Solid Memo is a flashcard app. It brings each card back shortly before you'd forget it, so a little study every day goes a long way. Your cards and your study live in your own Solid Pod, not on Solid Memo's servers. You can try it in your browser first, without an account.
This page walks you through the app at https://solid-memo.com/ screen by screen, each section linking the page on how that part works. The user journeys take the same walk as tests, clicking through the real app in a browser on every change, and the last table says which journey shows which part. CI's report on the site's version, with a screenshot of every step, is at https://journeys.solid-memo.com/ (after a deploy by hand, the last release's).
- Pod: your own online storage, run by a Pod provider you choose, or by yourself. Apps that follow the Solid standards keep your data there, and you decide who may read it.
- WebID: the web address that identifies you, from your Pod provider. You log in on your provider's page: Solid Memo never sees your password.
- Instance: one collection of your decks and study, in a folder of your Pod. Most people need only one.
- Deck: a set of cards on one subject. Card: a front and a back, each with text, a picture, or both.
- Course: a deck that teaches short pieces of theory, each checked by questions that become cards in your deck once answered.
- Library: ready-made decks and courses, free to copy into your instance.
Solid Memo runs in the current version of:
- Chrome and Edge, and other browsers built on Chromium;
- Firefox;
- Safari, on a Mac and on an iPhone or iPad.
Something that doesn't work in these is a bug: open a bug report with the browser and its version. Older versions and other browsers may work, but aren't supported.
Every user journey runs in Chromium. Logging in, the guest journey and reloading during a study session run in Firefox, WebKit (Safari's engine) and WebKit on an iPhone's screen too (testing.md). These are Playwright's builds, not the browsers you install, so no test runs on a real iPhone.
The first screen offers three ways in (onboarding.md):
- Try it without logging in. You study as a guest, and what you learn stays in this browser only, as a line at the top says, with "Keep my study: log in" and "Discard". When you log in later, move your study into an instance you have or a new one, discard it, or decide later (guest-mode.md): each card is then in your Pod where you left it.
- Log in with your Pod. Pick your provider, or type your WebID under "Or use your WebID" and press "Log in with Solid". You log in on the provider's page and come back to Solid Memo, which finds your Pod from your profile and says "Your Pod is connected." Press Continue (authentication.md). To go straight on next time, on every device, first check "Don't show this screen after logging in" (onboarding.md).
- No Pod yet? "Create a Pod" opens a provider's sign-up page in a new tab. Come back when you're done, and log in.
The first time you log in, Solid Memo asks which storage to use if your Pod has more than one, then a name for your instance and where in your Pod to keep it. After that, logging in takes you straight to your decks. "Log out", at the top, ends the session.
- At the top: the Solid Memo logo, which takes you home; the language list (a globe and the language's name); the light and dark toggle; and who you're logged in as, with "Log out".
- The instance bar names the instance you're in, with "Open in your Pod" (or "Kept in this browser", for a guest), and links to its Statistics and Preferences, "Open in Studio" and "Switch instance".
- The breadcrumb under it shows where you are, such as Decks › Spanish › Browser, each part a link back up. Back and Forward work, and every screen has its own address to bookmark or open in a new tab (routing.md).
- "Skip to content" is the first thing the Tab key reaches.
- "Something went wrong" takes a screen's place if it breaks, and the top and the footer stay. Try again, or Go to the start. Copy details and Report it help you tell the project: paste the copied details into the report, and nothing of them is sent unless you send it (privacy.md).
The deck list is home. From the top:
- New in Solid Memo: the app's highlights this browser hasn't shown, newest first, under the version's number. Close puts it away on this browser until a later version brings more. A first visit shows none, and a version that only fixes things brings none.
- Today: once you've studied today, your streak (days in a row), a word of praise and the day's numbers, with a link to all your statistics (statistics.md). Finish every deck's cards for the day and the strip turns gold, with a burst of stars from its flame. Before you study, a welcome back: the streak that studying today keeps, a note on it that changes daily, and the cards left for today. After a streak has lapsed, a gentle note to start a new one.
- Your courses: each course you've added and not finished, started or not, with how many of its chapters are done and a button to start it or go on where you left off. Courses run alongside your other decks. While all your decks are courses, the strip points to the Deck library, since you can add other decks at any time (courses.md).
