Manual
The flashcard box
Spaced repetition with 6 compartments: rhythm, archive — and how words enter the box or stay out.
How the compartment system works
The flashcard box follows the proven Leitner principle with 6 compartments. Every word starts in compartment 1. Answer it correctly and it moves up one compartment; answer it wrong and it goes back to the start — and begins the journey again. The further back a word sits, the less often it is asked: you automatically practice the words you struggle with the most.
The statuses at a glance
On the start page and inside every compartment, each word carries a status — in short:
- Compartment 1–6 — which compartment the word currently sits in. The higher the compartment, the longer the gap until it’s asked again.
- Due — up now; comes in the next round.
- In X days — not due yet; it unlocks in that many days (its compartment’s waiting time).
- Pending — not yet taken into the flashcard box, e.g. a box set to “After the first round” whose word you haven’t practised yet.
- Excluded — the word belongs to a box set to Excluded, so it stays out of the flashcard box entirely.
- Archived — learned and taken out of the rotation; it stays in your collection but is no longer asked.
What you practise: the whole box or a single one
On the start page, the Flashcard box card practises your language pair’s entire flashcard box — that is, all boxes together. If you only want to review one specific box or folder, open it and start the flashcard box there: then only that box’s words come up (for a folder, including all its sub-boxes).
Pick your compartments
Tap the filter button at the top right and choose which compartments (1–6) are asked — review just the new words in compartment 1, say, or the ones that have already travelled to the back compartments.
What’s in a compartment? Tap it
Quick tip: on the start screen, tap the word count under a compartment to open exactly those words. More in Quick tips & shortcuts.
Tap a compartment (1–6) to see its words. Each word shows when it next becomes due: some are due now, others unlock in 2, 5 or 21 days — depending on how far they have travelled through the box. At a glance you see what’s coming up next.
Due or not yet?
- Due — the word is up and comes in the next round.
- In X days — not due yet; it unlocks again in that many days. The further back the compartment, the longer the wait.
This is different from Excluded: “In X days” just means not due yet, whereas Excluded applies to a whole box you’ve kept out of the flashcard box (see below).
The review: card by card
To practice, tap the flashcard box and start. Each due word comes up as a card:
- Reveal: swipe the card aside to flip it and see the answer.
- Score: swipe the revealed card aside to grade it. As you drag, the button your motion is heading for grows, so you always see whether it’s going to be Correct (green) or Wrong (red). Prefer tapping? Just use the two buttons at the bottom.
Correct moves the word up one compartment, Wrong sends it back to the start — exactly the compartment system above. There’s an animated walk-through of revealing and grading a card over in the exercises.
Tap to hear it
Tap the card to have the word read aloud, in its own language. The front reads the question, the revealed back reads the answer. Whether it reads automatically and whether the note is read too is set in the exercise settings.
Want a longer look? Press and hold
After you grade a card, the next one slides in automatically. Need another moment on the current one? Press and hold it — it stays put while you hold, and moves on to the next word as soon as you let go.
Mis-swiped? Mark it correct afterwards
It happens — you swipe a card to Wrong when you actually had it right. At the end of the round the result screen lists every word with a green or red mark. Tap Mark as correct on a wrongly-graded word and it counts as right after all — and moves up a compartment. This only works for the round you just finished: once the next session starts, the result is locked in.
Why the gaps? Spaced repetition
Right after learning, your brain forgets a word quickly — that’s the forgetting curve (light lines). But if you review the word exactly when it starts to fade, the curve gets flatter with every repetition: the knowledge consolidates (bold line) and lasts longer each time. The dashed lines show what would happen without the next review. The gaps between the repetitions are exactly your compartments’ waiting times: 4, 7, 14, 60 and 180 days.
These growing gaps are exactly what the flashcard box models with its compartments:
| Compartment | Waiting time (default) |
|---|---|
| 1 | due immediately |
| 2 | 4 days |
| 3 | 7 days |
| 4 | 14 days |
| 5 | 60 days |
| 6 | 180 days |
Until a word is due again, it waits out its days and doesn’t appear in the session — that’s not a bug, it’s the heart of the method. The start page always shows how many words are due, excluded or archived.
If you allow notifications, the app reminds you of new words in the box in the morning and of still-due words in the evening.
Adjusting the waiting times
Each compartment’s waiting time can be adjusted in the flashcard box settings (1–180 days per compartment); the archive lives there too. You find them in Settings under Flashcard box — they apply per language pair, i.e. to every box of that pair. That’s how you tune the rhythm to your own pace.
How new words enter the box
When a box’s new words are added to the flashcard box is set per box: open the box and tap the settings on its Flashcard box card.
- Immediately — new words land straight in compartment 1 and are part of the rotation right away.
- After the first round — a word only enters the box once you have trained it in the exercise. That way you get to know it before the review rhythm starts.
- Excluded — the words of this box stay out entirely.
Omitting boxes from the flashcard box
Not everything belongs in the long-term rotation. Set a box to Excluded when you’re not actively learning it — old school years, reference lists, or boxes you only use for vocabulary tests. The words are kept, of course, and can rejoin at any time; they just no longer appear in the flashcard box.
The archive
The archive is “retirement” for learned words: whatever makes it this far counts as learned and is no longer asked — but stays in your collection and remains visible in its boxes.
How it works:
- Automatic: answer a word correctly several times in compartment 6 and it moves to the archive. The default is 2 repetitions in compartment 6; you can set 1–10.
- Can be disabled: if you want words to stay in the rotation forever, switch auto-archiving off in the settings.
- Reversible: a word answered wrong or reset starts again in compartment 1 — “learned” is not set in stone.
The effect: your flashcard box stays lean and focuses on the words that still need practice — instead of bloating with long-mastered ones.
Need a break?
On vacation, due words would otherwise pile up. That’s what the vacation break is for — it pauses the flashcard box until you’re back.