How to make your Anki less boring💗 | Anki Tutorial

Main ideas / lessons

The speaker’s goal is to make Anki (a flashcard app) feel less “boring” by:

• Organizing decks into sub-decks for easier navigation.
• Using more engaging card types, especially cloze and image occlusion.
• Applying visual customization via specific Anki add-ons (backgrounds, icons, fonts/colors).
• Adding motivational/progress elements to the homepage (events countdown, heatmap, progress bar).

Methodology / step-by-step instructions (with details)

1) Tour Anki’s base interface (so viewers know where everything is)

• Decks tab

  • Shows the decks and navigates back to the deck list page.

• Add button

  • Creates new cards.
  • Lets you choose:
    • Card type
    • Deck to add the card into

• Browse window

  • Displays cards inside a selected deck.
  • Allows editing/changing the card type.

• Stats tab

  • Displays learning stats for the currently selected deck, such as:
    • Future-due cards
    • Cards studied today
    • Total cards
    • How well the user is answering

2) Structure decks using sub-decks

Use a main deck (example: fourth year deck) split into sub-decks to navigate faster:

• Placements sub-decks (e.g., based on clinical/placement periods)
• Pass mode sub-decks (for pass/fail style practice)
• Extra study-before-exam sub-decks

Within each specialty area, split further by specialty (example given):

• For one specialty (MPC), include sub-decks like:
  • Neurology
  • Orthopedics
  • Palliative care

If there are many conditions, use pre-made decks:

• Combine them into one organizing structure to simplify studying.

3) Use add-ons to create more effective/more engaging card types

The speaker groups add-ons into two purposes:

• Add-ons that help create cards
• Add-ons that improve appearance

Card creation add-ons mentioned

• Enhanced cloze

  • Cloze-style cards where a selected word/phrase is hidden.
  • Helps break down large amounts of information into smaller recall chunks.

• Image occlusion enhanced

  • Used mainly for anatomy.
  • Covers labels on diagrams/images; the user recalls the hidden labels.

• Multiple choice

  • Not really used by the speaker (they made only one card and stopped).

Deck browse examples

• The speaker notes card types like “basic” cloze-style cards (example label mentioned: “N2A basic”).
• Image occlusion cards are shown as the example for anatomy label recall.

4) Customize Anki’s look (make the interface visually appealing)

Background and gear icon customization

Uses an add-on described as:

• Custom background and gear icon

Functionality:

• Changes the background image.
• Changes the gear icon shown on deck hover.
• Provides options for built-in images and supports importing an image (the speaker imported one to match their aesthetic).

How to access settings:

• Typically, Anki add-ons are under Tools.
• For this add-on, the speaker accesses it via a dedicated menu path:
  • Custom background and gear icon (opens a window where images/icons are selected)

Color/fonts customization

Uses an add-on mentioned as:

• Anki Redesign

How to access:

• Tools → Anki redesign

What it changes:

• Font selection (requires the font to be downloaded on the laptop)
• Font size
• General color scheme / theme elements

The speaker notes:

• Some settings were not fully understood, so they suggest “playing around” and checking results—especially when themes affect pastel/pink/vibrant elements.

Small visual/game-like features on the homepage

• Events tab

  • Adds countdowns to exam/important dates.
  • Conceptual workflow:
    • Enter a date (example: 15th of September)
    • Name the event (example: “back to uni”)
  • The homepage shows: “X days until [event]”

• Heatmap

  • Visualizes study frequency/streak and can show due cards in the future.

• Progress bar

  • A thin bar that visualizes deck progress while studying.
  • Example: after studying a certain number of cards out of a deck, the bar fills proportionally.

5) Install an add-on (detailed instructions)

Find add-ons

• Search on Google for Anki add-ons (the speaker refers to a website listing available add-ons).

Install (example using “Anki redesign”)

• Search for the add-on name.
• Open the add-on entry.
• Copy the add-on code.

In Anki (Mac described by the speaker):

• Tools → Add-ons
• Click Get add-ons
• Paste the code
• Press OK

After installing

• Anki reports “successfully installed”
• Restart Anki so the change takes effect.

Sources / speakers

• Speaker/Creator: Chenise
  • Identified as a fourth-year medical student and the host of the video.