- Try FSRS-6: while your instance schedules with SM-2, an invitation to switch to FSRS-6, the recommended scheduler, whose intervals differ more by your answer and adapt to how late you review. Switch to FSRS-6 switches at once (Preferences); Not now puts it away for good on every device, since your Pod's preferences keep it (srs.md).
- Decks: each deck, with a Study button when cards are waiting today, or "Done for today". Click a deck's name to open its page. A library deck says "New release" after its name when the library has a newer release, and its page offers the update. A new instance with no decks offers the course for newcomers here: "Start the course".
- Each deck's menu, at the end of its row, offers its preferences, Rename, moves up, down and into groups, "Open in Studio", and "Delete deck". Drag a deck onto another to make a group, and in and out of groups. Deleting a group keeps its decks.
- At the bottom: Create deck, Deck library and Add from a link.
A deck's page says how many cards are due today and how many are new, with a Study button, and shows:
- who made the deck, its license and its description, when the deck says so, as a library deck does;
- a notice when the library has a newer release of the deck, with an offer to update your copy card by card, keeping your changes and your progress (migrations.md);
- "Reset today's study", once you've studied the deck today, to undo today's answers for this deck (srs.md);
- the deck's statistics in short, with "More statistics" for all of them: where its cards stand, the cards you forget most and, in a course's deck, the wrong options you choose most. When some cards are leeches, Cram the leeches lets you practice those now (Cramming the leeches).
Its buttons lead to Preferences (the deck's name, its own daily limits, the language its cards are shown in first, and the languages of its text), the Browser (its cards) and Open in Studio.
Press Study. A session holds the cards due today, with a few new ones mixed in (srs.md).
- The front of a card is shown. Try to remember the answer.
- Press Reveal (or Space) to see the back.
- Rate how well you remembered it, with the buttons or the number keys: 0 (no memory at all) to 5 (easy), or Again · Hard · Good · Easy, as you choose in the preferences. Under each button is how long the card would wait before coming back if you chose it.
Pressed the wrong button? Undo last answer (or U) takes your last answer back and shows that card again, while the session is open.
0 — Blackout, 1 — Wrong and Again bring a card back later in the same session. 2 — Almost doesn't, but the card starts over: it's due again the next day you study. Hard counts as remembered. The better you remember a card, the longer it waits: a day, then a few days, then weeks. That's spaced repetition, scheduled with FSRS-6 or SM-2 (srs.md). "End session", at the top, takes you back to your decks at any time, and nothing you answered is lost. When the session is over it says so, with "End session" under it and Undo beside it.
A deck you study both ways asks each card front to back and back to front, each on its own schedule.
A card with a picture? Tap the picture to see it as large as the screen allows. Pinch to zoom in, or double tap a spot to zoom in on it and double tap again to zoom back out; drag to look around. Tap once, press Escape, or throw the picture up or down to put it back.
A wrong card in a library deck, such as a bad translation? Report a mistake, under the card, opens a report on the project's issue tracker with the deck and the card filled in: say what's wrong. A deck added from a link has the link when its creator names a page for reports (deck-library.md).
A leech is a card you keep forgetting: 4 times or more in its reviews of the last 12 months. Cram the leeches, under a deck's hardest cards, asks that deck's leeches now, due or not, shuffled. You answer them as in a study session, and a card you get wrong comes back later in the cram. At the end, Cram again goes through them once more, as often as you like. Under the leeches on the statistics' Memory tab, Cram the leeches does the same for all your decks, each card's heading naming its deck.
Nothing in a cram is recorded, as the screen says throughout: not when the cards are due, nor your statistics, nor which cards are leeches, so the grades show no interval and there's no undo. A card stops being a leech only through your normal study (srs.md).
- Create deck, under the deck list, asks for a name and the language it's in.
- The Browser, from a deck's page, lists every card, ten to a page (browsing.md). There you describe the deck, choose which way it's studied (front to back, back to front, or both), add cards, and open a card to edit or remove it. Under the editor, a card's history shows when it comes back, how long until then, when you first studied it, and every answer you gave it.
- Add card opens a form for the front and the back: text, a picture, or both, and optional notes. It stays open, so you can add many in a row. Check "Format with Markdown" for code, lists or tables (markdown.md).
Deck library, under the deck list, lists ready-made decks (deck-library.md), each with the languages its cards are in. Search by name, description or keyword, or narrow the list to topics, or to decks with cards in the languages you check. Many decks teach a language: Arabic, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. Arabic has four: Basic Arabic and the most common nouns, verbs and adjectives.
