A Digital Flashcard Service Compare-Contrast Article: TinyCards and a few Alternatives (3 Services)
Unfortunately, TinyCards is gone. (Well, sort of: if you downloaded the app, it will still function in limited capacity.)
Because of that, now if I want to create and study new sets, I have to use a (or multiple) different digital flashcard
service(s). I actually used three of them (I'm down to two now because as of my writing this, one service has been
down for a while). Each has its strengths and weaknesses and not one of them alone could completely replace
Tinycards. Before you ask, no, Anki is not one of them. It's not an option for me and I'll never consider it. All of the
digital flashcard services I use are easy to use, versus Anki, which is notorious for being hard to use. The services
are Quizlet, StudyLib, and Kartka.ai. Before I get into their pros and cons I would like to explain why TinyCards was
(and still is) the absolute best and what users could do with it.
TinyCards
Here's my review:
Features:
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It is completely free to use and is even ad-free.
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TinyCards’ PC version did not require an account to use. People who didn’t create accounts could have their
browser’s cookies track their progress, while users who had accounts could also use the app and have their
progress synced across all devices through the account. The accounts were Duolingo accounts, so users
who already had a Duolingo account would not have to create a new one for Tinycards.
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Users could search for existing public decks and save them to study later.
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Users could add pictures to cards.
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Users could use an in-app search feature to add pictures to cards if they didn’t choose to add their own
devices’ images.
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Users can have one text section or one picture on each card’s front and up to three pictures and/or text
sections on each card’s back.
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Users could choose to have Duolingo’s-text-reader-generated audio on one or both sides or to let neither
side’s text have audio (versus Quizlet and StudyLib forcing all cards to have audio).
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Users can press a button resembling an eye to hide cards they don’t need. This option does not delete the
hidden cards, which will be unhidden if the user presses the eye button again.
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It uses Duolingo’s excellent spaced-learning algorithm to track the users’ memory progress for the cards
automatically.
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It automatically breaks up the digital flashcard deck into five-card packs called “lessons” that make studying
incredibly efficient.
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Unlike in any other flashcard service I’ve seen, the terms are hidden on the “Lessons” screen (which is also
the decks’ default screen), which prevents users from having their terms revealed to them before they start
studying (which could feel a bit like cheating). If users want to see the term list, they can tap (or click) on the
“Cards” option.
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Users can see their tracked memories’ weakness levels on the “Lessons” tab. When the memory is
strongest, users will see a golden, smiley-faced card representing the lesson. When the memory weakens, a
progress bar appears that will decrease until the user studies the lesson.
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Users can study the cards in their lessons or tap (or click) a barbell icon to study the deck’s terms the users’
memories are weakest for outside of the lessons (so users can study terms from multiple lessons at once).
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Instead of immediately quizzing the user, Tinycards always presents each new term as a flashcard that the
user must view each side of before progressing.
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Deck creators could group relevant, similar-sounding, or confusable terms together in the groups of five to
make sure the terms would always appear together when the user studied the terms as lessons.
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App version only: If a flashcard had a picture on it, Tinycards may present the user one side of the flashcard
and ask if the user remembers it when encountering the flashcard the first time during each review.
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Both versions allowed users to study the terms with typing and/or multiple choice questions during lessons
for both learning and review.
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The user can adjust their deck’s settings to disable typing questions (which will make it a typing-free deck for
anyone who uses it), whether to allow typos in answers, and/or to choose if users will be quizzed about the
card’s front, back, or both sides.
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If users make huge mistakes (like accidentally deleting cards) while editing a published deck, they can undo
the mistakes by tapping the trash can icon in the settings menu and selecting “delete draft”, which will not
delete the entire deck.
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Even a user who didn’t create a deck can disable typing questions while studying by pressing a “turn off
typing” button in the lesson.
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Cons
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The PC version allowed users to group decks into folders, which would still appear as folders on the app and
would have a progress bar that measured cumulative memory across all decks in the folder.
The app allows users to take a quiz on all of a deck's terms.
Every day there is a new TinyPick, or featured deck. The app creators have handpicked that deck.
There is a “Trending” section that displays decks that may be of interest to many users. My guess is that
these are the decks that have had the most views lately, because I can confirm that it has nothing to do with
having lots of users star the deck in a short time.
Users can “follow” deck creators, which I guess notified them whenever the deck creator released a new
deck.
Each deck could only have up to 150 terms, so if the users needed to add more terms about the subject,
they would have to create sequel decks.
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Besides turning off typing questions, users cannot tell Tinycards how they want to study decks that others
created: however the deck’s creator set up the cards to be reviewed (besides the typing setting, of course)
would be the only way anyone who favorited the deck could study it. This could be a “pro” if a teacher
created the deck and only wanted students to be able to study the cards a certain way.
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Users could not take quizzes on the terms on the PC version.
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Users could not group decks into folders on the app despite being able to see and use folders on the app.
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If relevant terms came in groups larger than five (example: Spanish present tense conjugations, which come
in sets of six for each verb), the term groups would get broken up, which could lead to some term order
oddities while studying.
