Native Flashcard Feature: Enhancing Knowledge Acquisition and Retention / Spaced Repetition

Dear Obsidian Development Team,

I trust this message finds you well. I am a committed user of Obsidian and have found immense value in the power and flexibility of your platform. Thank you for your continued commitment to innovation and for your dedication to enhancing user experience through regular updates and upgrades.

Today, I am writing to propose a feature enhancement that, I believe, could greatly benefit users in their pursuit of knowledge. I would like to suggest the incorporation of a native flashcard feature into the Obsidian app, akin to the functionality provided by platforms such as Remnote.

Flashcards have proven to be a simple yet extremely powerful tool for knowledge acquisition and retention. They are particularly useful for breaking down complex subjects into smaller, more digestible units of information, and for enabling repetitive and active recall, both of which are key to long-term memory formation. As such, a built-in flashcard function would be a valuable addition to Obsidian, complementing the current note-taking and knowledge management features wonderfully.

I envisage this feature to be capable of generating flashcards directly from notes and PDFs, with the ability to include links for deeper exploration of subjects. This would be a boon to researchers, students, and lifelong learners alike, enhancing their ability to learn, remember, and connect information.

Moreover, I would like to consider the possibility of a cooperative effort with the Anki team. Anki’s spaced repetition system is highly effective and well-regarded in the educational tech industry. By incorporating Anki’s tried-and-tested learning methodology into Obsidian, users could benefit from an optimal learning strategy within a platform they are already familiar with.

I understand that introducing such a feature would require significant resources and development time. Yet, given the potentially immense benefits to the user base, I believe it would be a worthy investment. The addition of a native flashcard system would only enhance Obsidian’s reputation as a leading tool for knowledge management and self-directed learning.

Thank you for considering this suggestion. I, along with many other Obsidian users, would greatly appreciate this enhancement, and we look forward to seeing how Obsidian continues to evolve in service of its mission to facilitate knowledge creation and discovery.

Best Regards,
Samb

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I would like to add a supplementary note to my previous message regarding the potential implementation of a native flashcard feature.

In the vibrant Obsidian community, many talented developers have created plugins to address various niche requirements, and we are genuinely appreciative of their efforts. Indeed, there are already several plugins available for integrating flashcards and spaced repetition into Obsidian.

However, there are several reasons why I advocate for a native, built-in feature instead of relying on community plugins:

  1. Reliability and Stability: A native feature developed by the core Obsidian team would potentially offer greater stability and reliability, considering it would be designed to work seamlessly with other features and updates. Community plugins, while incredibly useful, might present compatibility issues with each new Obsidian update.
  2. Longevity and Maintenance: Native features are continually maintained and improved by the Obsidian team. In contrast, community plugins depend on the dedication of individual developers who may or may not have the time or resources to keep their plugins updated and bug-free.
  3. Consistency and Ease-of-Use: A native flashcard system would ensure a consistent user experience across platforms and devices, which may not always be the case with community plugins. It would also likely adhere to Obsidian’s design philosophy, making it more intuitive and straightforward for users.
  4. Feature Integration: A native feature could be more tightly integrated with Obsidian’s existing capabilities, such as backlinks, block references, and more.

In conclusion, while we deeply appreciate the efforts of the Obsidian community and the variety of plugins available, a native flashcard feature, we believe, could offer a more seamless, reliable, and long-term solution for users.

Edit: This walkthrough of Remnote’s new flashcard home section is a great showcase of their native flashcard integration.

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Just putting my support to this feature :+1:

I’d like to hear what the official team thinks about this feature, and how would they rank this feature compared to other new exciting features. New file format shouldn’t be against the big visions if we look Canvas. Obviously increasing the number of file formats used by the program makes the program less focussed in user and developer perspective. Similarly as with Canvas, we should ask how Flashcards should interact with the existing process of making notes. I give two examples:

  • page preview of internal links in cards
  • embedding notes to inside of cards

For example page preview could implicate that we can click links and do regular navigation while viewing the card. It’s not obvious what the process of cards review should look like, because there can be cards with two words or cards containing more content. This leads us to the question do we want flashcards at all, because Obsidian is more about notes.

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Thank you for chiming in and lending your support to the native flashcard feature proposal.

I believe that incorporating a flashcard feature would not deviate from the core vision of Obsidian but rather enhance its usability and functionality. Yes, adding more file formats may risk diluting focus. However, I see flashcards not as a separate format, but as an extension of our current notes: interactive bite-sized portions that serve as an additional layer to our knowledge base.

Your ideas about the interplay between flashcards and Obsidian’s existing features are exciting and worth exploring.

  1. Page Preview of Internal Links in Cards: This could indeed be a fantastic feature that combines the active recall power of flashcards with Obsidian’s superb ability to interconnect information. Imagine studying a concept on a flashcard and being able to immediately navigate to related notes for a deeper understanding - it would make learning more dynamic and context-rich.
  2. Embedding Notes Inside of Cards: This brings up an interesting perspective. On one hand, we have brief, concise flashcards, and on the other, potentially lengthy, detailed notes. Bridging these two extremes could provide a unique, adaptable learning experience.