- Click a deck to read what it covers, who made it, its license and sources, and Browse cards to list its cards.
- Preview shows its cards at random, recording nothing. A course's preview lists its chapters: open one to read each step's theory and answer its questions, as the course asks them.
- Report a mistake, on a deck's page and on each of its cards, reports a wrong card with its deck filled in.
- Copy link, on a deck's page, copies a link anyone can open: someone not logged in tries the deck as a guest (guest-mode.md).
- Check several decks and press Import, or import one from its own page. The copy is yours to edit. A deck you've imported is marked so.
- Add from a link adds a deck or a course someone published in their own Pod. Paste the link, and Solid Memo shows what it is and where it's published before you add it (deck-library.md).
You start a course, rather than import it, from its library page, a shared link, or the newcomer offer on an empty deck list (courses.md).
- The course's page lists its chapters, each locked, open or done, and a button to go on where you left off, with Deck library after it. Preferences, beside its title, sets the language it's shown in (Languages).
- A chapter goes a step at a time. First read a short piece of theory, sometimes in parts ("Part 2 of 3"). Then "Check your understanding" asks its questions with the theory hidden: choose an answer (or press its number) and press Check. The app says whether you were right and, if not, why. The first time you answer a question, its card joins your deck, to study like any other.
- The final review comes after a chapter's last step: every question of the chapter again, shuffled, and one you get wrong comes back until you get it right. Pass it, and the chapter is done and the next one opens. Finishing the last chapter brings confetti (none if your device asks for reduced motion).
Statistics, in the instance bar, shows your study over the last three months by default, or the last 30 days, the last 12 months or all time, as you pick above the figures. A guest has statistics too. Its tabs, each a link of its own, hold (statistics.md):
- Overview: your answers, study days, the cards you know now (mature), your streaks, a calendar of your activity and each deck's figures; over all time, the cards you've started and grown mature and about how long you've studied. "Download my answers (CSV)" saves the range's answers on your device as a spreadsheet file, sending nothing anywhere. Your streaks, the calendar, and this week and month on Activity look back a year, whatever the range.
- Activity: what each recent day held, the weekdays you study, this week and month beside the last, and about how long you study; folded away, the hours you study in and how your cards grew week by week.
- Memory: how well you remembered your cards in reviews, the answer buttons you pressed, your recall over time, by interval and by lateness, your course answers, and your leeches, each a link to the card's page, with Cram the leeches. Figures worked out from your answers alone say they're approximate, and changes made in the Studio aren't in your answers.
- Cards: how many are new, relearning (forgotten last time), young (reviewed at intervals under 21 days) and mature. The overdue reviews and when your daily limit lets you catch up, the next 30 days' reviews, and how far along each course you are, chapter by chapter.
A deck's "More statistics" shows these tabs for that deck alone. Today's strip says how many cards are left for today and about how many minutes they take. Point at a bar or a day to see what it holds, or reach a chart with Tab and step along it with the arrow keys. Every chart can be read as a table.
Each answer, in study or in a course, keeps how long you took to recall it and, in study, to grade it (not counting time the app was hidden). It keeps the day the card was due and your device's offset from UTC. These stay in your Pod with your answers, and nothing turns them off (privacy.md).
Preferences, in the instance bar:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Language | The app's language. Kept on this device. |
| Appearance | Light, dark, or as your browser says. Once saved, kept in your Pod, so every device looks the same (theme.md). |
| Colors | Standard, High contrast, Color-blind friendly or Parchment (low glare), each with a swatch in its own colors, light and dark, and any palette you designed. When your device asks for more contrast, High contrast is suggested. "Design a palette" opens the palette editor, and "Reset colors" goes back to Standard. Takes effect at once, and is kept like the appearance (theme.md). |
| Text size | Default, Large, Larger or Largest: up to one and a half times your browser's text size, each with a sample line. Takes effect at once, and is kept like the appearance (theme.md). |
| New cards per day | 5 to start with. Every new card comes back for reviews in the days after, so start small. |
| Max reviews per day | A cap on one day's reviews, 200 to start with. |
| Day starts at | The hour a new study day begins, 4 in the morning to start with, so late-night study counts for that day. |
| Scheduler | FSRS-6, listed first and marked Recommended, or SM-2: how each card's next day is worked out (srs.md). A new instance starts on FSRS-6; an older one, or one with no preferences saved, is on SM-2 until you switch. Each switch to FSRS-6 works out each card's memory anew from your answers, deck by deck, says how it went, and keeps every card due on its day. SM-2 stays up to date on every review, so you can switch back at any time. |
| Desired retention | With FSRS-6: how likely you are to remember a card when it comes back, from 70% to 97%, 90% to start with. Higher means more reviews. |
| Answer buttons | 0 to 5, or Again · Hard · Good · Easy. FSRS-6 always uses the four; your choice is kept for SM-2. |
| "When data does not conform" | What to do when data in your Pod isn't in the form Solid Memo expects: block the instance, set the faulty deck aside (the default), or only warn (validation.md). |
| After logging in | Whether logging in shows the screen that says your Pod is connected. Each instance keeps the choice; logging in skips the screen only when it's off in every one, and shows it when one's preferences can't be read or saved (onboarding.md). Not offered to a guest. |
| Developer mode | Shows developer tools: your WebID document, and a check of the instance against Solid Memo's data shapes. |
Press Save. A deck's own preferences can set daily limits for that deck, where an empty field follows these, and show its cards in another language (Languages).
