Deck Browser
The deck browser is the main navigation surface of the app: a list of all your decks, with each deck expandable to reveal its sub-items. Selecting a deck or any of its sub-items opens the corresponding playlist. It lives in the left sidebar on both Mac and iOS. On iPhone, where there’s no room for a permanent sidebar, you can swipe in from the left edge to reveal it, or tap the sidebar toggle in the top-left.
Anatomy
At the top level, the deck browser lists your decks — one row per deck. Expand a deck to reveal its sub-items, which always appear in this order:
- Unfiled — cards in the deck that aren’t in any folder. Always present.
- Folders — one row per folder you’ve created in this deck, listed between Unfiled and Trash. Only shown if the deck has folders.
- Trash — cards and folders that have been moved to the trash. Always present.
- Tagged — a header that appears only if at least one card in the deck has a tag. Underneath it is one row per tag found in the deck.
Deck rows
A deck row shows the deck’s name and, when applicable, a small blue indicator. The indicator’s default behavior is to appear when the deck’s Study Queue has at least one card waiting — a quick “this deck has something for you today” signal. You can change when (or whether) the indicator appears in the deck’s settings (see Decks).
Deck rows do not show a card count — only the indicator.
Sub-item rows
Every sub-item — Unfiled, each folder, Trash, and each tag under Tagged — shows its name with a count of cards in that item. This is the total card count for the sub-item, not a due-today count.
How selection shapes the Playlist
Think of the deck browser as the first stage of filtering and the Playlist’s filter button as the second stage. Whatever you pick in the deck browser decides which cards the Playlist starts with; the Playlist filter then sorts or narrows that set further.
- Top-level deck — the whole deck. This is the only selection that gets the capped daily Study Queue and the +/− buttons; see Playlist › the daily cap.
- Unfiled — only cards in the deck that aren’t in any folder.
- A folder — only cards in that folder.
- A tag (under Tagged) — only cards with that tag.
- Trash — only cards (and the contents of folders) that have been moved to the trash.
In every case, the Playlist filter you’ve picked (Study Queue, Seen, New, Weakest, Cram, Manual Order, Starred) is then applied on top of that scope. So selecting a folder and choosing the New filter shows only the new cards in that folder; selecting a tag and choosing Weakest shows your weakest cards with that tag; and so on.
The one thing that doesn’t carry over to sub-items is the daily cap. Sub-items show all matching cards with no cap and no +/− controls — so they’re the right pick when you want to drill more deeply than the daily queue allows.
Folders
Folders are how you sub-organize a deck. They appear under their deck between Unfiled and Trash, can be nested, and can be reordered.
Creating a folder
- Both platforms: bring up the context menu on the deck (or on an existing folder, to create a child folder) and choose New Folder.
- Mac: File › New Folder, shortcut ⇧⌘N.
Moving cards into a folder
- Mac: drag a card from the Playlist onto a folder in the Deck Browser. Drag alone moves the card; hold ⌥ (Option) while dropping to copy it instead.
- iOS: open the context menu on the card in the Playlist and use the move action — drag-and-drop into folders isn’t supported on iOS.
Nesting and reordering
Folders can be nested to any depth. Drag a folder in the Deck Browser to either reorder it among its siblings or drop it onto another folder to make it a child.
Renaming and deleting
Use the context menu on a folder to rename or delete it. Deleting a folder moves it (and its contents) to the deck’s Trash, not straight to oblivion — to permanently remove it you have to empty the Trash.
Moving a folder to a different deck
Folders aren’t truly portable between decks — they belong to their deck. But you can produce the same effect by moving (or copying) a folder across decks:
- Mac: drag the folder onto a different deck in the Deck Browser. The folder, its sub-folders, and all of its cards are copied into the target deck, and the original folder is placed into its source deck’s Trash. Hold ⌥ (Option) while dropping to keep the original in place (a true copy).
- iOS: use the context menu on the folder for the move or duplicate action — drag-and-drop across decks isn’t supported on iOS.
