Learn & Review

An Anki add-on that adds separate Learn and Review actions to the Deck Browser — now with per-deck alternative card presentations.

Warning

Experimental software — back up your Anki collection before using this add-on.

This add-on is still experimental and may contain bugs. Before installing or updating it, create a backup of your collection, including media, and make sure you can restore it. Testing with a separate Anki profile is recommended.

Use at your own risk. The author is not responsible for lost progress, data loss, or collection corruption resulting from use of this add-on. This notice does not limit any rights that cannot legally be excluded.

Why?

By default, Anki provides a single Study action for a deck. That session can include both new cards and review cards depending on what is available.

This add-on separates these two workflows:

• Learn — starts a session dedicated to new cards available for learning. Each new card is introduced once through the learning process.
• Review — starts a session for cards already in the learning/relearning/review cycle.

This makes it possible to explicitly choose what you want to work on instead of letting the standard Study session mix both.

Alternative card presentations

Learn and Review can now show different fronts and backs of the same card, without creating duplicate Anki cards. For example, you can recognize an Arabic word when learning it (Arabic → English), then practice recalling it from English during review (English → Arabic), while keeping a single scheduling history.

You can configure this independently for each deck:

1. Open the gear menu next to a deck in Anki's Deck Browser.
2. Select Learn & Review.
3. Choose Original (Anki) or Alternative separately for Learn and Review.
4. To create an alternative presentation, copy the existing Anki card template into the editor, then customize its front HTML, back HTML, and optional additional CSS.
5. Save the settings for that deck.

The alternative uses Anki's template rendering, including fields and conditional sections. It inherits the note type's existing styling; additional CSS is optional.

Nothing changes until you select an alternative presentation. Both modes use the original Anki presentation by default. These settings are stored by the add-on, rather than modifying your note types or deck presets.

Note

Alternative presentations change how an existing card is displayed, not its Anki card type, scheduling state, or review history. You do not need to create a second card type (which would generate additional cards).

Installation

The add-on is not yet published on AnkiWeb. For now, it can be installed manually from the releases available on the Releases page.

1. Download the latest release.
2. Extract the archive.
3. Copy the add-on folder into Anki's addons21 directory.
4. Restart Anki.

The addons21 directory is located at:

• Windows: %APPDATA%\Anki2\addons21
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Anki2/addons21
• Linux: ~/.local/share/Anki2/addons21

How to build

To package the add-on into a distributable .zip file, run the build script from the repository root:

python3 build.py

The resulting zip file will be generated in the dist/ directory. The builder checks that all required add-on modules and its config.json are present before packaging.

Technical approach

The add-on does not implement its own scheduler.

It uses Anki's native V3 scheduler and its existing scheduling rules, card states, and daily limits. Alternative presentations are rendered in memory using Anki's template rendering system; they do not create additional cards or alter scheduling.

It does not:

• increase or bypass daily card limits, unlike some existing add-ons that modify or work around these limits;
• modify Anki's native deck options or note types;
• change Anki's scheduling algorithm;
• alter card states to make additional cards available.

The add-on provides separate entry points into Anki's existing scheduling system and optional presentation customization while keeping native scheduling behavior intact.

Support

This add-on is completely free and open-source. If you find it valuable, you can support its development with a pay-what-you-want contribution!

License

This project is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPLv3).

See LICENSE for the full license text.