Fresh Cards 3

Thank you for beta testing Fresh Cards 3! This page offers some testing notes.

Encountering issues? You can post to the support email found in the app (or at the bottom of this page) or post in the Discord #freshcards-beta channel.

Minimum OS Versions

• macOS 12.4
• iOS 18.6

Known Issues

• Slow initial iCloud sync. Installing the app on a new device may result in a slow initial sync. The app uses Core Data with CloudKit, a shared resource that Apple throttles across all apps on your device. If you have a lot of cards and study history, it may take up to several hours for everything to appear. Your data is safe — it just may not show up right away.

• Allow initial migration to complete before leaving app. Please don’t quit the app while the initial migration is running. Fresh Cards for iOS doesn’t run in the background, so if you quit mid-migration, it won’t resume until you reopen the app. When you see the migration status at the bottom of the screen, allow it to finish before leaving. It should take a few minutes at most, even for larger decks. Note: iCloud sync statuses are unrelated to migration — you can safely quit if only those appear.

• Summary icon may briefly show a moon. After reviewing a deck for the first time in a given day, the summary section’s icon may briefly change to a purple moon before switching to a flame icon. This is a known issue — no need to report it.

• Accessibility issues. A full accessibility pass hasn’t been completed yet, so there may be incorrect or missing strings throughout the UI.

• Purchase flow requires sandbox Apple ID. Don’t bother going through the full purchase flow in this build. It requires setting up a separate sandbox Apple ID just for testing. I don’t want to complicate things for this beta test, so I’m not expecting anyone to go through this process, unless you want to. If you want to do this, contact me with an email address which isn’t your Apple ID email address and I can add it as a sandbox account.

• TestFlight builds won’t recognize your past Fresh Cards purchase. This is expected. If you’ve purchased a Pro license of Fresh Cards before, this TestFlight build will not necessarily detect that. Don’t worry, your purchase didn’t vanish. It’s still there and when this new update is released, it will recognize your previous Pro license purchase.

• Maximum free cards is 2500. Once the app releases, the number of cards available for free users is 100. To make beta testing easier and make it so users don’t need to purchase a license, I’ve bumped this up to 2500. If you have even more than this already, let me know and I’ll bump it up some more.

What to Look For

Here are some things to watch for when using the app. If you encounter any of these, feel free to email or post on Discord.

• General sync issues. The sync engine has been completely redone. The initial sync may take some time, but once migration is complete and data has been synced to the new Core Data with CloudKit storage, syncing should be fast. If you still see issues after migration has completed, please report it.

• Asset sync. If assets aren’t being migrated or synced, please report it. Assets, especially in large numbers, may take some time to sync across devices, but if after several days the data still hasn’t synced, there may be a bug.

• General day-to-day use. How does the new UI work for you? Is it easy to use or confusing? Any feedback, good or bad, is welcome!

• Typos or missing artwork. If you find icons missing from the UI or typos in the text, let me know.

• Layout issues. If UI elements are off-center or cut off in ways that look wrong, please report it.

Changes

The entire app has been rewritten from the ground up. Many aspects were carried over from the old version, but much of the core is brand new. This section describes most of the changes.

Card Organization

• The deck browser has been updated to support folders and other new features.

• Folders are finally here to let you organize and review cards however you like.

• Starring: you can now star cards, making it easy to mark cards for review later.

• Deleting cards (and folders) now places them in a Trash container in case you change your mind.

Playlist

• The playlist has a new look and is much easier to use. The main actions are now simplified along the bottom, much like a media player.

• Card info is displayed in a simpler format. The “energy bar” has been replaced with a next-due countdown. New cards get an asterisk; due cards get a blue dot.

• The main playlist now shows your already-studied cards from earlier in the day so you can easily re-review them if needed.

• Improved default sort order: you can now configure how many new cards are included in your daily reviews.

• The playlist is now more intelligently generated with two modes: Fixed Daily Study (pick a daily number of cards to review) and No Limit (show all cards that are due at any one time).

