QuickMem
QuickMem vs Anki
Anki is the most serious flashcard software there is, and people who love it are right to. This page is for the other case: you want the cards written for you, on a phone, without configuring anything — and you would like to keep the decks you already have.
What Anki is very good at
It is free and open source, it runs on desktop as well as phones, and almost nothing about it is fixed: note types, card templates, styling, scheduling parameters and add-ons all sit in your hands. It has a scheduler with years of research behind it, a large library of shared decks, and a community that has answered nearly every question you can think to ask. If you want total control over how your cards are made and shown, that is Anki, and no phone app is going to match it.
What QuickMem does differently
QuickMem starts from the part that stops most people: writing the cards. Describe a deck — or hand over a PDF, a .docx or a page of pasted notes — and the Helper drafts it, then puts the cards on a review screen where you accept, edit or drop each one before anything saves. Then it gets out of the way: nested decks, a daily queue that ends, and four grading buttons that print the interval each one would schedule.
It is a phone app that works the moment you install it, with no account required to start, and the settings that exist are the ones you would actually change.
| Anki | QuickMem | |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iPhone, and a web client for syncing and study. | Android and iPhone, synced between them. No desktop or web app. |
| Price | Free and open source on desktop and Android; the iPhone app is a paid one-off purchase that funds development. | Free, including Anki import. The AI skills are free for your first ten AI-written cards, then QuickMem Plus at $4.99/month. |
| Getting cards made | You write them, or download a shared deck. Card generation is not built in; some people add it with add-ons on desktop. | The Helper writes them from a description, pasted text, a PDF, a .txt or a .docx — and you approve every card before it saves. |
| Bringing cards in | Its own .apkg and .colpkg files, CSV and text import, and the shared deck library. |
Anki .apkg files, with images, note types and cloze cards. No structured CSV importer — a CSV can be handed to the Helper as text instead. |
| Scheduling | A mature, configurable scheduler with per-deck options, and FSRS available for people who want it. | An SM-2-family schedule with four grades and no options to tune. Today's queue is what is due plus up to twenty new cards, library-wide. |
| Organising | Nested decks, tags, a card browser and saved searches. | Nested decks that carry their progress when moved, plus search across your cards. |
| Sharing | A large public library of shared decks, plus exporting a deck as a file. | Share a deck with a friend in the app; you each keep your own progress. There is no public deck library. |
| Customisation | Note types, card templates, CSS styling, add-ons, scripting. | None of that. Text, images, a hint, and read-aloud settings. |
| Offline | Fully offline; syncing is a separate step you trigger or schedule. | Cards are cached for offline study and sync when you are back. The AI skills need a connection. |
Anki's details are from its own published documentation and change over time — check theirs before deciding. The QuickMem column is what the app does today.
Moving your decks across
This is the one direction that works properly. Export a deck from Anki as an .apkg, put the file on your phone, and open it in QuickMem: it reads the decks, the notes, the note types and their templates, cloze cards, and the media. Text cards are usable straight away and images upload behind them. Both the older collection format and the current one are handled. There is a step-by-step in importing your Anki decks.
Going the other way, QuickMem has no .apkg export. If that matters to you, keep your Anki collection where it is until it exists.
Which one to pick
Stay with Anki if you tune your scheduler, rely on add-ons or custom templates, study mainly at a desk, or have built something elaborate that works. Try QuickMem if the thing standing between you and studying is that the cards do not exist yet, and you would rather answer four buttons on a phone than configure a deck preset.