Screenshots
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Screenshot Descriptions
1. Studying an image-only deck (via multiple-choice question) on the desktop version
2. Quiz mode with the same image-only deck on the app version
3. Studying the same image-only deck on the app version (with the “Remember this one?” screen)
4. A deck’s lesson grid (on the app version) showing three packs that have been studied enough for now (gold smiley
faces), two packs that need studying with varying memory strengths, a pack that hasn’t been studied yet (9), and
packs that will become available after the user studies its prerequisite packs
5. Studying a card (on the app version) with an image on one side and text on the other side
Summary Statement
Tinycards was simply unparalleled; not only did it offer spaced learning, but it let users see the “memory decay”
through decreasing progress bars. It did not require any download or even an account to study terms (the account
thing seems especially unheard of), had card audio options and best of all, it was completely free and even ad-free.
(It would bother me if it eventually got ads though). The cons are very minor as well, with each either having an easy
workaround or being too small to be a problem. Fortunately all may not be lost when it comes to having another
flashcard experience like it, since other services can be used together to simulate TinyCards or may only need some
tweaks (and by that I mean updates, so I’ll send some feedback and stay tuned to see if and/or how currently
available services improve) to become the next TinyCards. Note: I have written about what makes TinyCards the
absolute best spaced-learning digital flashcard system at this article’s very end under “Final Statements.”
You can still see and (sort of) interact with TinyCards on the Web Archive. Below this paragraph there is a link my
profile, from which you can access some folders and decks to look at. Keep in mind that studying and the search
feature will not work and not all of my public decks were saved to the archive. If the page doesn’t load all the way,
click on the number of captures, then one of the dates with a circle, then one of the times or go to the Web archive’s
homepage and paste in the page’s URL (that is, the URL starting from the second “https”.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20200831060833mp_/https://tinycards.duolingo.com/users/jaylahcat\
Here are the alternative services I tried:
StudyLib.net
Here's my review:
Pros:
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It is completely free to use and is even ad-free.
Users can search for existing public decks and save them to study later.
Users can "customize" (that is, edit) their copies of the public decks they saved to study later.
Users can add pictures for free.
Users can have both a picture and text on both sides of the card.
Users can add custom audio to a card for free.
It uses the browser's text-reading function to read the cards aloud to users.
It has a spaced learning algorithm.
If a user starts to study on Spaced Learning Mode and leaves before finishing the session, StudyLib will
remember which terms the user had studied and will remove some from the terms that need to be studied
accordingly.
StudyLib allows users to edit terms while studying them in Spaced Learning Mode, which can be handy
when users only spot a mistake once they start studying a term.
There is an “ignore card” option, so users should be able to hide cards they don’t need without deleting
them.
It works on both PC and mobile browsers.
It is completely browser-based, so users don't have to download an app.
The website also allows users to upload documents.
Collections can contain flashcard sets and documents.
Cons:
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Its Spaced Learning Mode will stop showing the user a term even if the user never gets it right, which is a
huge problem and creates a need for either Fast-Learning Mode or Quizlet’s Learn Mode.
Once a user has studied all of a deck's cards in Spaced Learning, StudyLib will say "No more cards for
today!" and won't let the user study the cards in spaced learning again that day. After that, the only way to
study that deck more is to add more cards.
StudyLib's Spaced Learning feature tries to stop users from learning more than twenty new cards in a day.
Fortunately there's an easy workaround though: StudyLib will ask if the users want to see more cards, so
users can just press the "Yes, show me more cards" button. There is also a setting that lets users increase
the new card limit up to 50.
Once all of the cards have been studied on multiple days, StudyLib will start to lock users out of studying
them in Spaced Learning for multiple days at a time (which can be a nightmare if the user needed to study
them for a test).
StudyLib's spaced learning algorithm is not the same as Duolingo's. I noticed I could be recommended to
study cards I just learned in TinyCards again in the same day if enough hours pass (it seems to be seven
hours after I learn the cards), but StudyLib only works in days. TinyCards recommends that I review just as
the information weakens in my memory and tells me how weak the cards have become with a decreasing
progress bar while StudyLib seems to want me to review only when I'm about to forget the terms.
The document-to-cards feature was too confusing for me to use. Maybe you'll understand it, but I'll stick to
copying and pasting to make text flashcards.
Users cannot add new terms between existing terms when editing.
Personal gripe: I don't like the fast-learning mode. Maybe you will, but it just couldn't engage me. Maybe it's
because I tried it on a computer and I get engaged much more easily on a phone (probably because I'm a
tactile learner and I can hold my entire phone in my hand while studying, but my computer is too large for
that; I've also noticed that I stay engaged in Spaced Learning more easily if I keep at least one hand on the
computer (rather than sitting back from it and using a mouse to answer questions)).
Sometimes Spaced Learning Mode seems to needs a double-click to register an answer, and other times
the double-click will automatically select the next question's answer. (Answering with buttons always works
like a charm though.)
