Playlist

The Playlist shows the cards under whatever you’ve selected in the Deck Browser — a deck, a folder, a tag, the Unfiled node, or Trash — in some order, ready to study. Change the selection and the Playlist updates to match. Tapping the play button at the bottom kicks off a study session using those cards, in that order.

The playlist isn’t a fixed list. It’s a view you can reshape, and a handful of controls are worth knowing about: the default Study Queue view, the daily cap, the +/− buttons, the filter button, the redaction toggle, and the stats icon.

The default view: Study Queue

By default the playlist uses a filter called Study Queue, which splits the deck into two sections:

• Study Queue — cards you haven’t studied yet today. Sorted by next due date, with brand-new cards (never studied before) at the end. This is, effectively, “what you should study next.”
• Studied Today — cards you’ve already gone through in today’s sessions. Also sorted by next due date.

When you tap play, the session studies all the cards in both sections, so if you want to repeat cards from earlier today you can.

Redacted vs. revealed

Cards in the Study Queue are redacted (hidden behind blocks) by default — they’re cards you’re about to test yourself on, so the app doesn’t want to spoil them. Cards in Studied Today are always revealed: you’ve already seen them this session, and showing them lets you scan at a glance what you’ve gone through.

A quick rule of thumb: if you see a redacted card, it hasn’t been studied today yet.

If you want to override this — for example to peek at cards before studying — there’s an eye button that toggles redaction.

The daily cap

When the top-level deck node is selected in the deck browser (not a folder, not “Unfiled”), the Study Queue is capped at a fixed size — by default 50 cards per day, configurable in the deck’s settings (see Decks › deck preferences). As you study, cards move from Study Queue into Studied Today, so the combined size of the two sections stays at the cap.

Adjusting today’s queue on the fly

When the top-level deck node is selected, you’ll see + and − buttons around the Study Queue header count. These let you tweak today’s queue without changing the deck’s default:

• Tap − to take cards out of today’s queue. Tap it enough times and the Study Queue section disappears entirely — handy if you just want to drill the cards you already studied today.
• Tap + to add more.
• If you’ve removed the Study Queue, a + Study Queue button appears so you can bring it back.

The +/− buttons and the daily cap only apply at the top-level deck node. If you select a sub-item — a folder, a tag, Unfiled, or Trash — the Study Queue section shows all of that sub-item’s cards with no cap and no +/− controls. So the top-level deck gives you a quick “study what’s natural today” workflow, and sub-items give you focused study across everything they contain.

Studying a single section

The play button at the bottom studies every card in the playlist across all sections. If you want to study just one section — say, only “Studied Today,” or only “Overdue” under the Seen filter — bring up the context menu on that section’s header (iOS: long-press the header; Mac: right-click it) and choose Start Study Session. The session will include only the cards under that header.

Due indicators and interval labels

Cards in the Playlist are sorted by next due date, but every card shows up regardless of whether it’s actually due yet — the due date drives the order and the label on each row, not whether the card appears at all.

Two visual cues tell you where a card stands:

• Overdue indicator — a small blue indicator next to cards that are due to be reviewed. The app’s UI also refers to these as “Overdue.”
• Interval label — for cards that aren’t yet due, a friendly relative-time label showing when the card next comes back. Examples: 25m (in 25 minutes), 5d (in 5 days), 2mo (in 2 months), 2y (in 2 years).

At a glance: blue-indicator cards are the ones the algorithm wants you to study now, and the interval labels show the algorithm’s plan for everything else. For why those labels say what they say, see The Spaced-Repetition Algorithm.

The filter button

Tapping the filter button (top-right of the playlist) lets you change which cards are in the playlist and in what order. Whatever you choose here is what your next session will study when you tap play.

The full set of filters:

• Study Queue — the default, described above. Splits the deck into “Study Queue” (not yet studied today, capped by the daily queue size) and “Studied Today.”
• Seen — every card that’s been reviewed at least once, grouped by where it sits in the schedule:
  • Overdue — cards whose next-due date is in the past. These are what the algorithm wants you to study now.
  • Scheduled — cards whose next-due date is in the future. Not due yet, but visible so you can drill them anyway.
  • Studied Today — cards already gone through in today’s sessions.

  Useful when you want to see the whole picture of what you’ve learned in a deck, separate from “what’s queued for today.”

• New — only cards you’ve never reviewed. Focus a session purely on learning new material.
• Weakest — sorts cards by which ones gave you the most trouble: cards you marked wrong most recently come first, followed by cards that have been harder to recall over time (cards you’re still actively learning). Cards you’re consistently getting right are hidden. Great for short sessions targeting your weak spots, and a natural follow-up to a session where you marked several cards wrong — switch to Weakest later (or the next day) to come back to them deliberately.
• Cram — re-orders the deck for a cram-style pass through everything. Cram is an ordering filter, not a preview mode: cards you study under Cram are graded normally and their schedule updates just like any other session. Use it before a test or when you want to power through a deck without the daily cap.
• Manual Order — shows cards in the order you’ve arranged them by hand. Drag cards in the playlist to set the order; the session then plays them in exactly that sequence. Handy for curated walkthroughs (e.g. a lesson plan) where the algorithm’s ordering isn’t what you want.
• Starred — only cards you’ve starred. There are two ways to toggle a card’s starred state: from the Playlist (iOS: long-press the card for a context menu; Mac: click the star button next to the card) or from the Study UI while the card is on screen. This filter is how you come back to your collected stars across a deck.

This is the part of the app that rewards experimentation. Try a filter, look at what shows up in the playlist, and if it looks right, tap play.

The stats icon

The bar chart icon (also top-right of the playlist) opens the stats for this deck — how many cards are due, your study history for this deck, how cards are distributed across learning stages, and so on. More on this in Stats & Streaks.

Related

• Deck Browser — the sidebar where you pick which deck’s playlist to view.
• Decks — per-deck settings including the daily queue cap.
• Studying — the study session itself, filter modes in depth.
• Stats & Streaks — what the bar chart icon opens.