As to whether Obsidian needs flashcards at all, I think it boils down to the spectrum of learning strategies. Obsidian already excels at helping users create, organize, and link their notes. Adding a flashcard system would only extend its utility, catering to different learning styles and goals. After all, notes and flashcards serve complementary roles in learning: notes for in-depth understanding and flashcards for retention and recall.

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Fully agree with ur idea, nothing more to say ! :§

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Thanks!

What’s the benefit of a native plugin vs a community plugin? There are already several impressive community plugins which you can use immediately, including several which integrate with Anki.

Aosr has a great review interface which runs directly in Obsidian:

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While this feature request sounds exciting, it misses yet some concrete features (list) to make it useful and applicable for any kind of note. I understand this system isn’t strictly a flashcard thing, but rather a system to repeat important bits in our notes. Otherwise, i would suggest you to pick one of the many flashcard plugins available for Obsidian.

Anki is a very popular flashcard system however I’d not like to have Anki like interfaces for note retention. Let me tell why. Any button kind of “easy/good/hard” causes additional learning noise, it wasts time and breaks the flow.
The concept is simple: or you know the bits you’re learning or you don’t. Your answer is the decision trigger to move you forward in your flashcards stack and forward in your statistical correct / incorrect answer progress.

To start with some concepts, let’s ask some questions:

  • how should this flashcard system know, which words / sentences to copy / extract from to generate a flashcard?
  • would this flashcard system require a new interface ?
  • what Obsidian plugins are a good example to draw inspiration from?

Some inspiring plugins i remember:

  • Incremental writing
  • vocabulary view
  • flashcard learning
  • better reading mode

I think headings are a good starting point. Then generate cards based on folders or tags. I don’t think a flashcard system should force the user to make changes to the original notes. But obviously we want to store cards together with scheduling information. We should then ask what is the benefit of notes <<–>> flashcards interaction. This interaction should have two important characteristics: automation and smart card creation. I think a card should include a button that takes you to the original note, but in the same time you should be able go back and continue your flashcard session. One possible solution would be external flashcard system used with Obsidian URI but then the user should manually make every card. However I don’t think this manual work would be pointless because it’s far from obvious what information the card should contain. And finally there are users from different fields like sports, arts and science. I think it’s impossible to automatically generate useful cards to every user. Note-based review sessions are one option though but there should be at least a prompt asking questions (and again this requires manual configuration).

I would like to see the flashcards feature to help you memorize concepts/terms from notes.
Examples of such features are Anki cards and Quizlet.

Hi @kironedu. What kind of notes <<–>> flashcards interaction you are imagining? You can connect Obsidian notes to external software like your calendar events using Obsidian URI (go to your note, press three dots ⋯, select Copy Obsidian URL). You can create flashcards in Obsidian by writing two-column markdown tables and then converting them to csv files using this free web tool. You can integrate any web tool—including Quizlet or Brainscape—into Obsidian by using Custom Frames community plugin. By using some AI tool like Chat-GPT you can automate flashcard generation based on some input resource like your course material. Offline AI tools are available as well although in general you need to pay to use AI. I personally write my flashcards manually using markdown tables and then import the csv file to Brainscape which offers better free tier plan than Quizlet. By keeping all csv files I can easily switch between any flashcard platform.

The concrete feature to natively offer flashcard creation and review within a textbased, markdown knowledge base has already been nicely demonstrated by remnote.

Just take a quick look at this demo video, it demonstrated the main flashcard features within a few minutes: https://youtu.be/9vjILiX7l1Q?si=RuZAz9MCVf8gNJt2

No reason to reinvent the wheel :slight_smile:

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Oh, I see why I asked for more info to understand your first post.

Your base idea is excellent and the motivations to integrate with Obsidian very reasonable, since Obsidian is a pkm app and should honour features in line with this philosophy.

My worry is related how such a system would be designed;
Remote and Anki use the same tiresome multi-button-dialog to check your learning process.

The ideal way to learn is to learn quickly (yes and no) to help reinforce the confidence in learned words.
Wrong decisions are saved automatically on a review list.

Any multi button dialog instead interrupts a natural thinking flow

To make an example, in the past I’ve had the pleasure to use a excellent Mac app called Provoc. Meanwhile, modern Mac’s cant run this app anymore but I’ve found some nice plugins for Obsidian (please see my first post above)

To understand what I’m trying to say, have a look at the video below:

By the way, it seems that one of the (once) most popular flashcard plugins for Obsidian has been abandoned:

That’s exactly the reason I avoid investing too much time into building knowledge systems that depend on plugins like this. Please don’t mistake this as critique regarding the plugin or the devs that create free and open source plugins. It’s understandable that these kind of community plugins have a half life of a few years. I’m always thankful how community plugins push the boundaries and iterate all kind of ideas users can come up with.

That being said: While the flashcards I created are, of course, still there / do still work, this is a good example for why a native flashcard feature provides more trust in the long term availability of whatever study workflow users establish within Obsidian.

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+1
I’m currently only using RemNote for their excellent implementation of flashcards within the hierarchy.

