Changelog

Fresh Cards updates are constantly adding new features and tweaking existing ones. Here’s where you’ll find a complete list of changes over the years.

Version 2.20 2024/07/02

macOS and iOS

iOS only fixes

Version 2.19 2024/05/10

Version 2.18 2024/03/19

macOS

iOS

Version 2.17 2023/09/28

macOS

iOS

Version 2.16 2023/09/20

macOS

iOS

Version 2.15 2023/08/24

macOS

iOS

Version 2.14 2023/01/10

Hello, and a belated Happy New Year!

This minor update just has bugfixes:

Version 2.13 2022/12/18

Happy Holidays, everyone!

This release has two big features: MathJax support for displaying math equations, and an improved sync engine.

  1. MathJax support has been added to Markdown- and HTML-based cards! Simply write your math equation between two dollar signs ($) and it’ll be rendered using math notation. To enable this, you will need to explicitly go into the UI Settings during a review session and set the checkmark on. This will enable the MathJax for the current deck.

  2. The sync engine has been significantly rewritten to be more reliable and efficient. I know a lot of users have been experiencing sync issues, so I re-designed it to handle failure scenarios better. There is also now a sync status indicator in the deck list which will tell you how many files are uploading or downloading. This should help you keep track of devices that are still in the process of transferring files. If you tap this status, you’ll be presented a summary screen where you can investigate which decks are still transferring files, and which specific files are being transferred.

Please note that there are still some cases where iCloud will take a few minutes to finish uploading or downloading a file, so please be patient when that happens. You’ll be able to tell that this situation occurs because you will see the upload or download icon appear in the sync status UI, which shows up at the bottom of the deck list.

Next up on my list of tasks is full Anki deck compatibility. Look forward to this in January!

Read on for some more minor changes, and Have a Happy New Year! ✨

Marker button appearance

Misc

Version 2.12 2022/11/02

Hello and welcome to the autumn season and another Fresh Cards update!

This update contains a lot of quality of life improvements. Here are the quick highlights:

iOS changes in great detail

macOS changes in great detail

Version 2.11 2022/10/04

Hello and welcome to another Fresh Cards update.

It’s spooky season and the leaves are changing color here in the Pacific Northwest. That means shorter days, but more coding time for me! This update has a couple great new features, but watch out as I will be adding even more fun stuff in the next few months.

Okay, let’s talk about the updates…

Slideshow

This release adds a new feature: slideshow mode! On iOS, simply long-press the play button to access it. On macOS, right-click the play button or access it from the File menu.

Slideshow mode will auto-play the front and back of each card, allowing you to view the deck in a hands-free mode. It’s also useful if you want to record a video of your flashcards to share with others.

It’s now easier than ever to filter by tag. Many people asked for this, so I’m happy to introduce this new feature.

On iOS, long-press the search button to bring up a list of tags used in the current deck. Tap one to filter by that tag. Once you’re in search mode, you can also tap the “+ search tags” button to add additional tags to your search.

On macOS, you can select tags from the Tags drop-down list.

Lesson UI changes under the hood

Some code for the lesson UI was rewritten to support slideshow as well as future planned features. Everything should still work as it did before, and you shouldn’t notice any changes. However, if you do encounter any bugs, please reach out to let me know.

These under-the-hood changes will make it easier to add two future features: template-based cards and better Anki importing!

Other macOS changes

Other iOS changes

Version 2.10 2022/09/08

Welcome to another Fresh Cards update. Just a few minor tweaks in this one as well as the addition of notifications to iOS.

macOS changes

iOS changes

Version 2.9 2022/08/25

Playlist Screen Changes

Emphasized daily review count

The header has been redesigned to emphasize the number of cards you’ve reviewed today.

Daily goal badge

There’s now a daily goal badge that appears in the header. This replaces the little rocket (or flag) you’d see in the summary section below the header.

At first, this was just a minor aesthetic change I was playing around with, but after using it for a bit, I think it works a lot better. The gold badge jumps out right away, making it much easier to know if you’ve hit your daily goal.

Color scheme

The overall color scheme has been improved. The old color scheme was a little bit too colorful and made it difficult to emphasize other elements that needed it. (The tags label and progress bar colors have been muted, for example.)

