Flashcard Generator from Your Notes

How it works (and what's actually doing the work)

We want to be straight about this: the default generator is not a cloud AI. It's Smart import, a set of rules that reads the structure of your notes and turns it into cards instantly. It's fast, it works offline, and it's predictable — the same notes give the same cards every time.

If your browser has a built-in AI model (currently desktop Chrome), you can also opt in to that. It's optional, it runs on your device, and nothing is sent to a server either way. More on that below.

What Smart import recognises

Smart import looks for patterns that people already use when they take notes:

• Q/A lines like "Q: What is osmosis?" followed by "A: ..."
• Term – definition lines using a dash, colon, or equals sign
• Tables, where the first column becomes the front and the second the back
• Headings with the text underneath them
• Bold terms followed by an explanation
• Bulleted and numbered lists
• Cloze candidates — sentences with numbers, dates, or names that can become fill-in-the-blank cards

Review the cards it produces and delete or fix any you don't want. Notes that are well structured give the best results; a wall of unformatted prose gives fewer cards, and that's where the optional AI can help.

Sources: paste, PDF, Word, or a photo

Paste text straight from a document or web page, or open a PDF or DOCX file. For handwritten notes, textbook pages, or slides, upload an image and we run OCR on your device to pull the text out first. English OCR works out of the box; other languages download a small language data file the first time you pick them.

For a PDF-specific walkthrough, see PDF to flashcards.

Optional on-device AI (supported browsers)

Some browsers now include a small AI model of their own — at the moment that's mainly Chrome on desktop computers. When yours does, a Write cards with AI button appears in Smart import. The model writes question-and-answer pairs from free-form text. If the browser hasn't fetched its model yet, it downloads it once the first time (the browser manages this, not us). If your browser has no built-in model, the button simply doesn't appear and Smart import works as usual.

A few honest caveats:

• It's opt-in, and only available where the browser provides a model — usually desktop Chrome, not phones.
• It's slower than Smart import, especially the first time.
• Small models make mistakes. Read the cards before you study them — the same advice applies to any AI-generated cards.

Because the model runs locally, your notes stay on your computer even when AI is on.

After you generate

Generated cards go into the normal editor, so you can fix wording, change card types (basic, reverse, cloze, multiple choice, type-in), add images, and then study with spaced repetition, Learn, Test, or Match. You can also print them or export to Anki.

Writing cards yourself is still a good way to learn — choosing what matters is part of the work. A generator is most useful for turning notes you've already written into a first draft.

Getting better results from Smart import

A few small formatting habits make a big difference to what Smart import finds. Put one term per line with a separator, like "Mitosis – cell division that produces two identical cells". Use headings for topics and bullet points underneath. Bold the key term at the start of a sentence. Write review questions as "Q:" and "A:" lines.

If your notes are already in that shape, you'll usually get a usable deck on the first try. If they're mostly paragraphs, consider spending two minutes adding dashes or headings before importing. It's quicker than fixing dozens of cards afterwards, and it tends to improve the notes themselves.