Bringing decks in

5.1 Where import lives

Every import starts on the Interests screen. JustFlip! recognises the file by its name and content, so the same entry points take every format.

The main import accepts several files at once, and whole folders: every supported file inside is imported.

5.1.1 What each file becomes

For Anki and CSV files, JustFlip! first asks where to put the cards. The Import Cards sheet has an Interest menu — including New Interest… — and, for a spreadsheet, a Deck Name. Tap Continue.

When the import creates a new interest, the sheet also offers Include in device search, which decides whether its cards can appear in Spotlight (Chapter 8).

5.2 Anki decks

JustFlip! imports Anki’s deck packages (.apkg) and collection packages (.colpkg), from old and current versions of Anki. In Anki, use File › Export, choose Anki Deck Package, and include media. To bring your review progress too, also tick Include scheduling information. Then import the file as above.

The promise is simple: the learning content comes across; Anki’s presentation doesn’t. Your words, pictures, sounds, formulas and tags arrive, and so can your review progress. Anki’s styling and scripts stay behind.

5.2.1 What comes across

• Every card. Each Anki card becomes a JustFlip! card. Front/back, reversed and optional-reversed note types all work.
• Cloze notes, split up. A note with {{c1::…}}, {{c2::…}} and {{c3::…}} makes three JustFlip! cards, one per number, exactly as it did in Anki. Each card blanks its own number and shows the others filled in. A hint such as {{c1::Paris::capital}} is kept.
• Pictures, inline, in the order they appear. An Anki picture’s alternative text becomes what the voice says for it.
• Sound. Every [sound:…] on a side is kept, in order (Chapter 4).
• Image occlusion, from Anki’s own tool and from the older Image Occlusion Enhanced add-on. Both become native occlusion cards.
• Formatting: bold, italic, lists, links, small tables, maths and sub- and superscripts.
• Tags.
• Your review progress, if the export included scheduling information. Each card you studied keeps its interval, ease, due date and lapses, and its review log comes along as history, so a deck you have studied for years carries on where it was. Suspended cards arrive retired. Turn off Keep Anki progress on the import sheet to start every card as new instead.
• Deck structure, flattened. JustFlip! has no sub-decks, so Languages::Spanish::Verbs becomes one deck called Languages / Spanish / Verbs.

5.2.2 What stays in Anki

• Anki’s FSRS parameters. If you used FSRS in Anki, its parameters and each card’s memory state are not imported. A card keeps its interval, due date and review log, and takes the default ease.
• Progress from shared decks. A deck you downloaded and never studied has no history to bring, so its cards start as new.
• Styling. Custom CSS, fonts and colours are simplified away.
• Code. JavaScript and add-ons never run, and are not kept.
• Anything online. Remote images, embedded pages and iframes are not fetched.
• Video.
• Flags. Anki’s card flags are not carried over.
• The repeated question. Anki shows the question again on the answer side; JustFlip! flips the card in place, so that copy is dropped. Cloze cards are the exception, because there the repeated sentence is the answer.

5.2.3 The import sheet

Importing a single Anki file from the Add or import menu, from Files or by dragging opens Import from Anki. It reads the package first — Checking the package…, Unpacking…, Reading cards… — then shows Ready to study: how many Anki decks, Cards, Images and Audio it found.

If the package contains cards you have studied, the sheet also shows Keep Anki progress, on by default. With it on, those cards keep their Anki schedule and review history. Turn it off and every card starts fresh.

Under What changed is the import report: one plain sentence for each thing worth knowing before you commit. For example:

• 240 cards keep their Anki schedule and review history. (Or, for a shared deck or with Keep Anki progress off: Cards start fresh here. Your Anki review history stays in Anki.)
• Answers no longer repeat the question — JustFlip keeps it on screen while you flip.
• 12 images could not be read and were left out.
• 3 cards had nothing on their question side and were skipped.
• 2 fields came from Anki add-ons and were left out.

Nothing is written into your cards. A missing picture is simply missing, and the report is the only place that says so.

Under Options are the Decks the import will create, and one choice — If you already have these cards:

JustFlip! remembers which Anki note and card each imported card came from, so matching works even after you edit the question in JustFlip!. Tap Import to add the cards.

