want to understand the complete sentence, although quite often that would involve spending a lot of time looking stuff up, which would take ages. In practice, I think as long as you can understand the word’s function in the sentence, then that’s fine.

I really only use the “good” and “again” buttons, despite having another 2. If I know it, I’ll select “good”, but if I struggle or get it wrong, I’ll select “again”. Ultimately, you aren’t punished for getting something wrong, so you should feel more liberal about using the “again” button. If anything, it rewards you by giving you a chance to strengthen that word.

I usually do 20 new items a day, and I have my max reviews set to 100 for each deck. I probably play my reviews much safer in Wanikani then I do in Anki. In Anki, I just prefer blasting through tons of stuff, which usually means I get a lot more wrong, but for me I find Anki a lot more fast paced anyway (I’ve spent an average of 3 seconds on each review, and one of my decks is full of sentences).

[polv]

@jprspereira

do you know any decks that could help me with this?

I just use Core 10k breakdown and wanikanitoanki.com Recently, I have Onomato Project.

Sometimes, I change note type; other times, I export/import CSV. So, I don’t really care if it is whether *.apkg or *.csv (or *.xls).

Easiest way to tweak to deck to your need is “Suspend card”. One more recommendation is {{type:Field}}.

Creating Anki deck is about knowing HTML, basic JavaScript and Anki syntax.

@jprspereira

I read somewhere (and found it very logical) that if you fully know the answer, you should click on “Good” and if you don’t know it perfectly, you should click on “Again” instead

If I am still within 4-h and 8-h interval, even if I don’t fully know the answer, sometimes I click “Good”. Beyond 8-hr (1-d or 3-d), I usually click “Again”. Also, I click “Again” too, if I just want to repeat the drill for no reason. However, it does depend on the review work load.

Interestingly, Wanki template that @hinekidori created, sometimes “Good” is 7-d, but “Perfect” is 2-d. In this case, I press “Perfect”.

My “fully-know-the-answer” means remember essentially everything in goo.ne.jp, that is, full dictionary explanation, not just what is directly shown on the card.

@UntitledName

I usually do 20 new items a day, and I have my max reviews set to 100 for each deck.

A best setting I know is 0 new items per day for a very large deck. I use 10 new items per day for a smaller deck. In case to want to study new items, Custom Study → 10 more new items. Sometimes, even 10 items feels too much, but I don’t usually go any lower.

Step of 1 10 240 480 will keep you worked up every half a day, and be infested with Leeches, anyway.

Max review for me is set to 50.

[Raspberry]

I’ve never used anki before but I’m taking N3 this December and I need to blast through a lot of vocab, so anki seems like my best bet.

I’ve found lots of different JLPT decks online but I’ve no idea which ones are best - are there any recommended ones?

Also, some simple videos/tutorials on setting up anki would be great. I’ve got it downloaded and had a play with a deck but the interface is pretty intimidating.

Thanks!

[polv]

@Raspberry

Also, some simple videos/tutorials on setting up anki would be great.

Have you tried ⇓, which is Video Tutorials?

[Anki] Tutorials

I’ve made a handful of Anki tutorial or example videos now. So I thought it would make a post to deposit them in one place. →  [Anki: How to Change Note Types] →  [Anki: Using the Suspend Tool] →  [Anki: Creating Card Types] →  [Anki: Some Features] →  [Anki: Testing my Genki Deck] →  [Anki: Choosing Between Commonly Kana/Kanji] →  [Anki: Basic Styling Walk-Thru] →  [Anki: Activating and Styling the Input Box] If you want to try out the decks you see in the videos you can follow the link belo…

In https://wanikanitoanki.com/docs, you’ll see that Anki template is mostly HTML, some basic Javascript and Anki syntax.

However, Anki has so many bugs. If in doubt, feel free to drop this app. But, yes, it is very powerful and customizable.

Some easiest and useful customization.

• Suspend cards
• Type-in field

[Raspberry]

Thank you! I’ll have a look ^^