Although StudyLib has been pretty stable for the most part, I've had some glitches on mobile, the worst of
which would delete every new card I added during a session if I tried to give the deck a profile picture.
Besides that glitch, it either won't read my cards aloud to me on mobile, or whenever it does, it makes the
mobile browser I use it on (Microsoft Edge Mobile) crash immediately after reading the term.
The method to adding public decks to a user's personal collection for studying is pretty clunky, so I had a
few trial-and-error moments while learning how to use it.
Multiple choice options on both Spaced Learning and Test modes, and true-false questions’ false answers
on Test Modes seem to be truly selected at random, which can make questions too obvious.
Because StudyLib autosaves progress on Spaced Learning Mode, a user cannot undo a misclick like on
TinyCards (this is a very minor gripe and is by no means a reason not to use this service.)
As of March 2021 (although I don’t know the exact day this happened), StudyLib’s Spaced Learning no
longer really works on mobile (at least not on my iPhone in either its Safari or Microsoft Edge browsers).
Adding new cards still seems to work just as well as before.
Features it has in Common with TinyCards:
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It allows audio on cards.
It's completely free and ad-free.
It allows users to add pictures to cards for free.
It can read cards aloud to users.
It's available on both mobile and computers.
It has a spaced learning algorithm, though StudyLib's algorithm is inferior to Duolingo's.
It allows users to take a quiz on all of a deck's terms.
It gives users the option to type answers, use a flashcard-styled review, and/or use multiple-choice
questions to review terms.
It allows users to ignore unnecessary cards.
It lets users organize decks into folders like TinyCards’ PC web version.
It has a search function that allows users to find existing public decks to study.
It has an image search function (for use when adding images to a deck) that is similar to one that TinyCards
had.
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Users can subscribe to a collection, which is similar to following a user on TinyCards.
Advantages over TinyCards:
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It allows users to edit their copies of other creator's decks.
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StudyLib decks can contain many more cards than Tinycards decks. I don't know the limit, but I've seen a
StudyLib deck that contained 2000 cards, which may eliminate the need for sequel decks.
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Users can add custom audio to decks. (Imagine creating a musical note deck for ear training that plays the
notes or creating a fantasy character deck that includes correct pronunciations even if characters' names
aren't spelled the way that any one language could pronounce them all correctly!)
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Its quiz mode offers matching and true-false questions in addition to typing and multiple choice.
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It has a review game.
Screenshots
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Screenshot Descriptions
1. Studying a term in flashcard mode
2. Editing a card from within a study session
3. Studying a term in multiple choice mode
4. A screen with the pop-up from clicking the “ignore” button
5. Getting a term incorrect in multiple choice mode
Additional Notes:
This was the first TinyCards alternative I tried out in response to TinyCards' impending discontinuation. I found it on a
list of TinyCards alternatives. I read a statement somewhere on the website that was along the lines of: There are
three types of flashcard services: paid, hard-to-use, and StudyLib (so it’s clear its creators never heard of TinyCards).
In addition to the flashcards feature, StudyLib allows users to upload documents. StudyLib’s “collection” feature
(similar to TinyCards’ folders) allows not only flashcard sets, but also documents and links to videos (there is also an
“external link” section in there, but I can’t seem to get it to work.) There are stars that users can click on next to terms,
but I’m not completely sure what they do. What I do know is that terms without stars are not hidden, so those stars
cannot be used to distinguish which terms are the only ones the user needs to study. Also, unfortunately studying on
mobile (at least the Spaced Learning Mode) is broken now (it wasn’t when I started writing this article in 2020).
Kartka.ai
Here's my review:
Pros:
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When TinyCards was close to being discontinued, it had a tool for converting any existing TinyCards deck
into a deck on its website. TinyCards users could preserve their decks either by using their .csv files from
Duolingo or by pasting any public deck’s URL into a different form. The URL-based tool would use the
correct language character versus the .csv file that butchered them all and regardless of which conversion
tool was used, Kartka would input all images into the decks even for users with free accounts (only paid
accounts can add images when creating decks manually). These conversion tools eased much of the pain
from losing TinyCards.
It can be used for free and users can do plenty with a free account; the paid version’s bonuses are mostly
for deck creation.
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Even the free version is ad-free.
It has a spaced learning algorithm that users can have some control over.
When users study their decks in the mode that allows typing, Kartka will allow the user to tell the system if
the answer typed was correct if it wasn’t typed with the exact same wording (versus TinyCards only allowing
slight typos). (Imagine typing terms in a list for the answer. You would have to type them in the exact same
order every time to get it considered correct if Kartka didn’t let you tell it your answer was correct.)
When users study their decks in Review mode, they can tell the system how confident they are about each
term, and that rating will control when they can review the term again. While StudyLib chooses when a user
can see a term again, users can keep pressing “Forgot” on Kartka so they can review terms sooner and if
they never want to wait more than a day to study a term again, users can choose to only press “Hard” (which
is the option with the one-day cooldown) whenever they remember a term.
Kartka’s term list includes how many times the user got each term correct or incorrect, which also tells the
user how many times each term was studied.