Under the settings (not for a guest), Findable by other apps shows whether other Solid apps can find your decks and study through your Pod's type indexes, and registers what's missing when you ask (data-model.md).
Solid Memo speaks English, Swedish, Korean, German, Spanish and French. It starts in your browser's language when it speaks it, else English. Choose another with the globe at the top of any screen, or under Language in the preferences (i18n.md).
Your cards show as you wrote them. Each text names its language, so a screen reader reads it in that language. A deck's name, its description and a card can have translations, and you see the one in your language when there is one. A deck's page says when some of its text doesn't name its language, with a link to settle it.
To show a deck's cards in another of their languages, whatever the app's, choose it under Card language on the deck's Preferences and press Save card language. The cards then show in it wherever they appear: when you study or cram, in the Browser and in the Studio. A card without text in it shows as usual, and the deck's name and description stay in your language. The app's language goes back to the usual. The deck keeps the choice in your Pod, on every device.
To read a course in another language, choose it under Course language on the course's Preferences and press Save course language. The list offers every language the course has theory and titles in, even before you've answered any question. The course's and its chapters' titles and descriptions, the theory and the questions then show in it, and the app's own words stay in yours. Text the course doesn't have in it shows as usual. The deck keeps this choice in your Pod too.
Right-to-left text, such as Arabic, runs right to left: on a card, where Arabic starts at the right, in a deck's name, and inside an English sentence, which keeps its punctuation in place. The screens stay left to right, since none of the app's languages is written right to left.
The sun and moon button at the top switches between light and dark. Under Appearance in the preferences, "As my browser" follows your device's setting (theme.md). For example, switch to dark, choose High contrast and Larger under Colors and Text size, and press Save in the preferences. Log in on another device, and Solid Memo opens in them there too, since your Pod keeps them. Colors and Text size, under Appearance, change the palette and the text size in light and dark alike.
"Design a palette", under Colors, lets you choose the colors you read best (theme.md). Give it a name, the palette it starts from, and a color for the page, the text, the buttons, the links and the answer buttons, in light and dark. A preview shows the colors, and a table says whether each pair of colors that holds text has the contrast it needs. Solid Memo asks before it saves colors with too little contrast ("Use anyway"), and doesn't save text you couldn't read at all. "Save and use" keeps the palette in your Pod and shows Solid Memo in it on every device. "Edit", beside it under Colors, changes it later. "Reset colors" is always drawn in the standard colors, so you can find it and go back to Standard.
"Switch instance", in the instance bar, lists your instances: open one, create a new one, attach one by its address, or delete one.
For example, to keep your language decks apart from your work decks, press "Switch instance" and create a new instance in another folder of your Pod. Add decks to it: it starts empty, with its own decks and study. "Switch instance" takes you back to the first. With two instances, Solid Memo asks which to open when you come back.
A deck's cards and progress may live anywhere in your Pod: in another folder, under other names, or in your Pod's root. Solid Memo writes to those documents, or deletes them with the deck, only when they say they belong to the deck, as every document it writes does. An older document outside the instance's folder may not say so yet, and Solid Memo never adds that there by itself, where someone else's data could be named.
Such a deck is listed under Decks to confirm, above your decks and on the Studio's Health screen, with the addresses of its documents. You can study it, but no answer or edit is saved to those documents, and removing the deck only takes it off the list. If they're the deck's, press These are this deck's documents, check the addresses once more and press Mark them as the deck's. The deck then works like any other.
