Guide

Doing your Anki reviews on a walk

Three ways to get through today’s cards without looking at a screen, what each one really does, and where it stops. I make the third one; the first two are free and already on your phone.

First: which cards work out loud

A card works out loud when its question is a sentence and its answer is short enough to say: a date, a name, a word, a definition. Vocabulary, history, geography, law and a good part of medicine work. A card whose question is a picture, a diagram or a formula does not, and no app will make it: keep those for the screen. Most collections are a mix, so whichever way you choose, expect to do some of your reviews on a walk and the rest sitting down.

1. Let Anki read to you

Anki can read a field aloud with the voices built into your device. In the card template, write {{tts en_US:Front}} where the field is ({{tts fr_FR:Front}} for French, and so on). It needs Anki 2.1.20, AnkiMobile 2.0.56 or AnkiDroid 2.17, or later: the manual’s page on text to speech.

Since Anki 23.12 there is also Auto Advance. In the deck’s options, set “Seconds to show question for” and “Seconds to show answer for”; then, in the study screen, start it from the More button (the manual’s section). The card is read, the answer follows after the pause you set, and the next card comes by itself.

What you get: your own cards in your ears, free, in the app you already use.

Where it stops: Anki cannot hear you. Either you grade with a tap, which means taking the phone out, or every card is answered the same way when its time runs out, and your schedule stops reflecting what you knew. And it is listening: the answer arrives whether you had it or not.

2. Grade with a button in your hand

The step up is to keep the grading honest without looking. AnkiMobile, from 2.0.53, can be driven by a game controller, with an action assigned to each button (its manual); AnkiDroid maps a gamepad’s four buttons to the four answer buttons (its manual). A small Bluetooth controller in your pocket becomes “show answer”, “Again” and “Good”.

What you get: real grades, eyes-free, still inside Anki, for the price of a controller.

Where it stops: you are still grading yourself, in your head, on a walk, which is where “close enough” starts to count as Good. And it is one more thing to carry and charge.

3. Answer out loud, and be graded

This is what Loudwalk does, and why I built it. It asks today’s due cards through your headphones, worded differently each time. You answer out loud, in your own words. It compares what you said with the answer written on your card, tells you whether you had it, corrects you in a sentence, and grades the card. If the card leaves you with a question, you ask it, and you get an answer before the next card. A recorded walk is on the home page, with its transcript.

It starts from an Anki export, an .apkg or a .colpkg, with your media and every review you have done, and it keeps Anki’s schedule: FSRS, your presets, your daily limits. Reviewing on screen in it is free.

Where it stops, plainly. It is an iPhone and Mac app: nothing for Android or Windows. The voice needs a network and is a subscription, €11.99 a month after a 7-day trial that takes no payment card, because every spoken answer runs through a model. By default it asks the cards that are due; a new card is first met on screen. It does not sync with Anki live: going back is a file you import. The whole list of limits is on the home page.

Which one

• Your cards are things to hear again, such as sentences in a language you are learning: the first way is enough.
• You want honest grades and do not mind a controller in your hand: the second.
• You want to be asked, to answer in your own words and to be told: the third.

Loudwalk is independent of Anki and is not affiliated with Ankitects.