Guide

Audio flashcards you answer out loud

Most audio flashcards read your cards to you. This is about the other half: saying the answer, and being told whether you were right.

Hearing it is the easy half

A question followed, two seconds later, by its answer feels like studying. But a flashcard is not there to show you the answer; it is there to make you produce it. On a screen that is what the pause before “Show Answer” is for. In your ears the pause is easy to skip: the answer arrives whether you had it or not, and nothing records which it was.

So the question to ask of any audio flashcard set-up is: what happens between the question and the answer? If nothing listens, you are the one keeping score, in your head, while crossing a street.

What a spoken card needs

• A question that is a sentence. “Capital, Australia” reads fine and sounds like a telegram. “What is the capital of Australia?” can be asked.
• An answer you can say in a breath. A name, a date, a word, a definition of one line. A paragraph cannot be graded by ear, by you or by anything else.
• One fact per card. “Who painted it, when, and where does it hang?” is three cards.
• Words, not pictures. A card whose question is an image, a diagram or a formula belongs on a screen. Keep it there.

How a card goes, answered out loud

This is what Loudwalk does. It asks the card through your headphones, worded differently each time, so that you learn the answer and not the shape of the question. You say the answer your way. Your speech is turned into text on your own device; the text is compared with the answer written on your card; you hear whether you had it, the right answer if you did not, and the card is graded and scheduled as it would be on screen. When an answer leaves you with a question, you ask it, and you get a real answer before the next card. Listen to a recorded walk, or try three cards in your browser.

Starting

If you use Anki, export your collection or a deck and import the file: your cards, your media and your review history come with it, and your schedule does not move. If you do not, write your cards in the app, or import a CSV file with a question column and an answer column. Reviewing on screen is free; so are editing, scheduling, sync through your own iCloud Drive, and export.

The voice is the part that costs money: €11.99 a month after a 7-day trial that takes no payment card. It needs a network, an iPhone on iOS 26 or an Apple silicon Mac on macOS 26, and it speaks English or French between cards. Everything it does not do is listed on the home page.