Kartka lets users color-code decks on the dashboard.
It is completely browser-based, so users don't have to download an app.
Its creators made it very clear that they wanted to add more features and were very open to user feedback
and suggestions; in other words, the service wasn’t finished yet, but it had a lot of potential.
Cons:
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I did not find any way to search for or otherwise find decks others had made, so I have no idea what the
medical student claiming to have used premade decks in a testimonial or other claims about premade decks
are talking about (as far as I know, the only way to get a deck someone else made in Kartka is to use a
“Share” link.)
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It does not allow audio on cards.
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It cannot read terms to the users. (I don’t know if a read-text-aloud FireFox extension would have worked on
it either because I never tested it before the site went down).
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Users cannot group decks into folders.
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The last time I checked, it only worked on computers; I could not get it to work on a phone browser even
after requesting the desktop version on both (iPhone) Safari and (iPhone app) Microsoft Edge; it always
displayed all text at a weird resolution and was full of broken images and error messages.
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The last time I checked, it only worked on FireFox. Images would appear broken on any other browser, and
the website would also be extra buggy in non-FireFox browsers.
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The last time I checked, the website would butcher foreign language characters if users entered them
manually.
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The last time I checked, the website would insert some weird character string if the users copy-pasted in a
term without deleting the spot before the term in which they had pressed enter; in other words, users had to
be very careful when copy-pasting terms in to avoid getting a string that started with an ampersand at the
beginning. This issue got resolved.
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Kartka's spaced learning algorithm is not the same as Duolingo's.
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Once a user has studied all of a deck's cards, Kartka will lock a user out of studying the terms just like
StudyLib (but fortunately it will never lock users out for multiple days in Review mode as long as they don’t
accidently press the button or click the option for “Fine” (a three-day lockout) or “Easy” (a five-day lockout).
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Users cannot tell the service that they do not need to study a certain card; the only way to “hide” an
unnecessary card is to delete it (which would mean if you found out the term was on a later test you would
have to re-add it.)
Features it has in Common with TinyCards:
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It's completely free and ad-free.
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It allows users to have pictures on cards.
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It's available through a computer browser.
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It gives users the option to type answers or use a flashcard-styled review.
Advantages over TinyCards:
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It lets users tell the app (directly) how confident they are about each term when using the flascard-like
review style. If users were less confident about a term and wanted to be sure they could review it sooner,
they would have to get it wrong intentionally on TinyCards.
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It displays how many times each term was studied and breaks that down into times the user was correct and
incorrect about the term.
Screenshot
Screenshot Description
Dashboard while transferring decks from TinyCards (Apparently I really wasn’t thinking about taking screenshots
while this service was up. I was pretty sure I had taken at least one other screenshot, but when I checked, this was
the only one I found.)
Additional Notes:
An old resolved con is that if users forgot to delete a space before a term’s beginning, the website would insert some
weird character string. Another old resolved con was that this website used to be seriously buggy, to the point that I
would get a bug that made all of my decks (seem to) disappear almost every other page. Sometime between October
18 and November 8, (2020,) Kartka got an update that smoothed out the bugs. I currently cannot confirm whether or
not users can edit other users’ decks on this service. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to confirm that, because now it
seems pretty clear that this service has been discontinued. I used a website to check if it was down on many different
occasions, and it was always down. It was a nice little browser-based Anki alternative while it lasted though, and it
was good that it immediately restored access to TinyCards decks and served as a TinyCards deck backup service for
a while. Speaking of Anki, that’s all it ever compared itself to and I could tell from what some flashcard service review
videos showed of Anki that Kartka worked very similarly without a download or any need for technological knowledge.
Quizlet
NOTE: This review is mostly based on Learn Mode’s previous version. On July 7 th, 2021 or so, Quizlet gave Learn
Mode a massive downgrade that makes it work almost exactly like Flashcard mode if you set “Flashcards” as the only
mode by which to study your terms. I have more notes about this in the “additional notes” section.
Here's my review:
Pros:
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This is the only non-TinyCards service on this list that gets me confident with my terms (and yes, that's huge
and is why I listed this first).
Learn Mode’s previous version kept showing specific terms to users until they get the terms correct twice in
a row, which allows users to "master" the terms. (This was the mode that got me confident about my terms.)
Quizlet’s multiple choice questions seem to use artificial intelligence to select at least two incorrect answers
from cards with similarly-worded other sides (if available) so the correct answer isn’t always completely
obvious.
Users can search for existing public decks and save them to study later.
Users can "customize" (that is, edit) their copies of the public decks they saved to study later.
It can be used for free and users can do plenty with a free account, including add images with an in-Quizlet
search function.
It allows audio on cards.
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Cons:
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It can read terms to the users.
When users edit decks on the PC version, if the deck is for a foreign language, Quizlet provides clickable
on-screen buttons for relevant special characters, such as accented letters and upside-down exclamation
points and question marks for Spanish decks when the user edits the side set to the foreign language.
