Docs / Basics
Custom study & tags
Study exactly what you want: pick decks, then open Custom study for a mode, tags and a card count. Links can be bookmarked.
The study page
Go to /study to set up a session. Three quick starts sit at the top:
| Button | What it starts |
|---|---|
| All due today | Today’s cards from every deck, ignoring the deck choices below. |
| 10 extra new cards | Ten new cards beyond today’s limit, from your selection below. |
| Quick cram | 25 random cards from your selection, practice only. |
Below them, tick the decks to study. Start studying runs today’s cards for them, and Custom study opens a popup with every other way to study them: a mode, tags to include or leave out, how many cards and in what order. Askesis remembers your choices on this device.
Choosing decks
- Tick a deck to include it. A parent deck always includes its subdecks, so ticking it ticks the branch.
- Untick one subdeck and its parent shows a dash: only part of the branch is selected.
- All decks selects everything, including decks you add later.
- Each row shows today’s New, Learn and Due counts, with its subdecks added in.
- The play button on a row starts today’s cards for just that deck and its subdecks.
Study modes
The Custom study popup lists every mode, each with the number of cards it would give right now.
| Mode | What it studies | Options | Reschedules? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today’s cards | Learning cards, due reviews and new cards, within each deck’s daily limits. The normal session. | Order | Yes |
| Quick study | Today’s cards you’re closest to forgetting: learning steps that are up, then due reviews from the lowest chance of recall, then new cards if there’s room. The dashboard’s Quick study button starts 20. | Up to N cards | Yes |
| Extra new cards | New cards beyond today’s limit, in each deck’s new-card order. | Up to N cards (10, 25, 50, 100 or any number) | Yes |
| Review ahead | Review cards that come due in the next few days. | Due in the next N days (default 3), up to N cards | Yes |
| Forgotten cards | Cards you pressed Again on recently, whatever their state now. | Forgotten in the last N days (default 7), up to N cards | Yes |
| Cram | Any cards in your selection, new or not. | Up to N cards | No, practice only |
Order is Mixed (learning cards first, then reviews with new cards spread among them), Due date, or Random. In Today’s cards, learning cards always come first; Quick study has its own order, most at risk first. Suspended and buried cards are left out of every mode.
- Answers in every mode except Cram are saved and reschedule the card, just like a normal session.
- Extra new cards count toward today’s new-card limit, so do your regular session first, or you’ll only be taking today’s new cards early.
- Cram answers aren’t saved: they don’t change when cards come back, and earn no XP.
When extra study is worth it, and when it isn’t: Studying extra.
Filtering by tags
The tag filter, in the Custom study popup, narrows the selected decks to cards with certain tags. Leave it empty to study every card in them.
- Include a tag (its + button) to study only cards that have it.
- Exclude a tag (its − button) to leave out every card that has it, even cards that match an included tag.
- Clicking a tag’s name cycles it: include, exclude, off.
| Setting | Studies |
|---|---|
| Any of them | Default. Cards with at least one of the included tags. |
| All of them | Only cards that have every included tag. Available once you include two or more. |
| Excluded tags | Cards with any excluded tag are always left out. |
A tag covers the tags below it. Tags nest with ::, so including lpic1 also matches lpic1::chapter::01 and everything else under lpic1. Excluding works the same way. Matching ignores upper and lower case.
To find tags:
- Most used shows your ten most common tags. Click once to include, again to exclude. Right-click or Shift-click excludes straight away.
- Search filters as you type. Several words must all appear, and the best matches come first: the exact tag, then a level with that name, then levels starting with it.
- All tags is a tree. Expand a tag to see the ones below it; each shows how many cards it covers.
Your picks are listed at the bottom of the popup, under Selected tags, with a sentence that spells out the filter, for example “Cards tagged verbs or nouns, without leech. 120 cards match in the selected decks.”
The live preview
The Today panel on the study page counts today’s cards for the selected decks. In the Custom study popup, each mode shows how many cards it would give, and the footer counts the session your choices make, updating as you change them:
- The number of cards, split into new, learning and review.
- A time estimate, at about 8 seconds per review or learning card and 20 seconds per new card.
- If no card in the selected decks has your tags, it says so and Start custom study stays disabled.
Session links
Every session has its own address. Start one from the study page and the address bar holds the link: bookmark it to repeat that exact session. Every parameter is optional, and values that don’t make sense fall back to the defaults.
/study/session?decks=<id,id>&tags=a,b&match=all&xtags=c&mode=cram&order=random&limit=50| Parameter | Values | Default |
|---|---|---|
decks | Deck ids, separated by commas. Subdecks are included. | All decks |
tags | Tags to include, separated by commas (up to 20). | None |
match | any or all: how included tags combine. | any |
xtags | Tags to exclude, separated by commas (up to 20). | None |
mode | scheduled (Today’s cards), new, ahead, forgotten or cram | scheduled |
order | mixed, due or random | mixed |
limit | 1–1000 cards. Today’s cards ignores it and uses the daily limits. | 100 |
ahead | Days to look ahead in review-ahead mode, 1–365. | 3 |
forgotten | Days to look back in forgotten mode, 1–365. | 7 |
During a session
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Space or Enter | Show the answer; once it’s shown, answer Good |
| 1 2 3 4 | |
| Z or ⌘/Ctrl Z | Undo your last answer |
| L | Later: move the card to the end of this session |
| E | Edit the card |
| B | Bury: hide the card until tomorrow |
| S | Suspend: hide the card until you unsuspend it in Decks |
| ? | Show all shortcuts |
| Esc | Close a panel, or end the session |
Undo restores the card exactly as it was before your answer. Later doesn’t touch the card’s schedule; it only moves it to the back of the queue. On small screens the same actions are compact buttons by the card. Session preferences (text size, alignment, interval previews, timer, focus mode and more) are saved on this device. Which of Later, Bury and Suspend to use: Bury, suspend or later.