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📖 Anki Cheat Sheet

The shortcuts, search syntax, and settings that matter, on one page. This is the page to keep open while you study. On a Mac, use Cmd everywhere this sheet says Ctrl.

On this page: Keyboard shortcuts · Cloze syntax · Browse search syntax · Answer buttons · Card lifecycle · Settings that matter · Sync & backup · File formats

💡 Mac users: where the tables show Ctrl, press Cmd (⌘) instead.

1 · Keyboard shortcuts

The everyday keys. Some shortcuts differ slightly on mobile and between Anki versions — these are the desktop defaults.

Action Shortcut Where
Add the card you're editingCtrl+EnterAdd / editor
Show answer / rate "Good"SpaceReview
Rate Again / Hard / Good / Easy1 / 2 / 3 / 4Review (after showing answer)
UndoCtrl+ZAlmost anywhere
Open BrowseB (main screen); Ctrl+F searches within BrowseMain / Browser
Cloze — reuse the same numberCtrl+Shift+CEditor
Cloze — new (incrementing) numberCtrl+Shift+Alt+CEditor
Toggle HTML source editorCtrl+Shift+XEditor
Bold / Italic / UnderlineCtrl+B / Ctrl+I / Ctrl+UEditor
Sync nowYMain screen
Edit the current cardEReview
Suspend card@ (review) / Ctrl+J (Browser)Review / Browser
Bury card- (review menu)Review
Mark note* (review) / Ctrl+K (Browser)Review / Browser

✅ Tip

Forgot a key? During review, press M or open the gear/⚙ menu — Anki lists the available actions with their current shortcuts. You can also rebind most shortcuts in the deck options and add-ons.

2 · Cloze syntax

Cloze deletions blank out part of your text. The number after c groups deletions into cards.

{{c1::answer}}              → hides "answer"
{{c1::answer::hint}}       → hides "answer", shows "hint" in the blank

📖 Same number vs. different numbers

Same number = revealed together on one card. Different numbers = separate cards, one per number.

Worked example. This single note:

The heart has {{c1::four}} chambers: two {{c2::atria}} and two {{c3::ventricles}}.

...produces three cards (c1, c2, c3), each blanking one part while showing the rest. If you'd instead written both "atria" and "ventricles" as {{c2::...}}, they'd be blanked together on the same card.

⚠️ Watch out

Cloze deletions only work with the Cloze note type. Adding cloze markup to a Basic note won't generate blanks. See Cloze deletion in the glossary and Part 5 of the guide.

4 · Answer buttons — how to grade

Be honest and quick. The button you press is the whole basis of scheduling — grade how well you recalled, not how you feel about the card.

Button Key Means Press when…
Again1You failed to recall itYou blanked, guessed wrong, or peeked. Card resets and returns soon.
Hard2Recalled, but it was a struggleYou got it, slowly or with effort. Interval grows only a little.
Good3 / SpaceRecalled correctlyYour default answer — you knew it after normal effort.
Easy4Instant, effortlessYou knew it immediately. Interval jumps well ahead. Use sparingly.

⚠️ Watch out

Don't overuse "Hard" as a mild "Good" — under SM-2 it drags a card's ease down over time. And reserve "Easy" for cards that are genuinely trivial, or you'll get long gaps before the next review. When in doubt, press Good.

5 · Card lifecycle

Every card moves through the same states as you study it:

New  →  Learning  →  Review  ──(press "Again" = lapse)──►  Relearning  →  Review
  • New — made but not yet studied; enters at a limited daily rate.
  • Learning — moving through short steps (e.g. 1m 10m) until it graduates.
  • Review — graduated; intervals grow from days to months to years as you keep recalling it.
  • Relearning — where a Review card lands after a lapse (you pressed "Again"); it repeats short steps, then returns to Review with a smaller interval.

See the glossary entries for Learning, Review / Relearning and Lapse for detail.

6 · Settings that matter most

You can ignore almost every option in the deck settings. These are the few that actually shape your daily experience.

Setting Default What it does
New cards/day20Your biggest workload lever. Each new card becomes many future reviews — raise it slowly, and lower it if reviews pile up.
Maximum reviews/day200Caps daily review count. If you're consistently hitting the cap with a backlog, raise it to clear the queue.
Learning steps1m 10mThe short intervals a new card passes through before graduating. Fine to leave as-is for most people.
FSRS desired retention0.90The fraction of cards you aim to remember at review time. Higher = more reviews and less forgetting; lower = less work, more forgetting.
Optimize FSRS—Run periodically (e.g. monthly, once you have a few hundred reviews) so FSRS tunes its parameters to your own memory.

✅ Tip

If Anki feels overwhelming, lower New cards/day before touching anything else. Fewer new cards today means fewer reviews for weeks to come. Full detail is in Part 8.

7 · Sync & backup

  • Sync after every session (Y) so all your devices match.
  • Keep one main device and always sync before switching to another — it avoids merge conflicts.
  • Export a .colpkg occasionally as a manual, portable backup of your whole collection (include media).
  • Automatic backups exist — Anki snapshots your collection periodically and on close, so you can restore an earlier version if something goes wrong. Sync is not a backup; it can propagate a mistake to every device.

8 · File formats

Format Holds Use it to…
.apkgOne or more decks (notes, cards, media)Share or download a deck; move a deck between collections.
.colpkgYour entire collection + media + schedulingMake a full manual backup, or move everything to a new computer.
CSV / plain textRows of fields, one note per lineBulk-import your own material (e.g. a word list from a spreadsheet).

More on importing and exporting in Part 10, and the glossary entries for .apkg and .colpkg.

See also