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Show HN: I made Ankify that converts notes to Anki cards

by kangruixiang on 5/7/22, 1:33 PM with 62 comments

Backstory: I was in medical school and had to study a ton of materials in short period of time. I came across Anki but always had trouble with making cards. In my mind, making cards should be quick, seconds instead of minutes. My other problem is after making the cards, each card does not really relate to the other. When you study the individual card, your thought process is very random and not cohesive. I wanted to be able to still reference to my notes for big concepts and then use the cards to memorize the details but also for long term retention.

Ankify came out of that. At the time, I did not know any programming and paid someone to write a script in Python to convert the cards. Then, eventually I learned Python myself and expanded on the script. I also uploaded the markdown files online so I could view them anywhere (https://kangruixiang.github.io/wiki/).

I ran into a wall in making user interface for the program. It was difficult to make good looking cross platform user interface with Python. I gave up on making user interface for a year or two with end of med school and residency. After a while, I went back to see if anyone else had made anything similar. Despite many plugins/programs that makes it easy to make cards, none of them really focused on readability of the original notes. I decided to sit down and learn javascript to help with UI creation.

After about 3 years, everything finally came together after I learned Svelte, Tailwind, and Electron. I know Electron is not the most efficient program, but it's what works for me.

Also, it's also the feeling of being able to make whatever my mind can think of. It feels really refreshing and empowering. Even making the website for Ankify is a lot of fun. You have to think so much about the presentation, typography, logistics.

  • by rsanek on 5/7/22, 7:48 PM

    This looks great! I too have long been frustrated by the laborious process of making high-quality notes. I've approached the problem a bit differently, choosing to integrate with APIs and auto-generate notes from that structured information. I've found that when done carefully, this approach can solve especially well for the 'disconnected knowledge' problem.

    I see your project uses import-from-csv to get cards into Anki -- you can make this significantly more user-friendly by utilizing the genanki Python package [0]. It spits out an apkg for you that you can just double-click on and import. The other side benefit is that you can keep a stable ID of the same cards over time, which means that if you want to eg update the structure or styling of already-exported notes, it is very easy to do so.

    [0] https://github.com/kerrickstaley/genanki

  • by jwrallie on 5/7/22, 9:25 PM

    Thanks for sharing. I'm a big fan of Anki, but mostly I am using it for language learning these days.

    Sometimes I branch into other uses. I was quite successful using Anki when studying for my amateur license exam.

    I will consider using Ankify if I need to study from notes at some point in the future.

    What I loved about your post is how you evolved with Ankify as you developed it, I think this is a great example for people starting on their own journeys of learning how to program, I always felt that having a project in mind from the beginning is the best way to keep moving forward, and your journey is a great example of that.

    I am considering using Python for cross platform gui design. Could you expand on why you chose electron over other alternatives, for example Qt?

    Also, could you share which resources you used to learn about gui development on Python?

  • by esrh on 5/7/22, 9:04 PM

    This is pretty neat, I've also encountered the same problem. Personally, I take my notes in emacs org-mode, and I've built up a workflow around anki-editor[0], some snippets and elisp.

    [0] https://github.com/louietan/anki-editor

  • by lervag on 5/8/22, 9:29 AM

    Shameless plug: I made apy [0] that allows more or less the same functionality, and more, from the command line. Some things I like about apy that I never found from any alternative solutions:

    * I communicate directly with the local Anki database - no need to keep Anki open and use any ankiconnect type plugin.

    * I can sync the database before and after with "apy sync".

    * I can easily add single cards from the command line. And I can add mulitple notes from a Markdown formatted file simultaneously.

    * I can easily edit cards that I have marked to specifically change in some way (I find it useful to adjust cards).

    [0]: https://github.com/lervag/apy

  • by i_like_apis on 5/7/22, 8:05 PM

    This is cool.

    Is there a way in Ankify to export cards to any mobile apps?I always want to study Anki on mobile but in the mobile apps I know about, the experience of creating cards is too tedious.

    It want to be able to create cards on desktop but usually study on mobile!