Quizlet’s edit feature detects duplicate terms, highlights, them, and has an option next to the duplicates that
lets users jump to matching terms (at least on the PC version).
Users can move terms to different positions while editing.
It is available as both a website and an app (I overwhelmingly prefer the app and only really use the website
to star my terms when studying Spanish decks, to create decks and edit them with copy/paste from
documents and to use Ctrl+F while editing).
Because it has a website, there is no download required.
Quizlet's document-to-cards feature is straightforward and easy to use. Once users have formatted a
document so that Quizlet can pull cards from it, they can just paste in the text and click a button to create
their cards. (There was a compare-contrast article pitting TinyCards against Quizlet and Anki that criticized
TinyCards for lacking this feature. TinyCards' lack of that feature did not bother me when I read that article
because I never had a need to create decks that way before, but this Quizlet feature became a Godsend
when I edited a study guide in my fall 2020 online semester to make flashcards. I now love using it to
convert the information from my Duolingo .csv file into Quizlet decks.)
Users can use the stars next to the terms and the option to only study starred terms to control which terms
they study. Selecting the terms (that is, clicking/tapping a star next to a term or clicking/tapping the “select
these terms” (website-exclusive on the free version) option that Quizlet may offer the users once they have
started studying) allows users to jump to the terms they want to study first (versus using alphabetical or the
original order), create a TinyCards-like “bite-sized” study session with 1-5 terms, or hide terms they don’t
need (at the moment) by only selecting the terms that they need for the time being.
As of April 2021, Quizlet does not have a spaced learning mode. It used to have one in Plus, but someone in
the company had the (simply genius) idea to remove it in March 2020 (much to the irritation of users who
only bought Plus for Spaced Learning.) Quizlet only won the compare-contrast article faceoff between itself,
TinyCards and Anki because of Plus' spaced learning system. It now loses to Anki every time in more recent
compare-contrasts.
If users want to add their own images, they have to pay for Quizlet Plus.
If users want to add custom audio, they have to pay for Quizlet Plus.
Quizlet Plus is seriously expensive to purchase. It doesn't look bad at first because it says it's $3.99 (USD)
per month, but it can't be purchased for a month or few; subscription plans are yearly only, which is a $47.88
(USD) purchase. It's still expensive with a Black Friday discount. Fortunately, if your class calls for a
Cengage digital bundle, there is one that comes with a shorter Quizlet Plus subscription along with other
useful services such as one from Chegg.
Occasionally (and by that I mean plenty often enough to be annoying) I get a glitch in Learn Mode (in the
app) that causes a term to go straight from “not seen” to “mastered” when I answer it correctly the first time I
encounter it even if I just added the term to the deck (versus when I had studied it before and restarted
Learn Mode). The previous sentence is from an older version. Since there was a bug fix update that fixed
this, but it also increased the number of times a term had to be correct to be “Mastered” from two to three,
which was even more annoying. The next update undid that and now every time I see a term for the first
time in Learn Mode (in Flashcards mode; I haven’t tried with the others) the term goes straight to “Mastered”
if I press “Got it”, which implies that the glitch was reintroduced as a feature (which I now use as a “skip”
button when I encounter words I already knew when I study from other people’s Spanish decks).
If two terms have a certain side matching, Quizlet will only display one of those cards as a question in Test
Mode despite how many terms the user selected to have on the test. This would mean that a user could end
up having fewer questions than expected and would have to find all of the terms with matching sides,
deselect the ones that appeared on the first test, and take the test again to get the desired result. The worst
part is that this has no other workaround (unless you count using Learn Mode instead).
Features it has in Common with TinyCards:
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It allows audio on cards.
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It can read terms to the users.
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Learn mode is very similar to learning and practicing terms on Tinycards and similarly it builds users’
proficiency (and therefore confidence) with the terms.
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It allows users to take a quiz on all of a deck's terms.
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It gives users the option to type answers, use a flashcard-styled review, and/or use multiple-choice
questions to review terms.
It is available as both a website and an app, which makes it available on both mobile and computers.
It lets users organize decks into folders like TinyCards’ PC web version.
It has a search function that allows users to find existing public decks to study.
It has an image search function (for use when adding images to a deck) that is similar to one that TinyCards
used to have. (Better yet, users don't have to have Plus to use it.)
Advantages over TinyCards:
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Its quiz mode offers matching and true-false questions in addition to typing and multiple choice.
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It allows users to edit their copies of other creator's decks.
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Users can move already-created terms around in the set’s order while editing.
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Its edit feature detects and highlights duplicate terms.
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Users can create classes that both they and other class members can add decks to.
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It has review games.
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Quizlet decks can contain more cards than Tinycards decks. I don't know the limit, but I've created a Quizlet
deck that contains 290 cards.
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Quizlet may start recommending decks based decks the user has studied, which I suppose could be more
useful than TinyCards “Trending Decks” feature (which I thought was interesting, but will also admit was a
bit distracting).