• Hidden content now uses redaction blocks instead of asterisks.

• “Daily Mix” is generated for you and represents your daily goals, but can be increased or decreased on the fly based on how much you want to review.

• Redaction has been simplified: either redacting or not. Only unreviewed cards are redacted; cards studied earlier today are not.

• The filter system has been simplified. Instead of a two-tier system where you pick a sort order and then a secondary filter, there is now a single list of filter settings to choose from.

Stats

• You now see a 100-day history of your daily reviews, making it easier to spot trends in your study habits.

• A new Next Due histogram shows how many cards are due now and how many will become due in the coming days, weeks, and months.

• Your 100-day history of study time in minutes is now shown.

• Confusing stats have been removed. The old learning stats were never a good representation of the underlying data. The new Next Due histogram offers a better view of your progress through a deck.

Study Session

• A study session now begins with a list of cards about to be reviewed, with the current batch highlighted in blue. As you progress, reviewed cards are revealed and the highlight moves down the list.

• Shuffle mode: you can now shuffle the order of cards in a study session.

• New challenge types: Text Input and Word Jumble. Text Input lets you type in the answer using the keyboard and matches it against the correct answer. Word Jumble breaks up the text into word tiles that you must rearrange in the proper order. In both modes, you can always override the system’s evaluation if you disagree.

• Simplified study UI. The skip round button has been removed.

• Wrong cards are now handled differently. Instead of being tacked onto the end of a batch, they are marked as wrong in the study session summary, where you can review them all when you’re ready.

• New cards are shown with a simpler UI, making it more obvious they are not meant to be scored.

• Study Session and Lesson Planner settings have been simplified to look more like standard UI.

• In-lesson nag screens removed. The app no longer nags you during a study session to upgrade.

Misc.

• On macOS, you can now toggle the app theme: System Default, Light, or Dark.

• The spaced repetition algorithm has been improved:
  • Lapsed cards that have been reviewed several times before are no longer punished as harshly, but they do take more time to advance compared with cards marked correct.
  • Cards reviewed correctly multiple times in succession no longer advance the schedule as quickly as before.
  • How the system determines “reviewed early” cards has been adjusted to depend on the length of the interval.
  • Fixed a bug where hard cards would have their e-factor adjusted down too much.

• Each side of a card now has its own text type. You can set one side to use markdown and the other to use standard formatting, for example.

• The sync engine has been completely redone using Core Data with CloudKit, making it simpler to maintain and extend. All of your old data will be migrated to this new system.

• Font picker UI has been improved.

• Text to Speech settings have been improved.

• Card Editor on iOS has been simplified, requiring fewer taps to add and edit cards.

• Free Mode has been simplified. Free users get 100 cards across as many decks as they like. All features except import are available to free users. Previously, Text to Speech, custom fonts, SRS algorithms, and iCloud sync were limited to paying users.

• App icon updated. The icon has been changed to avoid the impression that Fresh Cards is only for Japanese language learning. The new icon also has a dark mode variant.

• Import UI has been simplified. Previously you could drag and drop external files to import. Now all import is done through the File menu on macOS and via App Settings on iOS.

Removed Features

• Anki import has been temporarily disabled. This version has structural changes to better support Anki cards, but there are still challenges with managing and syncing large decks with many assets. Anki import will return once this release stabilizes.

• Match game has been removed. If this is an important feature to you, let me know — I can prioritize bringing it back if enough people request it. It was removed because it was hard to discover and not widely used. It will also be difficult to incorporate future card types into this mode (such as image obscuring), making it even less valuable.

• Slideshow mode has been removed.

• Manual card selection from the playlist has been removed. This feature added visual noise, and it’s now easier to organize cards into folders for custom review.

• Export is temporarily disabled. It will be added back once this version stabilizes.

• Card “level” has been removed. Organizing cards into grade levels is now possible with folders, and this feature was always hidden.