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Lymidocs

Guides

Import from Anki

Bring your Anki decks into Lymi with their cards, tags, pictures and review history. Your cards keep the due dates they had in Anki, so nothing you already learned starts over. Anki itself is not changed.

Import in four steps

  1. Export from Anki

    On a computer, open Anki and choose File, then Export. Set the format to Anki Deck Package (.apkg). In Include choose All Decks or one deck.

    Tick Include Scheduling Information and Include Media. Without scheduling information your review history stays behind and every card starts as new. Support older Anki versions can be on or off. Press Export and save the file where you can find it.

  2. Open the import in Lymi

    In Lymi, open Settings from the menu under your name, and under Import choose Anki. Choose the file, or drop it on the page. Keep Lymi open while the file uploads; a large file on a slow connection can take a few minutes.

  3. Check what comes across

    Lymi reads the file and shows what it found: how many cards, decks, pictures and past reviews, and which words you already have. Check two things.

    • The language of each deck. Anki does not store a language, so Lymi guesses from the deck name. Lymi needs the language to find duplicates and to say words out loud.
    • How a card will look. Lymi shows one of your cards as it will arrive. If the word and its meaning are the wrong way round, change which field is which.

  4. Import

    Press Import. Lymi writes the cards on its server, so you can close the app. When it finishes, your decks are in Library and the import is listed in Activity.

On a phone

In AnkiDroid, open the menu and tap Export. In AnkiMobile on an iPhone or iPad, open Settings, tap Export and choose a deck. In both, turn on scheduling information and media, then save the file to Files and choose it in Lymi.

A deck downloaded from AnkiWeb is an .apkg file too, and imports as it is. It has no review history, so its cards arrive as new. A collection backup, a .colpkg file, also works.

What comes across

Decks
Every deck that holds cards becomes a Lymi deck with the same name. Italian::Lesson 1 becomes Italian / Lesson 1.
Basic cards
The front becomes the term and the back becomes the meaning. You can change this for each note type before you import.
Reversed cards
A note asked both ways in Anki becomes one Lymi card asked both ways. Each way keeps its own history.
Cloze deletions
Each gap becomes its own card. The hidden word is the term, the whole sentence is the example, and the Back Extra field is the meaning.
Readings
Furigana such as 漢字[かんじ] becomes the term 漢字 with the pronunciation かんじ. A Reading field does the same.
Formatting
Bold, colours and layout become plain text with line breaks.
Tags
Tags come across, up to 20 on a card. Anki’s own marked and leech tags do not.
Pictures
The first picture on a note becomes the card’s picture. Picture review waits until you describe it.
Review history
Every past review comes across on its original day and shows in Insights. Each card keeps the due date it had in Anki.
Suspended cards
They arrive archived, the way a card you archive in Lymi is kept out of reviews.

What stays behind

  • Audio. Lymi makes its own pronunciation for words in a language. The preview counts the sounds that are left out.
  • Extra pictures. A card has one picture in Lymi, so only the first comes across.
  • Card styles and templates, deck options and presets.
  • Image occlusion notes. Lymi cannot ask them, and the preview counts them.
  • Very long text. A meaning longer than 1,000 characters moves to the card’s notes. The preview counts every card with text that was cut or moved.

Your streak and today’s goal

Reviews you did in Anki count as history, not as reviews done in Lymi. They light up the days you studied in Insights, but they never count toward today’s goal and never change your streak, even if you reviewed in Anki this morning.

Words you already have

If a word is already in Lymi in the same language, the import skips it and keeps your card. The preview lists the words it will skip and the decks they are in.

Importing the same file again

Import the same collection again and Lymi recognises the cards it already brought across. It adds no copies. It adds cards that are new in Anki, and fills a field on a card only if that field is empty in Lymi, so your edits stay. Reviews you did in Anki after the first import do not come across, so review each deck in one app.

Undo an import

Open Activity, choose the import and press Archive import. Every card the import added is archived, and so is every deck it made that has no other cards. Restore brings back exactly those. Nothing is deleted.

If something goes wrong

The file is too large

Lymi imports files up to 1 GB, with up to 64 MB of cards and review history. Pictures and audio make a file large, so export again without Include Media, or export one deck at a time by choosing it in Include.

Lymi can’t read the file

Export again from Anki as Anki Deck Package (.apkg) and choose that file. A text export or a spreadsheet cannot be imported yet.

The upload stopped

Try again on a steadier connection and keep Lymi open until the upload finishes. After that you can close it.