    If you like building in Electron, you may like Ionic if you build a mobile app ;)

    https://ionicframework.com/

    I wish Anki mobile apps were just a nice simple view/study experience, with the create and edit features much better suited to desktop UI.

  • by curacao1962 on 5/7/22, 8:42 PM

    Does anyone use/know of an alternative to Anki? Maybe I am just picky or I am simply not cut for SR systems but I find Anki clunky.

  • by JulianWasTaken on 5/7/22, 9:41 PM

    Cool.

    Tangentially related, but I have a GitHub Action [1] -- which converts all the notes I write in my (oft-neglected) TIL site [2], and which may also be of interest. It's simple stuff but yeah bit of fun.

    [1]: https://github.com/Julian/til/blob/1b9ae162625d20d3e4b6a3ffb... [2]: https://github.com/Julian/til/ [2b]: https://til.grayvines.com/

  • by falsenine on 5/7/22, 8:57 PM

    Definitely going to check this out, especially as someone applying to medical school. Came upon the same problem with Anki, it's great for memorization but challenging to make a ton of cards.

    An aside question: For incoming med students interested in tech, would it be worthwhile to learn programming? I know it would be great for research. But as someone who is unsure about becoming a clinician scientist, it might be a waste of time to learn programming concurrently during med school.

  • by kajiryoji on 5/8/22, 5:01 AM

    I wonder if you could use ankify to update anki cards in a bi-directional way? Like I can modify one of my cards and my notes will reflect the change, and vice versa

  • by sean_the_geek on 5/7/22, 9:40 PM

    Many thanks. This looks neat and I will check it out. I am heavy user of Anki and was in a similar situation. I ended up taking notes in Notion and using https://2anki.net/ to create cards. It does restrict the type of notes you can take. Your application looks comprehensive. Thanks.

  • by blindseer on 5/7/22, 8:49 PM

    You can tell the website is using sveltekit by the favicon but also by how seamless the navbar navigation is. Congrats on launching.

  • by LeonidBugaev on 5/8/22, 9:57 AM

    I'm using this plugin for Obsidian and very happy so far https://github.com/st3v3nmw/obsidian-spaced-repetition

    Essentially no need convert your notes to Anki cards, your notes litelarly became spaced repetition cards.

  • by merry_flame on 5/9/22, 1:16 PM

    It's worth mentioning that users of TiddlyWiki can use https://sobjornstad.github.io/TiddlyRemember/ to a similar effect. Nice seeing more initiatives in this space.

  • by rg111 on 5/7/22, 8:10 PM

    Linux version, when?

    Also, any plans of an Android version?

  • by herunan on 5/8/22, 1:12 AM

    No way! I have a humongous list of “term - definition.” and was planning in writing a program to do exactly this! Never got around it due to laziness/lack of prioritisation and this might have just saved me some time and effort. Thank you!

  • by zmix on 5/7/22, 9:51 PM

    Why not use YAML "front matter" instead of abusing XML comments, which may (I didn't spend much thought on it) break it for people, who also want to encode the Markdown into XML/HTML?

  • by lorey on 5/7/22, 9:34 PM

    I've only looked into importing cards automatically briefly. My feeling was that keeping progress might be an issue if cards change (and thus get re-created). Do you deal with that?

  • by hombre_fatal on 5/8/22, 3:22 PM

    Love the memory aids. Staph -> pharoah. Tetracycline -> bicycle. Haemophilus + pneumonia -> rusty chest plate.

  • by McNutty on 5/8/22, 10:25 AM

    Feedback: I read the entire website and I still had to separately google what an Anki card is

  • by arkades on 5/8/22, 1:12 AM

    Obsidian needs to acquire you guys asap

  • by _dmn7 on 5/8/22, 12:08 AM

    (Shameless plug) Only marginally similar (though I imagine you can adapt it to the same purpose), but I also created a GUI tool [1] for quickly making Anki cards when reading foreign language texts. It's also not electron, but rather PyQt, so it conforms to your system theme if you are on Linux.

    [1] https://github.com/FreeLanguageTools/vocabsieve