My Anki setup for Chinese flashcards

Overview

I use Anki (opens in a new tab) for practice with readings Chinese words and phrases. Getting a note type and add-on setup that doesn’t need to be rebuilt for every new deck has made it much easier to keep adding vocabulary instead of fighting the tool.

Custom “Chinese” note type

I started with a note type I built for a 50-common-phrases deck, then renamed it to “Chinese” so I could reuse it for every deck going forward instead of creating a new one each time.

Two things make it worth reusing:

• A Pleco field. I added a field that renders a link straight into Pleco’s dictionary entry for the word. See my Pleco power-user guide for the exact plecoapi:// snippet.
• A flipped card template. Alongside the normal character-to-English card, I added a second card template that shows the English first and asks me to produce the Chinese, which is closer to how I actually need to recall the language in conversation.

Add-ons

HyperTTS (opens in a new tab) (add-on ID 111623432) bulk-generates audio for existing notes instead of recording or sourcing clips one at a time. I followed their guide for adding collection audio (opens in a new tab) and ran it across all three of my decks in one pass.

Exporting and sharing decks

To hand a deck to someone else, or just to back it up:

1. Open Anki on desktop
2. Click File > Export
3. Export format: Anki Deck Package (.apkg) for other Anki users, with Include media checked
4. For non-Anki users, also export as TXT or CSV. It’s worth doing since Anki costs $24 upfront on iOS and not everyone wants to pay just to try a deck

For backing up my full collection (not just one deck), I use Anki Collection Package (.colpkg) instead, which is covered in my critical file backup guide.

Practical tips

• Bump up the font size if you’re squinting at small characters on a phone screen: Tools > Manage Note Types > select the note type > Cards > Styling tab > change the font size > Apply > Close > Sync.
• Keep everything in one reusable note type per subject (in my case, “Chinese”) rather than a one-off type per deck, so add-ons and templates only need to be set up once.

Related

• Pleco: a power-user guide
• Critical file backup process guide