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Quizlet’s starring feature lets users study terms in sets of more than five (which I prefer for some Spanish
verb decks since that allows me to study all six or seven of a verb’s form that I included, versus Tinycards’
tendency to break up the verb groups oddly since the groups were automatically broken up into groups of
five by the term number).
Screenshots (Note: All of these are from the app.)
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Screenshot Descriptions
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1. The app’s dashboard displaying only starred terms
2. Studying a term in multiple choice mode in Learn Mode’s previous version
3. A progress intermission in Learn Mode’s previous version
4. The completion screen in Learn Mode’s previous version
5. Test mode’s results showing an incorrect term
Additional Notes:
Ah, good old Quizlet. I was originally only going to use StudyLib and Kartka.ai to study my new terms, but after
neither of them got me confident about my terms I started using Quizlet too. Many people already know and swear by
Quizlet and I also have a personal story about it from long before I started creating decks with it and using it regularly:
I remember first using this in high school to study for a literature vocabulary test long before TinyCards or Duolingo
were created. A fellow student had created a Quizlet deck of all of the test's terms and I don't think I ever would have
been able to review all of the terms and get anywhere near as confident with them if it hadn't been for that Quizlet
deck. Back then Quizlet had far fewer features; in fact, it only may have had the flashcards feature (it's the only
feature I remember using to study for that vocabulary test).
About that Learn Mode downgrade: It now removes terms from rotation after the user gets them correct only once,
which is bad if the user stops studying after that. As a result, I now take my starred terms into “Test” mode after I get
them all correct once in Learn Mode. If I get a term correct on the test, I unstar it on the results screen. I then take the
terms I get wrong on the test back into Learn Mode and repeat (as long as there are at least two terms for Learn
Mode; if there is only one, I stop after getting it right twice in a row in Learn Mode) until I master all the terms (and
yes, Quizlet still distinguishes whether your terms are “mastered” or not, but if you don’t have Plus, you can only see
that category on the website version now.) I sent Quizlet feedback about this update, so hopefully they’ll eventually
restore Learn Mode to a version that only stops when all terms are mastered. The interesting thing is that this update
makes Learn Mode’s flashcards look a lot more like and occasionally act like an exact copy of TinyCards’ flashcards.
How to (try to) Best Recreate a TinyCards experience with these Services
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Sign up for each of the (available) services this article mentions.
Get a matching study set in all services.
Print or otherwise create a list of your terms that you can markup according to how you (need to) study your
terms.
Start on Quizlet and press the star on five terms.
Switch the Quizlet deck display so that you only study the starred terms.
Set up Quizlet’s Learn Mode to only let you review your terms with flashcards, learn your terms 0, adjust the
settings to allow multiple choice and/or typing in addition as desired once you start the next round (with your
terms in the “familiar” category, then repeat steps 4-6 until you have studied all of your deck’s terms.
Write a recommended review time on your term list. The first time you study your terms, the earliest
recommended review time you should set is seven hours and twenty minutes later 1 (yes, that exact oddly
specific time period, which I discovered through observation by studying TinyCards) if you learned the terms
for the first time. Set an alarm for that time (if the day is still young enough; otherwise just be sure to study
the terms again the next day).
Switch to StudyLib and use the Spaced Learning Mode to review all of your terms.
Switch to Kartka.ai (if available) and review your terms there, choosing the confidence button of your choice
for each term. You are now finished studying for now.
Come back for the next study session on Quizlet. Use Quiz Mode to review all terms, starring them five-atonce as before. If you miss terms or are not confident about them, leave them starred, then study them in
Learn Mode (which you should restart if it says the terms are already mastered).
Set your next review time. Assuming you get every term correct every time, the next earliest recommended
time should be twenty-three hours and fifty minutes (1 day- 10 minutes) after the previous study session 2,
the next earliest recommended time should be sixty-eight hours and fifty minutes (almost three days;
specifically 3 days – 3 hours – 10 minutes) after the previous study session 3, the next earliest recommended
time should be 184 hours and 5 minutes (almost eight days; specifically 7 days + 16 hours+ 5 minutes) after
the previous study session4 , the next earliest recommended time should be 19 days, 8 hours, and 30
minutes after the previous study session5, and the next earliest recommended time should be roughly
around 53 days after the previous study session 6 if you always get every term right. (I would need to do
more field studies with TinyCards to figure out what time period to recommend for future study sessions and
the exact times for review sessions after the 5th. I definitely plan to update this article if I do it).
If it is the next day already, review your terms on StudyLib’s Spaced Learning. Otherwise, wait until the next
day, then review your terms on StudyLib’s Spaced Learning.
Review any available terms on Kartka.ai.
Repeat steps 10-13, studying on StudyLib and Kartka.ai as their systems allow and on Quizlet according to
your schedule.
Note: When reviewing terms on Quizlet, first study your terms in “Test” mode. If you miss some terms,
deselect the correct terms, take the missed terms into Learn Mode, reset Learn Mode, and master the terms
in Learn Mode again.
Note about the subscripts: These indicate how many times the terms were reviewed. 0 Is the first time the terms
were studied, hence when they were learned, so the other numbers indicate how many times the terms will have
been reviewed after the labeled step is completed.
