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Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

(domenic.me)
655 points domenicd | 8 comments | 18 May 25 11:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.865s | source | bottom
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aaldrick ◴[18 May 25 16:25 UTC] No.44022472[source]▶
I see a lot of discussion about SRS, and I think most can agree they have improved.

What I would like to see covered is a more vague area, but almost more important:

It’s the space in between reading/understanding something and the SRS. There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs (web browser, PDF readers etc.) into popular SRS (Anki, Mochi etc.). They should work almost as OS additions to make everything feel native and frictionless; I don’t need another standalone tool that does X Y and Z, I just need some sort of pipe into an SRS that is Mac friendly and does the job whilst not being in the way.

If someone knows of such a tool, I would love to hear about it.

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1. cosmic_cheese ◴[18 May 25 17:03 UTC] No.44022739[source]▶
The macOS services model seems like a good fit for this kind of thing. Services are little bits of context-aware functionality that apps expose to enable integration between apps without active developer involvement. An example, in most Mac apps if you select text, right-click to open the context menu, and open the Services submenu you’ll see a number of services that do something with the highlighted text.

Ideally the SRS app would make services available to facilitate quick creation of new cards, so for example one might highlight some text, right-click, and select Services → New SRS Card… which then opens an in-place lightweight card creator dialog.

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2. aaldrick ◴[18 May 25 17:17 UTC] No.44022848[source]▶
I hadn't thought of this; thank you for bringing this up. I will actually read into this. I didn't write it in my original comment, but I almost mentioned the OS because I'm coming round to the idea (albeit slowly) that the OS needs to provide some sort of hook into this capability natively for both maximum adoption and also ease of use (for both developer and end user).

Perhaps Shortcuts are now powerful enough to do this as a PoC, providing the SRS has some sort of open API that Shortcuts can take advantage of.

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3. cosmic_cheese ◴[18 May 25 17:57 UTC] No.44023163[source]▶
> the OS needs to provide some sort of hook into this capability natively for both maximum adoption and also ease of use (for both developer and end user)

I’m absolutely of this mind, but unfortunately it also depends on developers’ willingness to make use of these hooks, and it’s becoming increasingly uncommon for third party apps to have any integration or automation affordances, especially any specific to any particular platform. It’s become the norm to ship the absolute bare minimum, which is the lowest common denominator “it runs”.

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4. aaldrick ◴[18 May 25 18:49 UTC] No.44023498{3}[source]▶
A great shame, I see your point. I guess it comes down to the developer treating their product as something that could "help people" or something that "pays the bills". Hopefully the former would lead them to caring enough to spend the extra time for these significant QoL improvements.
5. xdfgh1112 ◴[18 May 25 19:10 UTC] No.44023637[source]▶
This is how anki already works on Android, using a custom intent.
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6. leephillips ◴[18 May 25 21:47 UTC] No.44024535[source]▶
I have anki on Android and I never see options to use it from another app. Do I need to set something up?
7. tylorr ◴[18 May 25 22:03 UTC] No.44024627{3}[source]▶
This reminds me of the share feature on mobile phones which gets plenty of use by developers. Seems quite possible to make something like this on a standard OS
8. KPGv2 ◴[18 May 25 22:14 UTC] No.44024696{3}[source]▶
Anki has AnkiConnect which is exactly this, I think

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2055492159

IIRC Yomichan (been a long time since I needed tools like that) is a Chrome extension that lets you mouseover words and it'll show you the meaning. I think you can invoke something in Chrome that will trigger the Anki Connect API and send the info to Anki to create a card.

I've never bothered with this, but I think that's what you're looking for.