- 1Add a file
- 2Make cards
- 3Get your deck
Your cards
Diagrams
Click a mask to hide or show that label. Drag to move, drag the corner to resize, drag on the image to draw a new one, Delete to remove.
A renal physiology page, in high-yield mode
Two dense paragraphs of lecture text become cards that each ask one thing, with a hint where the blank could be read two ways.
Cards 1–2In the distal convoluted tubule, aldosterone stimulates the reabsorption of and the secretion of .
Cards 3–4In the distal convoluted tubule, parathyroid hormone promotes the reabsorption of and the secretion of .
Card 5Antidiuretic hormone (ADH) increases water permeability in the collecting duct by regulating .Normally, the collecting duct is impermeable to water.
Click a blank to check yourself.
Real output in high-yield mode, unedited, from our quality test set. Source text: Wikipedia, “Nephron”, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Made for a med-school Anki workflow
- High-yield by default. This page starts in high-yield mode: definitions, mechanisms, first-line treatments and classic traps, 2–5 cards a slide. Switch to comprehensive for the lectures you'll be examined on line by line.
- Diagrams too. Anatomy figures, pathways and histology labels become native image-occlusion notes with the labels already masked.
- Sits next to your premade deck. Fixed note types and content-based IDs mean importing new lectures every week adds cards without cluttering your collection.
- Drug-heavy lecture? Switch the mode to “Drug cards” for separate mechanism, use and adverse-effect cards per drug.
How to make Step 1 cards from this week’s lectures
- Drop the lecture. The PDF or .pptx from your school’s course page. Untick title and objectives slides; one credit per slide you keep.
- Cards and diagrams. High-yield mode is preselected. Press “Occlude” on any anatomy, pathway or histology slide to mask its labels.
- Name the deck and download. Give it the block or lecture name under Deck options, check the flagged cards, and import the .apkg next to your premade deck.
Your lecture cards next to a premade Step 1 deck
Why make cards from lectures at all
In the preclinical years, school exams come first, and they follow your lecturers’ slides: their emphasis, their examples, their cut-offs. Premade board decks are organised by Step 1 topic, not by your curriculum week, and finding the matching cards for a single lecture is a job in itself. Cards made from the lecture cover what that exam will ask, in the words you were taught, and the facts overlap with the boards anyway.
Keeping the two decks apart
Set a deck name under “Deck options” before downloading — the block, the course or the lecture — and the cards land in that deck, away from your premade one. AnkiForge uses its own note types with fixed IDs, so importing never changes the note types of other decks. Every card also stores the file name and page it came from, plus a couple of topic tags, which makes a lecture’s cards easy to find in Anki’s Browse window.
Choosing a mode
High-yield (the default here) aims for two to five cards a slide: core definitions, mechanisms, first-line treatments and classic traps. Comprehensive aims for four to ten and turns every distinct statement into a card. Contrast writes cards about what tells two similar things apart — Crohn’s disease versus ulcerative colitis, nephritic versus nephrotic. Drug cards splits each drug into mechanism, use, adverse effects and contraindications. A slide costs one credit in every mode.
Diagrams
Anatomy plates, biochemical pathways and labelled histology are better as image occlusion than as text. Press “Occlude” on that page of the PDF, or paste a screenshot: the labels are found and masked, and you choose “hide all, guess one” or “hide one, guess one”.
Check before you study
The cards are drafted by an AI model from your lecture. It is told to use only what the page says, and every card is checked against the card rules before you see it, but a model can still misread a slide. Skim the deck — especially the cards marked “Needs a look” — before it goes into your daily reviews.
Pay per page. Start free.
30 free credits when you sign up, then packs from $4.99. 1 credit = 1 page or slide (or a notes section of up to ~3,000 characters) turned into cards, or 1 diagram scanned for labels. Failed runs are refunded and downloading is free. See all credit packs
FAQ
Is this a premade USMLE deck?
No. AnkiForge makes cards from the material you upload. It does not include or sell any board-prep content, and it is not affiliated with the USMLE program.
Will the cards match AnKing style?
They follow the same principles — one fact per card, short blanks, hints for ambiguous blanks, extra context on the back — but they come from your lectures, so wording follows your source.
Will it change the note types of my premade deck?
No. AnkiForge cards use their own note types with fixed IDs, so importing them never touches the note types or cards of other decks, and a second import reuses the same note types instead of adding copies.
How much does it cost?
New accounts get 30 free credits. After that, credit packs start at $4.99. One credit is one page or slide turned into cards, or one diagram scanned for labels. If a run fails, its credits are refunded automatically. Downloading is free.