About Step 11…
You might be wondering, “What should I do if I get a question wrong?” This is where the tracking really gets
complicated. My (somewhat) long explanation follows: I stumbled upon Quizlet’s article about its old spacedlearning mode and read that if a user missed a term the system would reset the term back to its minimum repeat
time, one day, and have the user rebuild the term from there. I am aware that TinyCards’s minimum term review
time is seven hours and twenty minutes. I tried to test TinyCards to see how the review time changes if the user
misses terms during a review. I know it wouldn’t set a review time as long as the one it would set if the users
always got each term correct every time, but would it let users review the missed term again in seven hours and
twenty minutes or twenty-four hours? I tested TinyCards and found out the answer was… neither. So,
unfortunately my short answer is that I don’t have an exact answer about what TinyCards would have
you do (regarding setting up new review times) if you missed a term while reviewing. Fortunately, I can
tell you the strategy I developed after reading the Quizlet article: First I write down the terms I missed on a
separate list from my main tracking list. I study those terms during my next study session, after which I give them
a mark based on whether I got them right the first time I studied them during the session. I give the terms a +1
tally mark if I got them right the first time, a -1 tally mark if I got them wrong, or a +0 if it took me a while to think
of the right answer or if I thought of a wrong answer and the right answer. I add more tally marks as I review the
missed terms again and I add the marks and zeros to form the terms’ scores. If a term’s score is less than +2, I
review that term again during my next study session. If the term’s score is +2, I review it in at least twenty-three
hours and fifty minutes; if the term’s score is +3, I review it in at least sixty-eight hours and fifty minutes, and so
on according to the times listed in Step 11. When a term’s score is one less than the number of times I’ve studied
all the terms in my main study sessions, I cross the term off the missed terms to review list and only study the
term with the rest of the terms when I do the main study sessions (versus with the missed terms to review). Also,
if my answer to terms with a +3 or higher score during a review would have given me a +0, I give it a -1 instead.
This missed term review trick has greatly increased my study sessions’ quality; previously, I had only set up
review times for all terms based on the times from Step 11 (in other words, I didn’t set aside missed terms for
extra review sessions), and although I always re-mastered the terms that I missed, I noticed I would miss those
same terms every time I reviewed my terms. Unfortunately it has increased my total session start-to-end elapsed
time since I have even more mathematical figuring to do now.
You might also be wondering…
1. What if I only ever study once per day?
2. Wouldn’t just StudyLib’s Spaced Learning be enough?
1. I realized that many may only study that way, (an example reason why is if the term list is so long that it would
be impossible to study the entire thing early in the day and again seven hours and twenty minutes later) so I
started a dedicated once-every-twenty-four hours TinyCards study that would show which days the users would
need to study if they only studied once per day at the same time every day and always got every term right. Here
are the results so far (following Step 6, 7, and 11’s subscript scheme from above):
0. Day 1
1. Day 2
2. Day 3
3. Day 6
4. Day 14
5. Day 32
6. Day 74
7. Day 116
8. Day 158
9. Day 200
10. Day 242
Note: Discovering these times was an ongoing project, but it came to an unfortunate end sometime after I got a
new job. I used to update this article when I discovered new times. It seems the review times for session 6
onwards are identical, so I think the discovery work is finished and we can conclude that all future main study
sessions would be 42 days apart.
Here’s how most of this schedule would look plotted on a calendar (the highlighted cells are study days):
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And so on…
Now of course, these are just main study days. If the users miss terms while review, they will have to study those
missed terms on additional days as explained in the “About Step 11…” section.
2. Because StudyLib’s spaced-learning algorithm is different (specifically inferior) to TinyCards, I wouldn’t
recommend StudyLib’s Spaced Learning mode alone as a TinyCards alternative. The good news is that there
seems to be only a one-study-session difference between how TinyCards and StudyLib would recommend that
users study: the seven-hours-and-twenty-minutes-later (or one day if you’re using the plotted schedule above)
initial review session. While StudyLib’s Spaced Learning mode would have users study the terms two days in a
row before assigning the three-day space, TinyCards would have the user either study the terms twice within a
24-hour period (with the initial learn and initial review sessions at least seven hours and twenty minutes apart) or
three days in a row before assigning the three-day space. The algorithms appear to behave very similarly after
the three-day space, so if users set up the initial study session outside of StudyLib’s Spaced Learning
mode seven hours and twenty minutes or a day before studying the terms in StudyLib’s Spaced
Learning mode, (users can use StudyLib’s Fast-Learning Mode or Quizlet’s Learn Mode to do this) using
just StudyLib’s Spaced Learning mode after that may provide a simple and effective TinyCards
replacement. ‘Why did I use ‘may’ instead of ‘should’ or ‘would?’” you might be wondering. The reason is
because StudyLib’s Spaced Learning mode at least sometimes forces a user along in a session,
eventually ending it even if the user misses a term and does not get it right twice in a row later in the
session. If this happens to you, you would have to isolate each of these non-mastered terms somehow
and then take them all into Quizlet’s Learn Mode to master them (since there seems to be no way to
isolate specific terms for a dedicated study session in Studylib).