% Learned

This one is really exciting. This new feature displays how much of a deck you’ve learned so far.

This number is an attempt at quantifying how far along the learning journey you are for a given deck. More specifically, it measures how close you are to getting a review interval of 35 days for all cards.

How % Learned it works

As you may know, the spaced repetition algorithm schedules out each card into the future, based on how well you’re learning it. The more times you’ve successfully remembered a card, the further into the future it’s scheduled out.

This % Learned feature will evaluate at what stage each card is in that journey to reaching a 35-day interval. It first estimates how many days from that very first review it would take a typical card to get to that 35-day interval. Next, it figures out, for each card, how many days it’s been since that very first review (or since the last “reset” of reviews in the case that you got a card wrong). Finally, this number is divided by the first one to get a “% Learned” for a single card. Fresh Cards does this computation for all cards and averages them to give you a final number.

So, it’s a little complicated. The math isn’t really important right now, and most likely the formula will be changed over time. The main purpose is just to give you some encouragement and an idea of how far along you are in your studying of a deck.

Caveats

Some things to keep in mind:

I really believe this is an important feature. Being able to measure your progress in some form, and getting feedback on how each review adds to this progress, is, I believe, an incredible motivator.

If you have additional thoughts on this metric, please do reach out to me to let me know what you think.

In-lesson Changes

The post-lesson summary now displays correctly in dark mode. Hooray!

I’ve updated the button for changing the lesson settings in the lesson. It now reads “Settings” instead of a gear icon on iOS or “Customize” on Mac. Hopefully this makes it a little easier for people to see and know that they can change lesson settings.

Fixed search queries

When you search for cards, the search terms are now logically ANDed instead of being ORed. This is pretty major. This change was suggested in the Discord. (If you’re not on the Discord, why not? Come join us and send your suggestions. They do get in the app!)

What this change means is that if you search for “#verbs eat”, it will find all cards that have both the tag “#verbs” AND the text “eat”. Previously, it would search for any cards that had either “#verbs” OR “eat” in the text.

Version 2.8 2022/08/20

This update has a few UI improvements.

Post-lesson Summary

The post-lesson summary screen has been updated.

It will now show a total count of cards reviewed in a session, instead of the number just reviewed in the previous batch. The total remaining is now displayed at the bottom. The buttons have also been updated so that it’s clearer that you have two options: stop reviewing or continue reviewing more cards.

I’m hoping this change has the effect of encouraging doing more reviews per day.

Note: I didn’t have time to update this for dark mode, so apologies for those in dark mode. This screen shows up as light mode colors for all users. I’ll work on fixing it in the next update.

Pre-lesson Status Message

The status bar message shown at the start of a lesson has been simplified.

The “Reviewing 5 of 250 cards” message was a bit confusing before. With the post-lesson summary screen updates, I didn’t think showing the “250 cards” part was necessary. The status bar will now just show you how many cards you’re about to review in the batch.

Lesson Preferences defaults changed

To make the app easier to understand for newer users, the following lesson preferences were changed:

I decided to change these defaults because I think new users may be confused and turned off by the number of times they have to review cards. In the long run, I think it’s better for learning to have the old settings, but that’s a personal preference. If you prefer the old settings, you can simply tap the gear or “customize” button during a lesson to change them for a deck.

iOS-only changes

Version 2.7 2022/07/20

This latest version of the app includes a ton of Quality of Life improvements to the review interface:

And some other minor changes:

Read on for more details.

Lesson “Rules” settings

When a new batch of cards is started, you can hit the customize button to change the lesson “rules”. These rules dictate the order of the cards presented to you.

Lesson UI settings

You can now customize some aspects of the lesson UI. On iOS, tap the “…” button at the bottom of the screen and select UI Settings to view the settings. On macOS, click the “Aa” button during the lesson to see the settings.

Skipping cards

During a lesson, if you don’t want to review a card anymore, you can tap the skip button (the one that looks like fast-forward). The card won’t show up again in the rest of the lesson session.

The next time you start a new session (i.e. you return to the playlist and hit PLAY), the card becomes available for review again.