"Open in Studio", in the instance bar, on a deck's page or in a deck's menu, opens Solid Memo Studio, a second app for managing many decks and cards at once and for writing decks and courses to publish (studio.md). Its search finds an Arabic word with or without its vowel marks: كتاب finds كِتَاب.
Its Import and export saves decks as files and makes decks of files (studio.md). For example, check a deck, choose Turtle, check "Include my progress" and press "Export 1 deck": your browser saves the deck as a file. Later, or in another instance, "Choose a file…" under Import says what that file holds. Leave "Import the progress too" checked and press "Import into": the file becomes a new deck, with your progress.
Its Graph draws the instance's folders, documents, decks, cards, answers and drafts as nodes, and the links between them (studio.md). Drag to move it, and zoom with the wheel or "Zoom in" and "Zoom out". Click a node, or reach it with the arrow keys and press Enter, to see beside the graph what it says and links to; click an empty place to let go. A link out of the instance, to a library release, a license or your WebID, ends in a leaf that's never read. Uncheck "Answers" to see less, or check "Vocabulary terms", last in the row, to see the classes and concepts the data uses too. "Show as a table" shows it all as two tables.
A user journey's numbered steps are the ones in the online report.
| You want to see | Journey | Steps |
|---|---|---|
| Logging in with a WebID and out | smoke.journey.ts | 01–03 |
| Preferences: new cards per day, the scheduler, answer buttons, developer mode | full-learner.journey.ts | 03, 12, 14 |
| The FSRS-6 invitation, answered Not now, and kept so | full-learner | 03b, 14 |
| Creating decks and adding cards | full-learner | 04–05, 07–08 |
| Studying | full-learner | 06, 13 |
| Grouping decks | full-learner | 09–11 |
| Statistics, and a card's history | full-learner | 15–15b |
| Previewing and importing a library deck | full-learner | 16–17 |
| Narrowing the deck library to the cards' language | library-languages.journey.ts | 02–04 |
| Describing a deck in two languages, and switching language | full-learner | 18–20b |
| A deck's cards in another language, and back | full-learner | 20c–20d |
| Checking the instance (developer mode) | full-learner | 21 |
| A card in Markdown | markdown-card.journey.ts | 04–07 |
| The newcomer course from an empty deck list, and the library beside it | newcomer-course.journey.ts | 03–07 |
| Previewing a course from the library: a chapter's theory, then a question | course-chapter | 02b |
| A course's first chapter and its final review | course-chapter.journey.ts | 03–08 |
| A course's title, chapters and theory in another language, and back | course-chapter | 03b–03d |
| A course's answers and chapters in the statistics, and its most-confused options | course-chapter | 09–10 |
| Adding a course from a link and playing it | studio-course.journey.ts, second journey | 03–05 |
| Solid Memo Studio | studio.journey.ts | 06–31 |
| Writing a course in the Studio, trying it and publishing it | studio-course.journey.ts, first journey | 05–11 |
| Trying the app as a guest, and moving the study into a pod | guest.journey.ts | 02–11 |
| A library deck's link, opened in another browser as a guest | try-link.journey.ts | 02–05 |
| A screen that breaks: "Something went wrong", its details and its report | render-error.journey.ts | 02–06 |
| Dark, High contrast and Larger, kept in the Pod and found on a second device | returning-learner.journey.ts | 03–05, 08–11 |
| A palette of one's own with too little contrast, used anyway and found on a third device, then reset | returning-learner.journey.ts | 12–14 |
| Skipping the Connected screen, kept in the Pod and found on another device, then showing it again | returning-learner.journey.ts | 08, 11, 13, 15 |
| A second instance, and switching between the two | second-instance.journey.ts | 04–08 |
| Exporting a deck as a file and importing it again, with its progress | studio.journey.ts | 21–23 |
| Switching to FSRS-6 from the invitation, then reviewing with it | later-day.journey.ts | 03, 06–09 |
| A later study day, forgotten cards and the hardest cards, with no leech | later-day | 07–12 |
| Welcomed back with the streak before the day's first answer | later-day | 07 |
| Updating a library deck to its new release, keeping progress | library-upgrade.journey.ts | 04–10 |
| Undoing an answer, and resetting today's study | reset-day.journey.ts | 07–12 |
| Reloading in the middle of a study session | study-reload.journey.ts | 05–10 |