If you don't like Anki, consider giving Mochi a try

Japanese
#1

Mochi is an aesthetically pleasing (imo) and easy to use SRS with built-in furigana function out of the box. It should feel a lot more intuitive and much closer to an electronic version of physical flashcards than Anki. Mochi is a free offline standalone app with an optional subscription service. All features mentioned in this post are available offline for free without any special configuration.

Some Ease of Use Features

Freedom when adding, making, and editing cards

In Mochi you can just pick a deck from the sidebar and start writing into an empty card. You are not restricted to fields that need to be set up elsewhere first. Write what you want to remember then save. Three dashes in a row (—) denote a new side to a card and you can have as many sides as you like. (Pressing Shift + Enter will also input the dashes for you)

There is a templates function where you can set up fields so you don’t have to format your cards over and over again. But!! Even if you have a default template for a deck, you are still free to add a new card with another template or no template at all, anytime.

Mochi Add Card
Mochi Add Card440Ă—532 32 KB

Furigana functionality is built-in

There are three ways (that I know of) to get furigana to show up like this
Furigana

  1. Typing
    Typing

  2. Highlighting and then selecting Add Furigana

    Selection
    Selection1033Ă—362 30.4 KB

  3. Making the card field in the template a Japanese Furigana Dynamic Field

    Dynamic Field
    Dynamic Field867Ă—583 59.1 KB

If the auto furigana gives you the wrong one, you can add the one you want by manually typing (method 1) and it will default to what you type.

Backslash will usually fix unexpected behaviour

Cards are formatted using Markdown but if you prefer to just have your text as is, adding a backslash before symbols will usually fix any unexpected behaviour.
Card view:

Card View
Card View994Ă—542 12.3 KB

Editing View:
Editing View
Editing View946Ă—521 12.6 KB

Attachments can just be dragged and dropped into editing area

Files don’t need to be in a certain location or be named anything in particular. Just drag and drop the file you want into the edit field and it will be added to the card. Copying and pasting an image directly will also work.

Freedom to decide which cards you want to review

In Mochi, cards are not automatically added to reviews so you can choose to have some cards in the review stack while keeping others just as notes in the deck. Personally, I have been using Mochi as a notes app with a built-in organizer and SRS function.


While Anki is likely more “powerful” when you have everything set up and have other tools integrated with it, if your main priority is that you have something you want to memorize, you will probably enjoy the convenience of Mochi a lot more.

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#2

Just wondering if there are any pre-made decks such as for JLPT, and if they are free? :eyes:

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#3

You should be able to import apkg and csv files if you have a premade Anki deck you like. The only things that aren’t free should be the pro features.

If anybody has tried it, I’m curious to hear what you think

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#4

Been a pro Mochi Pro user for a while now! Good to see it get more recognition.
Actually wrote this blog post introducing Mochi and a few of its features if anyone is curious.

Currently got deck templates for Words, Phrases, Read-aloud phrases, Readings, Kanji, and Comparisons. The auto audio-generation feature is sick too.

I’ll probably continue to use it until we flesh out the Vocab feature on Bunpro a bit more.

7 Likes
#5

Can’t find a quick answer looking through the product site, can you type in answers?

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#6

Yeah, you just need to put <input> in the card. The example given in the documentation is

The capital of France is <input value="Paris">

So it will ask for you to input then compare your answer to Paris

Input Output
Input Output977Ă—435 6.45 KB

1 Like
#7

Thanks! So it’s not an automatic thing.

#8

Looks interesting, unfortunately I’m neck deep in the Anki eco-system.

Some really cool features though like the Open AI. Might be worth looking into down the line.

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#9

Your blog is quite nice by the way. Very pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate.

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#10

Not Mochi related, but similar vibe.

I’ve been tired of spending so much time on making “good” cards in Anki, so I switched to jpdb.io. It’s a dictionary, but you can add all words into your own decks (it’s purely web based at this moment). You can customize some settings for the cards and for the app in general, but not much and it’s great for me. Now I waste zero time on making cards, so I have more time for anything more important, like immersion for example. I can just play/watch/read, look up the word, add it instantly and continue straight away and then jump straight to reviews when it’s time.

  • For other nice features that I know of, they have custom kanji keywords which are actually unique and actually make sense as opposed to the Heisig or regular dictionary keywords . You can use regular dictionary keywords too by toggling an option.
  • You can toggle an option that will make kanji cards for you depending on the vocab you learn. You can’t add your own kanji cards as far as I know, but maybe that’s better for some people (like me).
  • They have custom SRS system made by some AI or whatever, not sure where I read that, but you can tweak it as many times as you want to get a review frequency you like without breaking it. Or you can leave it alone.
  • They have pitch accent, but don’t know how accurate.
  • They have example sentences for the more popular words. The downside is that some of them are pretty lame, for example for many nouns the sentence is just “Tom is a dog”. The upside is that you can add your own sentences, but then you are spending time on making cards, so…
  • They also have some built in decks based on grammar books like Genki, Tobira and A LOT based on novels, movies, anime and stuff. 5633 of them at the moment. You can filter.