Improved Lesson Summary Screen

The lesson summary screen has been revamped to be easier to grok. The old one was a bit of an eyesore.🤷‍♂️ This new screen organizes the info in an easier to read way.

iOS-only changes

macOS-only changes

Version 2.6.0 2022/06/24

This update adds a new free mode. Everyone can now download the app without a fee, but some features are locked down, requiring an upgrade to the Pro version.

⚠️ If you had previously paid for Fresh Cards in the App Store, you will automatically be upgraded to the Pro version. You will not need to pay to upgrade.

How do you know if you weren’t upgraded? You’ll see a button saying “Upgrade to Pro”.

If the app does not automatically detect your previous purchase, you can try pressing the “Upgrade to Pro” button to launch the upgrade screen and from there press the “Restore previous purchase” button. If that still does not work, please contact me at support@ussher.ca so I can investigate any issues.

Pro mode is a one-time purchase, as before, so there are still no subscription fees required to use the app.

Hopefully, this helps introduce more users to the app. 🎉 Be sure to let your friends know about the app so they can give it a try themselves! Point them to www.freshcardsapp.com.

macOS bug fixes

iOS bug fixes

Version 2.5.0 - 2022/06/09

This update adds the much-requested Markdown styling to cards. 🎉

Yes, it’s finally here! You can now style your text using markdown. This update also introduces an option to style your cards using basic HTML.

Please note that HTML styling still has some rough edges. For instance, it’s not possible to add javascript or custom stylesheets to HTML cards. Fear not, as those are coming eventually. (Along with template-based cards in the future, the app will eventually support full Anki deck import too!)

Eventually, you’ll also be able to provide your own stylesheet for the markdown text.

If you have specific requests or bugs regarding these two new additions, please reach out using one of the contact methods below.

How to use Markdown and HTML styling

Here’s a quick explanation of how to use these new features. When editing a card’s text, you can now pick how the text will be interpreted using the “Card text type” dropdown on macOS and “Type” button on iOS. You can pick from Default, Standard, Markdown, or HTML.

Default will cause the card to pick up the style setting from the deck preferences. The new setting in the deck preferences will allow you to globally change the style for all cards that are using the default.

Of course, you can pick a specific setting on each card. Just customize it to be Standard, Markdown, or HTML on the specific card and the app will always interpret the card text in that style.

For more details on styling, be sure to check out the help page as it will be updated over time with more details.

Updates specific to macOS version

Updates specific to iOS version

Other changes

Version 2.4.0 - 2022/05/17

This update improves the overall performance and reliability of the app. Many things under the hood have been rewritten.

macOS updates

iOS updates

Version 2.3.0 - 2022/04/05

macOS and iOS updates ⬆

Show only reviewed cards in Cram and Strength modes

You can now choose to show only cards you’ve already reviewed when in Cram and Strength modes.

Minor scheduling adjustment in the spaced repetition algorithm

The spaced repetition scheduler now uses 6h and 16h instead of 30m and 12h for its initial review intervals.

macOS-only updates

This update has a ton of improvements to the macOS app.

Improved tagging 🏷

You can now bulk edit tags on multiple cards. Just right-click after selecting some cards to access these new tagging features.

There’s a most-recently used list of tags as well, so you can tag cards very quickly!

Drag and drop text to import 📦

You can now drag and drop text you find on the web to create flashcards. Here’s an example. If you scroll down to the “Basic Portuguese Words A-Z” section, you can select the text in the list and drag and drop it into the app to start an import!

If dragging text isn’t convenient for you, you can also copy the text into the clipboard and then select Import from Clipboard from the File menu.

This new drag and drop feature is still a work in progress, so let me know how it’s going. I plan on setting up a page on the Fresh Cards site with more details on how to use the feature and some great examples.

The CSV import settings screen now has a larger list of potential delimiter characters, including “=” and several dash types. The app will now try to determine the most likely delimiter that a file (or dragged text) uses.

Export to open flashcard format improvements

Firstly, you can now drag and drop selected cards directly into a text editor to export. This is a great way to share cards quickly.

Secondly, the exported text no longer includes “front-text:” and “back-text:” prefixes if they would be redundant.

Finally, if cards have image or audio resources but no card text, we’ll export a “missing” text label to make sure the deck can still be imported later.