Having this as a core feature into Obsidian in “open” (as you can’t export scheduling data from RemNote, for example) form (Anki scheduler compatible?) is a natural evolution of Obsidian as PKM tool.

Moreover, there are 2 factors why this not only inevitable, but required:

  1. The only flashcards plugin with FSRS (basically, the only modern (meaning, having the best efficiency - retention to time ratio) open-source algo, which is quickly becoming default by now being implemented into Anki) is currently looking for a maintainer and has not been updated in a long time - obsidian-spaced-repetition-recall.
    All other Obsidian SRS plugins are currently obsolete beyond repair.
  2. Convergence of good ideas - more competitive PKM apps with integrated flashcards implementation are emerging - SiYuan is the closest one to Obsidian, another example is the latest version of MarginNote.

In other words, there is a significant chance of Obsidian losing its staple status in the PKM world without integrated flashcards in the long run.

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Hey everyone,

I’m enjoying the different angles in this thread and how they all circle around one simple wish: being able to remember what we write right inside Obsidian.

What I’m noticing in daily use: My vault sits at ~8 000 cards. The Recall fork of the SR plugin is still receiving patches, but the README now gently asks for new maintainers, which makes me wonder how future-proof my review data really is. On mobile, I sometimes open Remnote or SiYuan because its built-in FSRS review flow is already there and feels friction-free.

If Obsidian ever offered a native “review” pane, what might the most minimal, note-native version look like?

  • Maybe markdown cloze (==like this==) plus an optional card code-block for classic Q->A pairs.
  • Maybe FSRS under the hood, but with a one-keystroke “know / again” flow instead of four buttons.
  • And an API hook so plugin authors can build dashboards or AI helpers on top rather than re-writing the scheduler.

Why I think it matters: durability (core features live as long as Obsidian does), cross-platform parity, and room for even more plugin creativity.

If this resonates with you, please drop a :heart: on the first post or share a story of when spaced-repetition inside Obsidian helped you learn faster. Real examples will shape a solution that feels unmistakably “Obsidian” :slight_smile:

Thanks for reading, and thanks to every dev and plugin author pushing this ecosystem forward. Obsidian already helps us think better. A gentle & built-in way to remember would close the loop beautifully.

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“different angles” resonates - folks recall and remember in many ways and for different reasons.
Popularity of using spaced repetition via question and answer is the most popular solution; there is a robust industry around the ancient flash card.

For me, it’s not a test question or a specific solution I need to answer or solve, but, rather, the knowledge itself that is the thing. In obsidian that represents a block, a section, a highlight, a comment, a inline link, or a callout (quote); a chunk, if you will, all in standard markdown. A chunk that I have acquired, categorized and identified in Obsidian; I’ve invested time in it, have an interest, and wish to learn and connect it with something else(s) so I can chase and expand further with a writing spurt.

I would like to see a mechanism that simply displays a chunk in a rotating manner. For me, that brief flash forces me to recall & reflect, and, in typical human brain fashion, connect it with other items in my head at that time. The flash often triggers writing and in that moment I am most charged; dopamine reward.

The closest I’ve come to this is using a plugin Local-Quotes. Although now maintenance mode, it still provides a useful framework.

I’ve toyed with a development project to create a smart “rotating chunk” plugin - an option would be to add a question (a simple callout toggle). Something that would involve searching the vault for the chunks to display instead of having to bring them into a place and format them in odd ways. Maybe now with vibe and agent assist dev work becoming valid…

Appreciate your prompt, it may be the productive nudge… Cheers!

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If Obsidian ever implements a native flashcard feature, I think there’s a real opportunity to go beyond what tools like Remnote or Anki are doing. Specifically, Obsidian could use the knowledge graph to create a more visual and intuitive review experience.

Imagine reviewing a flashcard and seeing the graph view embedded right in the review screen. It would show how that specific note or concept connects to other parts of your vault. Instead of learning cards in isolation, you’d see how the card “sits” in the bigger picture of your knowledge base. That kind of spatial context could really help with memory and understanding.

Remnote has a basic breadcrumb hierarchy at the top of its review screen (e.g. business psychology → organizational psychology → work satisfaction → Oldham), which is helpful but still very one-dimensional. Example:

Obsidian could offer something richer and more dynamic.

I think a visual map during review would add another layer of meaning and help connect ideas in a way that static cards can’t. Even something simple like showing backlinks or letting you jump to related notes mid-review would be a big step.

Quick mockup:

This is kind of related feature request:

Although instead of bookmarking we should have option to copy Obsidian URI for that corresponding local graph. You can already copy Obsidian URI to regular notes which could include dynamic queries (Bases, Dataview or Datacore) to backlinks. With two monitor setup one could use flashcard software in monitor 1 and then display additional details in monitor 2 by left clicking a link in monitor 1.

Dropping a focused idea for the roadmap: bring the Spaced Repetition plugin from st3v3nmw into obsidian core or strike an official local-sync partnership with Anki. Either move would lock in maintenance, keep everything offline and future-proof our review data. It lets users trust the longlivety of the SRS process and frees dev energy for bigger innovations instead of rewriting schedulers. Would love to see this land in 2025.