5.3 Spreadsheets (CSV)

A CSV file is the simplest way to move a list into JustFlip!: a vocabulary list, a glossary, an export from another app. Each row is one card; one column is the question, another the answer.

Question,Answer
el perro,the dog
el gato,the cat
"la casa, el hogar",the home

After Continue, Import CSV shows a live preview:

• Separator — comma, semicolon, pipe or tab. JustFlip! guesses it from the first rows; change it if the columns look wrong.
• Skip first row as header — off at first. Turn it on when your first row holds column titles.
• Column Mapping — pick which column is Front (Question) and which is Back (Answer). Other columns are ignored.
• Preview — the first rows as they will be read.

Tap Import (N) when it looks right.

A few details that save a second attempt:

• Put a field in double quotes when it contains the separator or a line break; write a quote inside it as "".
• Text can use the card markup from Chapter 3 — bold, maths, cloze. A {{c1::…}} in a CSV cell stays one card with all its blanks; CSV cards are never split the way Anki cloze notes are.
• A row with an empty question is skipped. A row with an empty answer is imported as a card with no answer.
• CSV cards have no language, no pictures and no tags.

5.4 Decks made with AI

The easiest deck to learn from is the one made from your material: your notes, a chapter, a lecture transcript. JustFlip! doesn’t talk to any AI itself. Instead, the website gives your AI the instructions for writing a JustFlip! deck file, and you import the result.

A chat AI can only hand back text, so the AI Prompt page asks for a text-only deck. A coding agent can open your local images and audio and pack them into a zip, with descriptions, licences and even image occlusion.

Import the file like any other. The file names its own interest and decks, so there is no setup sheet: JustFlip! uses an interest with that name if you have one, and creates it otherwise. A deck file can also set each deck’s language, so the cards are ready to be read aloud.

5.5 Paste cards

Sometimes the cards are already on your clipboard — a chat AI’s reply, a column from a spreadsheet, a list in Notes. Choose Add or import → Paste cards. As its How it works note explains, you copy the cards — one per line, question and answer separated by a comma — and tap Paste. JustFlip! finds the cards inside what you copied, including inside a chat AI’s code block, and ignores the text around them.

A pasted list goes through the same Import Cards and Import CSV sheets as a CSV file, into a deck named Pasted cards unless you change it. A pasted deck file — the JSON an AI writes from the AI Prompt page — is imported like a .flashcards file. Nothing leaves your device.

5.6 Curated decks

The Decks page on the website is a small library of ready-made decks — languages, music, mathematics, programming and science — in every language the app speaks. Tap Download deck, then open the file with JustFlip!. They are ordinary .flashcards and .flashcards.zip files, so everything in Importing the same file again applies to them too.

5.7 Importing the same file again

Deck files — .flashcards and .flashcards.zip from an AI, the curated library or your own editor — are designed to be imported again and again. Fix a typo in the file, add ten cards, import it: your deck is updated instead of doubled.

This is how JustFlip! matches them up:

1. The interest is the one with the file’s interest name. Letter case and stray spaces don’t matter.
2. The deck is the one in that interest with exactly the file’s deck name.
3. Each card is matched by its question text, exactly as written. A match is updated in place — its answer, pictures and sounds are replaced from the file, and its progress is kept. A card with no match is added.

Cards that are in your deck but not in the file are left alone; an import never deletes anything.

Anki packages follow their own rule — the choice in the import sheet. CSV files are never matched at all.

5.8 Exporting and sharing

To take an interest with you, press and hold it (right-click on a Mac) and choose Export archive. On a Mac, File › Export Interest… (⇧⌘E) does the same for the selected interest. JustFlip! writes one file, Interest name.flashcards.zip, and asks where to save it.

The archive holds everything in that interest: every deck and card, the pictures and sounds, and your full review progress. Save it to Files or iCloud Drive, AirDrop it, or send it like any other file.

Importing an archive restores exactly that interest. Its interest, decks and cards are matched by the hidden identifiers the archive carries, not by their names, so nothing is doubled — renamed decks are found too.

The same menu has Export statistics, as a Spreadsheet (CSV) or Full Data (JSON). Those files are for reading and analysis, not for importing back (Chapter 9). For a backup of your whole library, see Chapter 10.

5.9 When an import surprises you

↑ Back to top · All chapters · PDF