Cognitive science has made important discoveries with implications for the effectiveness of Anki as a study tool. And although the flashcard app has been going strong, its age is apparent to any eye viewing it.
That’s why we’re here: Let’s evaluate whether Anki is still the right choice for your study in 2023.
The Age of Anki: nearing its end?
The once go-to choice for spaced repetition learning is no longer the optimal flashcard app for several reasons. It shows its age in terms of user interface and design, which can make it feel outdated compared to more modern and intuitive alternatives.
Especially Anki's desktop version suffers from a lack of feature updates and support, which hinders its ability to keep up with evolving user needs and expectations. The Android version, being a community-driven project, further shows the limited involvement of the original developer in maintaining and enhancing the platform.
Another significant drawback of Anki is its complexity. While it offers a wealth of options for customization, this can be overwhelming and counterproductive for users who seek a simple, time-efficient way to study and retain information: The flexibility in settings becomes an obstacle for new users. The time-consuming process of setting up and managing decks can detract from the actual learning experience, making Anki less appealing to those who need a straightforward and user-friendly solution. But there’s a deeper problem:
Anki’s inability to adapt to the changing landscape of learning technologies is severe. With advancements in learning science, new methodologies and tools have emerged that offer more effective ways to study and retain knowledge. In this context, Anki's traditional flashcard-based approach may fall short of meeting the diverse needs and preferences of today's learners.
And then there’s Anki’s weird pricing model. While they are an open-source app, and as such offer the app for free on most platforms, iPhone and iPad users pay the price with a hefty $25 price tag on the iOS app.
The real issue with Anki as a study tool
But the real issue with using Anki as a study tool is that it relies on just one study technique: spaced repetition.
Spaced repetition can work, but only if it’s used to consolidate information you’ve already understood. The significant time investment Anki requires from a user usually means that you will spend less time with other study techniques which build a better understanding of the study material.
As a result, the material requires more repetitions to master, and students can get stuck in an ever-growing amount of flashcards to review.
How Traverse is different from Anki
I initially started building Traverse when I got frustrated with Anki as I tried to learn Chinese. Even though it helped me create a review schedule, I struggled to see how things connected, leaving me feeling like I was regurgitating isolated facts instead.
When building Traverse, we re-thought what an effective study practice looks like, diving deep into the science of learning.
We discovered that spaced repetition flashcards are most effective when combined with mind mapping and note-taking techniques which help connect the pieces together, and visualize the big picture.
We also discovered many students over-relying on flashcard practice only, neglecting to build a solid understanding upfront. While this saves a bit of time, it comes back to bite you as the material now requires many more tedious repetitions to master.
In short, we saw an opportunity to build something which lets you both understand and memorize, by combining spaced repetition flashcards with mind mapping, drawing, and note-taking in an easy-to-use interface.
This is a powerful combination, since encoding makes your study routine much more effective.
What Traverse and Anki both offer
- Fully customizable flashcards, leveraging active recall and spaced repetition
- Customizable spaced repetition scheduling
- Cloze deletion and image occlusion cards
- Custom content like Math equations, tables, programming code blocks
- Attaching media like images, audio and video
- Positive reinforcement (visual and auditory)
- Study and progress stats
- Community-created decks
- 100% compatible with Anki APKG deck format (see section below) - this allows you to export your Anki decks into Traverse, so
- Your decks can be in both apps as well
What Traverse offers that Anki doesn’t
When building Traverse, we realized that flashcards are an important part of studying, so we made sure to support everything that Anki does, but we went even further:
- We added email reminders to make it easy to form the habit of daily flashcard reviews
- There’s a powerful mind map occlusion flashcard type, which makes flashcards 100% visual and leverages the Picture Superiority Effect.
- We created an easy-to-use interface for creating and reviewing flashcards (including customizable cozy backgrounds ☺️)
But where Traverse really shines is its holistic approach to effective studying. Flashcards are not a silver bullet: techniques like mind mapping, drawing and taking notes are needed to build comprehension of the material.
Here’s a surface view of Traverse’s features for better learning:
- Mind maps to form chunks of knowledge and make connections
- Color coding for neat organization
- Freehand drawing to visualize your thoughts
- Notes with todo-lists and space for all your study resources
Anki’s advantage over Traverse
Anki’s main advantage, being a very old product, is that it has built up an extensive community over time. Which means there’s a large collection of shared decks, and also many extensions to customize (and patch up) Anki’s user interface.
At Traverse, we take a different approach. We’ve set out to build an interface that is simple yet complete, largely removing the need to spend time configuring and customizing it.
Which one’s right for you, Anki or Traverse?
If you’re serious about becoming an academic top performer, you want to set up a holistic effective study process, and not invest all your time into one facet like spaced repetition. In that case, Traverse is for you. As mentioned, you can even bring your Anki deck over to Traverse while keeping all your scheduling information (see below).
However, if you’re more of a casual learner who just wants to use what everyone else uses, you may want to stick with Anki.
Or maybe, there’s another app that is a better fit for you altogether. To help you decide, we’ve mapped out the learning process as it happens in the brain, and which apps can help you at each stage:
Comparison Table
Finally, here is a comparison table with an overview of the features offered by Anki, Traverse and a range of other study apps.
ㅤ | Anki | Quizlet | RemNote | Traverse | Notion | Obsidian | Notability |
Flashcards | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
Spaced repetition | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | only with extension | ❌ |
Microlearning | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
Note-taking | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Mind mapping | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
Creating connections | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Color-coding | only with extension | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | only with extension | ✅ |
Grouping | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Visual organization | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
Free hand drawing | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Anki import | Not applicable | ❌ | Partial (no scheduling, limited media) | Full (scheduling, media, occlusions) | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
(Features in blue relate to retrieval practice, while features in green relate to encoding.)
100% Anki Compatible: Migrating from Anki to Traverse
Traverse is the first app that’s 100% compatible with Anki’s flashcard deck format (well, besides Anki itself of course 😉).
This means that your scheduling information is preserved so you can pick up exactly where you left off. Images, audio and other media are also included, as are image occlusions. All your tags and sub-decks are saved, too.
By importing your Anki decks into Traverse, you can organize all of your decks and cards in visual mind maps, so you can literally see how things connect. On top of that, you can add notes and upload all your study materials!
Here’s a video of how to use the Traverse Anki import:
Conclusion
Anki has done an amazing job in popularizing evidence-based study techniques, and spaced repetition in general. But its age, outdated interface, and singular focus on flashcards make it no longer the best choice if you’re looking for academic top performance.
Traverse offers a completely science-backed approach as an alternative, combining flashcards with mind maps, drawing and note-taking.
And again: you can move your Anki decks straight into Traverse, so giving it a try comes without any risk of losing progress.