Reordering decks
Decks can be reordered by drag-and-drop at the top level of the Deck Browser, on both Mac and iOS. The order is purely manual — there’s no alphabetical-sort option — and newly created decks always appear at the bottom.
Decks can’t be dragged into folders, since folders live inside a deck, not the other way around.
Context menu actions
Right-click on Mac, long-press on iOS. The items available depend on what you’re clicking.
Deck row
- Mac: Add Folder, Rename, Move to Trash, Copy Deck ID (Mac-only).
- iOS: Add Sub-folder, Rename, Move to…, Copy to…, Move to Trash.
Folder row
- Mac: Add Sub-folder, Rename, Move to Trash.
- iOS: Add Sub-folder, Rename, Move to…, Copy to…, Move to Trash.
The iOS Move to… and Copy to… items are what you use instead of drag-and-drop to relocate or duplicate a folder across decks (covered above in Moving a folder to a different deck).
Unfiled row
- Both platforms: Add Sub-folder. The new folder is created as a sibling of Unfiled (i.e. at the top level of the deck), not inside it.
Trash row
- Both platforms: Empty Trash. This permanently removes everything currently in the deck’s Trash.
Tagged and per-tag rows
The Tagged header has no context menu. Individual tag rows are likewise inert as far as context-menu actions go — they’re for selection only.
Card row (in the Playlist)
- Mac: Edit, Move to Trash.
- iOS: Star, Move to Folder…, Copy to Folder…, Select Multiple (enters a selection mode for batch operations on multiple cards), Move to Trash.
The Trash
Each deck has its own Trash, shown as the last fixed row under the deck (after Unfiled and any folders). Nothing is permanently deleted until you empty it, and the Trash syncs across your devices along with everything else in your library.
What ends up in the Trash
- Folders you delete — the folder goes into Trash with all of its cards (and any sub-folders and their cards) intact.
- Individual cards you move to Trash from the Playlist.
Cards that already lived inside a folder when the folder was trashed stay inside that folder; they don’t get hoisted out into the deck’s top-level trashed-cards list.
Browsing the Trash
- Selecting the Trash row shows the cards that were individually trashed from the deck — i.e. just the cards at the Trash’s top level, not cards inside trashed folders.
- Selecting a folder under Trash shows the cards inside that folder, exactly the way that folder behaves outside of Trash.
Restoring
- iOS: open the context menu on a trashed folder or a trashed card and choose Restore.
- Mac: restore by dragging the folder or card out of the Trash and dropping it where you want it.
Permanently deleting
- Empty Trash from the Trash row’s context menu (both platforms) removes everything currently in the deck’s Trash for good.
- Mac: to remove a single item, use the Delete option in the context menu on a trashed folder or card. A confirmation prompt appears before the item is permanently removed.
- iOS: you can also remove items one at a time — swipe a folder in the Trash to reveal a Delete button (with confirmation), or use the context menu on a card to delete a single card.
The blue indicator
The small blue dot on a deck row is controlled by two settings working together: a per-deck opt-in and an app-wide rule for when to actually show it. Both settings sync across your devices.
Per-deck: opt this deck in
Each deck has a Show indicator on this deck preference, found in the deck’s settings. It’s on by default. Turn it off for a deck you don’t want signaling for at all — that deck will never show the blue indicator, regardless of the app-wide rule.
App-wide: when to show it
In General settings, the Deck indicator option picks the rule that decides when an opted-in deck lights up:
- When study queue is available — the deck’s top-level Study Queue has at least one card waiting.
- When overdue cards exist — the deck has at least one overdue card (next-due date in the past).
- When not yet studied — you haven’t studied any cards from this deck today.
Pick whichever matches how you think about “this deck needs attention.” For most people the default — Study Queue available — lines up with the daily flow of the app.
- Context menu actions — right-click (Mac) / long-press (iOS).
- The Trash — how cards and folders get there and how to restore or permanently delete them.
- Blue indicator behavior — the per-deck setting that controls when the indicator appears.