Minor card editor improvements

Version 2.2.2 🎁 - 2022/03/18

Match Game is finally back! If you have been missing this feature, thank you for your patience. It’s finally here again. Yay! 😀

On iOS, you can access Match Game by long-pressing the Play button. On macOS, you can ctrl-click the Play button or start it from the File menu.

For those of you using dark mode, I’ve improved the color choices for the lesson UI. I think you’ll find they’re a lot more harmonious. For macOS users, dark mode is now used for the lesson UI.

Version 2.2.1 - 2022/02/15

Two big improvements:

Several bug fixes and tweaks in this one:

Match Game is coming back! I wasn’t able to get it in this release, but hopefully the next one will bring it back.

Version 2.2.0 - 2022/02/06

macOS Version 2.2.0

Stats have been improved! This also includes some other minor improvements to update the macOS app to match the iOS release.

iOS Version 2.2.0

I hope you love this new version as there are a ton of new features and tweaks made based on your feedback.

Here’s a list of changes:

macOS Version 2.1.1 - 2021/11/27

Home Screen Updates

Limitless reviews. The app no longer prevents you from doing reviews outside of the spaced repetition schedule. If you only wish to see recommended cards to review, choose Scheduled mode and “Due or New” for the filter.

Playlist-style reviewing. What you see is what you get. Hitting play button will now start reviewing cards in the current search results, in roughly the order that you see the cards.

Four different modes for sorting cards. There are now four different sort orders for the “playlist”. Each mode has its own custom filters to let you limit the cards reviewed. The two main modes you’ll likely use are Scheduled Mode, which orders cards based on spaced repetition schedule, and Cram Mode, which orders based on their last review.

Lesson Updates

Cards can now be scrolled for longer content. You can finally scroll through the content in a card. You can enter as much text as you like in a card and the card will automatically size itself to fit the text.

Option to repeat reviews. When you finish reviewing a “hand” of cards, you can now repeat that same hand on the review summary screen.

Updated spaced repetition algorithm. The algorithm now takes into account if you review too early. The review interval is now computed as a weighted average of the previous evaluation and the next one should you review a card early. What this means is the next review date will not get farther and farther into the future if you choose to review early.

Updated font to Georgia. This font choice leads to better CJK text rendering and better rendering for other non-English languages. This still may not be the best font in all cases, so a future update will add in a font picker per deck.

You can pick between two different card widths during lessons. Cards can be resized to a wider format if you prefer that.

You can now press the 1-5 keys on the keyboard if you wish self-grade that way instead of marking cards as correct or incorrect. There is also now an option in the app preferences to enable “manual score input”, which will show 1-5 buttons instead of the traditional correct/incorrect buttons.

You can customize how many cards you wish to review within a lesson. Sometimes you want to review more cards and sometimes you want to review fewer. When you begin a lesson, you can customize how many cards you wish to review in the current hand.

Once a review ends, you can quickly start another one, using the remaining cards. Fresh Cards now lets you quickly start another hand of cards for review after you’ve finished one hand. The next hand will take from the remaining cards in the playlist, so you don’t have to worry about repeating cards from the previous hand.

You can now skip through reviewing the remaining cards in a round. There is a button beside the progress bar to skip ahead to the next round if you decide you have had enough with the current round. You may use this to skip the “reverse side” round, or even the “incorrect cards” round.

Miscellaneous

Breaking change in how lateness is computed for srsFunc. It now represents a value between -1.0 and +1.0 indicating how early or late the review is on the interval scale. For instance, if the interval is 100 days and the card is reviewed 50 days from the last review, the lateness factor is -0.50. If it is reviewed on the due date, the lateness factor is 0.0. And finally, if it is reviewed 100 days late, the lateness factor is 1.0.

Drills have been removed since the playlist-based essentially replaces the functionality in a better way.

Removed matching game. This feature didn’t fit with the current new playlist style review, so it has been temporarily removed.

New app icon!

Version 1.26 - 2021/10/18

This version includes several bug fixes.

The card sort order of imported decks was not being honored. This version fixes that. Imported cards now show up in the order that they were found in the original deck. They also get added into the deck in proper order. Imported cards will now no longer show up before any existing cards in the deck.

When choosing new cards for a lesson, they were previously picked randomly from the deck. This version makes it so that those cards are picked based on the card creation sort order. Along with the first item above, this makes it so that if you import a large deck in a specific order, your lessons will now be based on that order.

