QuickMem
Make flashcards from a PDF in a minute
Point QuickMem's Helper at a lecture PDF, a .docx or your pasted notes and it drafts the cards — you approve each one before it saves. Ten AI-written cards are free, then QuickMem Plus.
The handout already has the facts in it. Typing them onto cards is the part nobody has time for, and it is the reason a lot of well-intentioned decks stop at eleven cards. QuickMem's Helper reads the document instead.
The one-minute version
- Open the Helper tab and pick Import from text.
- Choose the deck the cards should go into.
- Pick the file — a
.pdf, a.txtor a.docx— or paste the text straight into the box. - Say how many cards you want, and anything else that matters ("definitions only", "keep the backs to one line").
- Read what comes back, keep the good ones, and save.
That last step is not a formality. Generated cards land on a review screen, not in your deck. You can edit a card in place, drop the ones that missed the point, or type a follow-up instruction and have the whole batch rewritten before any of it is saved.
What the app sends, and what it does not
The file never leaves your phone. QuickMem opens it on the device and pulls the words out — a .docx is a zip with the text inside it, a PDF is reconstructed page by page — and only that text is sent on to be turned into cards. Nothing is uploaded, and the file is not kept.
There are limits, and they are worth knowing before you pick a 400-page textbook:
- 20 MB is the largest file the app will open. That covers a syllabus, a chapter or a slide deck comfortably.
- 50 pages is as far as it reads into a PDF.
- About 12,000 characters of text go into one import — a few thousand words. Longer documents are cut off there, and the app tells you it happened rather than quietly shortening your material.
So the trick with a long document is to import it in pieces: this week's chapter, then next week's. That is usually better material anyway, because a card written from a page of specifics beats one written from a summary of a summary.
Scans are the one case that cannot work
A PDF that is a photograph of a page has no text in it, only pixels. Nothing in QuickMem reads those — that would need OCR — so the app says the PDF has no text layer rather than returning an empty deck and leaving you to guess why. If your lecturer hands out scans, copy the text from wherever it exists in a typed form, or type a few lines and have the Helper expand on them.
Then fix the cards that are almost right
A generated deck is a first draft, and the Helper has skills for the second one:
- Split a card when one card has quietly become three facts, which is the single most common flaw in a deck made from prose.
- Explain a card you keep missing, in plain language.
- Make a mnemonic for the one that will not stick, and save it onto the card as its hint.
- Tidy a card to fix typos and tighten the wording without changing what it asks.
Two more run entirely on your phone and cost nothing: Find duplicates, which is worth running after a big import, and Study plan, which reads your own queue and tells you where ten minutes would be best spent.
What it costs
Your first ten AI-written cards are free, counted as you use them rather than in one go. After that the AI skills need QuickMem Plus at $4.99 per month, billed through Google Play or the App Store and cancelled there. Everything else — making cards by hand, spaced repetition, nested decks, Anki import, read aloud and sharing — is free and stays free.