Do the above sections seem complicated to you? If so, you can agree with me that it was a terrible idea for
Duolingo to end TinyCards and for Quizlet to remove its spaced-learning feature. Just because two companies
decided they didn’t need a flashcard app with a spaced learning feature, we have to do all sorts of extra work to
simulate an app with a spaced-learning feature. Currently neither Quizlet, StudyLib, nor Kartka.ai have sufficient
individual features to replace TinyCards 1-to-1. Maybe one of the services could if it implements enough tweaks
to match what TinyCards did, but until then, users will have to go through a lot of trouble to get a TinyCards-like
optimized spaced-learning experience.
Final Statements
You might be wondering: (1) which service I eventually chose to use, (2) what specific things still keep TinyCards
a cut above the rest, (3) if I have any screenshots from Quizlet’s recent (terrible) Learn Mode update, (4) what
my Quizlet username is/if I will provide a link to my Quizlet profile in this article and/or (5) if I will write any more
articles or otherwise create documents on StudyLib.
(1) When I was still in college, I actually used all three services until Kartka.ai went down, after which I just used
studyLib and Quizlet. When a test was coming up I would study my terms every day, starting on StudyLib, then
switching to Kartka.ai if I finished studying on StudyLib, finally studying on Quizlet if I finished studying on both of
the other two services. I would study my terms every single day, even every single term every day that I had
enough time. I did not have the spaced-learning pattern data while I still had classes running and it took me a
very long time (probably months) after that to look into what I should do if I miss terms and create my solution to
that problem. It also wasn’t until a very hard class I had was almost over that I realized that I should break the
term set into smaller chunks (5 or so per Learn Mode session).
These days I study Spanish vocabulary words every day and only use Quizlet along with my manual spacedlearning tracking method. I put my decks from TinyCards into both StudyLib and Quizlet, but some of my decks
and deck expansions are only on Quizlet.
(2) TinyCards’ efficiency and superior, automatically-tracking spaced-learning algorithm (which also contributes
to TinyCards’ efficiency) are what make TinyCards the undisputed best digital flashcard app/website: Studying
with spaced-learning on TinyCards is simple as locating the desired deck, opening it, finding a pack that isn’t a
smiley face or a lock, tapping that pack, and studying. Users don’t have to star and unstar terms to get them in 5packs or choose whether a term is “Hard,” “Okay,” or “Easy;” TinyCards will track terms’ memory strength
automatically through right or wrong answers. Also, although a spaced-learning algorithm that has users review
terms only when those terms are almost forgotten (like what StudyLib or Anki will use) is fine for doctors working
in a supportive environment with co-workers who will be happy to verify information that one of them isn’t sure
about, said algorithm can be problematic for anyone using it to study for tests, or learn language vocabulary for
an interpretation job or for daily use. The algorithm allows users’ memories of the terms to get shaky, which can
cause users to take a long time to answer test questions about the terms and possibly choose a similar-looking
wrong answer on a multiple choice section. If the users used the algorithm to study language vocabulary, they
can have choppy thoughts and speech when either involves the studied terms, which is definitely terrible,
especially if those terms were for an interpretation job (imagine how unprofessional that would be and the
consequential bad reviews).
(3) Yes and they are below. I have also included a TinyCards screenshot to show how this update makes Learn
Mode look more like TinyCards (the TinyCards screenshot is the one on the right):
(4) Yes; My Quizlet username is Jac0074. Here is a link to my profile: https://quizlet.com/Jac0074
I have text-only versions of some of my decks from TinyCards on Quizlet. I also only update most of my decks
there (Pokémon GO Spanish Vocabulary is the exception) and I have a very long (over 250 terms) Kitchen
Vocabulary List on there.
(5) Yes, there are a few more projects I want to do and post on StudyLib, but I can give no guarantees on when
they will release. I doubt they will be over 8,600 words long like this one though. I also want to create or write:
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A surprise helpful thing for Spanish-language learners
An article about what needs to be done to make Quizlet the next (or even better than) TinyCards; this
may include or start off as a compilation of some of my feedback and suggestion e-mails to Quizlet
Support
A master list of TinyCards decks and profile pages that were archived on the Web Archive (I have
already started this project but have not finished it. I can upload the list I have any day and update it
later, possibly in chunks as a work-in-progress until I figure I’ve found and listed every archived page)
A project-thing (it would be part rally call and part directory) to unite former TinyCards users to make
their TinyCards decks available again (on other services such as Quizlet or StudyLib) and/or show
where their flashcards are available now
A Quizlet Plus review based off of my experience with a free trial in May 2021
Best digital flashcards, TinyCards alternatives, Compare Contrast Quizlet StudyLib, Spaced Learning, Spaced
Repetition, Spaced Repetition Algorithm, Spaced Learning Algorithm, Duolingo Algorithm, TinyCards Algorithm,
StudyLib Algorithm