Sorting decks would sometimes not work. This is now fixed. Previously, sometimes dragging the first deck in the list to another position would not move the deck to the new position.

Be sure to check out the “Future Plans” section at the bottom of this page for info on upcoming features.

Version 1.25 - 2021/10/11

This small update fixes some sync issues users are seeing. If you were seeing issues with saving a new card taking a long time or data after a lesson taking long to be updated, this fixes that as well. If you encountered that bug before, with this new update, the first time you try to save a new card or finish a lesson, you might still see a delay. However, after that initial delay, subsequent actions shouldn’t take as long.

Please let me know if you still see sync issues or if this update fixes any for you. It’ll help me understand the types of sync problems users are seeing.

There is a larger update on the way, but it’ll take at least a couple of weeks more to complete. The new update will include a large revamp of the lesson UI and home screen.

Version 1.24 - 2021/08/23

This new version adds a much-requested feature: deck reordering. On macOS, you can now drag decks to reorder them. On iOS, you can tap on the sort order icon in the deck list to enter edit mode and drag decks to reorder them.

This update also has many UI updates, including a refresh of the deck list theme. It does away with the dark appearance and uses a new lighter theme. For those wondering, yes, dark mode will eventually get added, but I’m not sure quite when I’ll get to it.

On macOS, the card editor has been improved. The editor is much easier to use and includes the ability to scroll through the text content.

Lastly, if you haven’t yet, please be sure to give the app a review in the App Store. It helps improve its search ranking. Thanks!

Version 1.23 - 2021/07/18

This new version fixes a major bug with the sync engine that would often cause the sync to get “stuck” and never complete. If you are still seeing sync issues after this update, please email support@ussher.ca with details.

This update also adds a new feature, Match Game. This can be found in the Drills section of the app and is a simple game where you are given a random set of six card fronts and backs, which you must match one by one. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Version 1.22

This version number was skipped due to build issues.

Version 1.21 - 2021/06/27

This is a minor update for both iOS and macOS. This new version fixes a bug where new cards in lessons would not be reviewed more than once if they came at the end of the lesson. This version also allows you to turn off auto-playing of audio.

macOS

iOS

Version 1.20 - 2021/06/10

macOS

This release features several new shortcut keys to make using the app even easier:

Lesson tweaks:

iOS

Lesson tweaks:

Bug fix:

Version 1.19 - 2021/06/05

macOS

iOS

Version 1.18 - 2021/05/09

macOS

Several minor fixes and improvements:

iOS

Several minor fixes and improvements:

Version 1.16 - 2021/04/09

macOS

This release has a ton of improvements that focus on the learning aspect of the app.

Miscellaneous minor improvements:

iOS

This release has a ton of improvements that focus on the learning aspect of the app.

Miscellaneous minor improvements:

Version 1.15 - 2021/02/28

macOS

Fresh Cards keeps on improving! This new version has a ton of new features and bug fixes.

New features:

Bug fixes and improvements:

iOS

Fresh Cards keeps on improving! This new version has a ton of new features and bug fixes.

New features:

Bug fixes and improvements:

Version 1.14 - 2021/02/06

macOS

iOS

Version 1.13 - 2021/01/18

macOS

A wonderful set of improvements:

iOS

Several minor improvements this release:

2021/01/04

macOS (Version 1.0.22)

Fresh Cards continues to improve with each release! This update has a ton of improvements, some listed below:

Nitty gritty details:

iOS (Version 1.12)

Fresh Cards continues to improve with each release! This update has a ton of improvements, some listed below:

nitty gritty:

2020/12/24

macOS (Version 1.0.21)

Fresh Cards gets better and better:

iOS (Version 1.11)

Fresh Cards gets better and better:

2020/12/07

macOS (Version 1.0.20)

iOS (Version 1.10)

2020/11/15

macOS (Version 1.0.18)

iOS (Version 1.8)

2020/11/12

macOS (Version 1.0.17)

iOS (Version 1.7)

2020/11/08

macOS (Version 1.0.15)

iOS (Version 1.5)

Version 1.0.14 - 2020/10/29

First Mac App Store build.

Version 1.0.3 - 2020/07/18

First beta