Interrogating the data like this can really help in the quest to learn how you learn. You see the blanks? Those are the days on which you broke your streak.

Each square represents a day of your Anki year. And knowing about your learning is valuable meta-knowledge that can be just as useful as first-level learning material like vocabulary lists.įor example, take a look at the mass of colour in the plug-in display. The Review Heatmap plugin for Anki Learning how you learnĪlong with streak info, you can see a couple of other handy stats that do not feature in Anki’s regular data breakdown, including your average cards-per-day rate. Although the extra information seems quite standard, you might otherwise rack your brains to locate it in vain in a vanilla installation.Īlthough still in Beta for the latest 2.1.x stream of Anki releases (with a version for older versions here), it runs reliably and instantly exposes useful stats on the very first run. Review Heatmap adds a panel of information to the summary screens in the desktop version of Anki.

I was stumped.įortunately, a natty little plugin came to the rescue. Despite the raft of data in the app’s familiar stats section, streak was nowhere to be seen. It all came to light when language buddy Marcel (so often a source of tips on everything language learning) asked if I knew where to find streak reporting in Anki. How committed am I, in terms of how regularly I study? So it comes across as an odd omission from the standard Anki installation. On the face of it, streak does seem like an intuitively natural thing to want to know as a learner. Proud players share their incredible feats with others who hope to reach the same heights. The streak almost becomes an end in itself, powering the language learning along with it. And it has long been a staple of gamified platforms like Duolingo, which quickly grew on its sticky back.

Streak is the presentation of unbroken, habitual use of the app as an achievement. A learning streak, that is: a golden motivational corridor in educational gamification. And it’s worth sharing this little-known secret with anyone who want a bit more data than the all-knowing app is ordinarily willing to provide. Anki is an incredibly powerful tool with a heap of learning science behind it.īut do you ever feel, as an Anki user, that the process is all a bit of a mystery? That, instead of being passively fed material, you might like to glimpse inside the flashcard box and find out a little more about its electronic, spaced-repetition plans for you?Ī chance question from a teacher and polyglot pal this week helped open up that box for me.

Anki review heatmap add on 2.1