I used it for about two months already and I don’t think I will use anything else for vocab SRS, unless I’m forced to.

3 Likes
#11

I do agree that mochi is way nicer. The reason I never bothered with it is because they don’t have a Lifetime option. That’s typically a deal-breaker for me.

Aye, jpdb does have a lot of what someone would want in a Japanese language flashcard app, except for an app. If the data were exportable (including sentences), then it would be very interesting since you could whack it in Kitsun and be done.

As someone who is almost entirely mobile-only, it’s hard for me to recommend something that does not have a native experience even if the Web app is amazing.

I have this odd reverse problem where, when I get on my computer, I get distracted… By work :sweat_smile:. So mobile is where I get my studying done.

6 Likes
#12

I’ll never understand primarily mobile users :joy:
Not being able to use my ten fingers on the keybard makes typing feel so sloooow.
Looks like Mochi does have a native app? Behind the scenes it’s a glorified web app though, if that’s what you’re referring to.

And agreed. No Lifetime subscription is a bit stinky.
I actually emailed the dev asking about it, and he said there are no plans for it in the near future :<

4 Likes
#13

This looks really nice, especially the bit where notes are formatted with markdown.
Is there yomichan integration (or plans to add it)? In my opinion, this is the single best feature of anki for learning japanese, and the major blocker for me switching to better alternatives.

1 Like
#14

Another jpdb.io user here! The only real issue I have with it is that there’s some vocab that just isn’t there, usually because it’s very new or dialect-based, but even then it’s not that devastating.

I’m extremely technologically illiterate, so something like Anki or Mochi is pretty inaccessible to me. Premade decks are fine of course, but the process of getting them in Anki is a ballache, and Mochi looks about as complicated to me!

I can definitely see the appeal if you’re able to use them, because I’m sure the customisation and freedom is wonderful! And it’s always good to have more options available, so thank you for sharing, ThousandJP!

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#15

What kind of cards does the yomichan integration generate? If they are just simple cards, the export from anki → import apkg will probably be your best bet. My impression is that this kind of integration is not in the works, just a guess though.

I probably made it seem more complicated than it is because I wanted to highlight some of the different features. Actually the main reason why I like it and wanted to share was because making the cards is a lot easier.

Making Cards
Making Cards856Ă—786 37.6 KB

You can just type what you want in that box, save then you’re done. It’s not much different than using a notes app. You’re also free to make every card different. Maybe some have 2 sides and others have 3 or 4, and some have pictures which you can just add by dragging the picture directly into that area.

You don’t have to set anything up before hand like in Anki. You could but you don’t have to.

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#16

This is very good to know.
I am also against services without lifetime. That’s why I haven’t purchased Satori Reader. It’s really a shame.

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#17

The offline free version has been working pretty well for me, but I am not a heavy SRS user. I’m curious which premium features you feel are essential.

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#18

These ones:

IMG_20230217_213643
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#19

I read your blog post, but I wonder if there is some confusion about a feature for Anki. On it, you write:

Anki offers no cloud storage options if you often switch between devices. You have to manage this yourself somehow. I did this using Google Drive for a while, but just found it clunky.

As far as I know, all you have to do is create an Anki account and it will allow you to sync all of your data with their cloud, and they give you up to 10 gigs of storage for free. You can then simply hit the “Sync” button on your mobile, desktop, or web app (or alternatively, it will sync when the apps close) and the data is backed up and updated.

Anki’s interface is also hard to navigate and a bit Jurassic.

Yeah, this is kinda true, and having to deal with JS/HTML/CSS as opposed to Markdown can be slightly more time consuming if you want to create more custom designs for your cards. But at least for me, I’m a programmer, so I don’t mind, and I’ll live with clunkier interfaces if it means getting access to Yomichan and it being a free service. To each their own though, and Mochi does seem like a nicely polished service.

4 Likes
#20

As far as I know, all you have to do is create an Anki account and it will allow you to sync all of your data with their cloud, and they give you up to 10 gigs of storage for free.

Thanks for pointing that out!
I’ll clarify that when I get the time. The last time I used Anki was like 5 years ago, but shoulda probably done more research before giving my hot takes.

Yeah, this is kinda true, and having to deal with JS/HTML/CSS as opposed to Markdown can be slightly more time consuming if you want to create more custom designs for your cards. But at least for me, I’m a programmer, so I don’t mind

I’m a programmer too, so I could deal with that type of stuff too, but for me it all just felt so much easier with the good UX/simplicity of Mochi. Plus the templating means I never have to write any Markdown anyway.
The most impressive for me is that the guy that builds Mochi is a solo dev, but the app feels super polished

I’ll live with clunkier interfaces if it means getting access to Yomichan

What Yomichan features are built into Anki? Curious

Once we polish Bunpro Decks (and potentially add community deck sharing), I think the combo of having pre-made decks filled with hundreds of Cloze-style (fill in the blank) questions/sentences will remove the overhead of having to DIY your own flashcard system anyway.

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