How a round works

The ring on the home screen

The ring shows you how far you have got today and fills up with every card you rate, until it is full when you reach your daily goal. You can always keep learning while doing so, because the ring is a progress indicator and not an upper limit.

The ring shows you three days at once: the largest segment belongs to today, the two paler ones beside it stand for yesterday and the day before. So you see at a glance whether you are keeping at it, without switching to the statistics for that.

Below it you find your study days and the start button with the cards that are due, and right at the bottom sit the four areas of the app. Nothing else is on your home screen, on purpose.

What people learn for

Qardbox does not know your material and does not want to know it either. It plans dates for your cards, the ones you wrote or imported yourself. And what comes of it in the end you decide entirely on your own.

Legal definitions word for word

A definition fits exactly onto one card: the term on the front and on the back the wording that matters in the exam. You decide yourself what goes on the card, and can therefore also test a single element of an offence instead of the whole sentence.

In criminal law in particular that helps, because there the exact wording counts and not the approximate sense. And because in the end you only make two statements, you cannot let a half-remembered element pass as almost known.

Medicine, from anatomy to pharmacology

In medical studies the sheer amount is the problem and not the single fact. And that is exactly what a repetition planner is built for. It keeps old cards alive while you constantly add new ones, and you do not have to keep a list of your own about any of it.

You separate your fields through subjects and categories and can practise just one subject deliberately before an exam. And larger collections you bring in through a file instead of typing them out.

Vocabulary at school, and in both directions at that

Vocabulary is the classic case for flashcards and it is the case in which direction matters. For every round you set whether the question side or the answer side comes first, or let Qardbox mix both. So you practise the same collection from German into English and back.

For a child you need neither a registration nor an address, because Qardbox runs without an account. There is exactly one thing to buy in the app, a ready-made card deck, and Screen Time can switch that off entirely.

That serves school and university alike: pupils drill the words for the next vocabulary test, students the terms for an exam, and anyone looking for a vocabulary trainer builds one that brings up only the words still wobbling.

Study days and study time

From version 1.1 Qardbox counts your study days: every day on which you studied. Gaps in between do them no harm, and a day on which nothing was due is not missing from them.

A tap on the display switches to your total study time and back. Both are a number about you, not a lever: there is nothing to lose and nothing to rescue.

Up to version 1.0 a streak stood there that started over at the first gap, with a rescue and a weekly pause. Both are gone, because they rewarded regularity by punishing irregularity.

The break notice

When you have rated for 25 minutes at a stretch, Qardbox shows a short note. That is not a notification and not a push, but only a sentence inside the app. A longer break resets the counter again. You can keep learning all the same, because the note does not stop you.

How much and when

A little every day brings you more than a lot once a week and ten to twenty minutes are entirely enough for most people. Your best time is the one that fits into your day, because a firm anchor beats every ideal hour.

And if a lot goes wrong for you, that is no bad sign. You are then remembering before you are certain, and that is precisely what consolidates your knowledge. A bit of effort is expressly wanted here.

How the scheduler calculates · All questions about learning