Sync & Devices

Fresh Cards on Mac and iPhone / iPad shares the same decks, cards, and study history through your iCloud account. There’s no separate account to create — if you’re signed into iCloud on both devices, sync just works.

This page is still being written. The outline below shows what’s planned — the full content will land in an upcoming Help update.

This section will cover:

• How sync works — iCloud (CloudKit) under the hood; one user, multiple devices; no separate login.
• Setting up a second device — what to expect when you install on a new Mac or iPhone signed into the same iCloud.
• What syncs — decks, cards, attachments (images / audio), study history, streaks, deck preferences.
• What doesn’t sync — device-local settings (e.g. text size on this device).
• Offline use — studying and adding cards offline; changes upload when you reconnect.
• First sync on a new device is slow — when you install on a fresh device, iCloud streams your decks down in the background. Text-only cards usually arrive within minutes; attachments (images, audio) can take much longer — minutes to hours depending on how much you have. The app is fully usable while this is happening; cards and attachments fill in as they arrive.
• Why sync isn’t instant — Fresh Cards uses Apple’s CloudKit, which batches and rate-limits changes rather than pushing every edit immediately. A card you add on one device typically appears on the other within seconds to a couple of minutes; longer waits are normal under poor connectivity or heavy load.
• Sync status — how to tell whether the app is up to date.
• Signing out of iCloud / switching accounts — what happens to local data.
• Premium across devices — one purchase unlocks Premium on every device using the same iCloud account (see Premium).

Sub-pages (to be created as detail grows):

• troubleshooting-sync.md — diagnosing sync issues (also cross-linked from Troubleshooting)