Note: I have stopped using Anki. I now use srf instead. It provides a small subset of Anki features but the scheduler regulates new cards automatically, to maintain a steady workload without constant manual adjustments, and cards with shorter intervals are prioritized over cards with longer intervals, which I find significantly enhances learning, particularly with a backlog (e.g. after a few days without study). As I am not using Anki, I will not notice if a newer version of Anki is incompatible with this plugin and will have little motivation to adapt the plugin. If anyone wants to continue development, of course you can fork this repository and I would be happy to give over the plugin page on ankiweb. Let me know if you are interested.
Limit the number of new cards in Anki based on workload.
If you have too many cards due, you cannot study them all on schedule. This defeats the spaced repitition schedule. Adding more new cards only makes the problem worse. You can manually edit your new card limit but this add-on adjusts it automatically to keep a steady workload, adding as many new cards as you can handle without being overloaded.
This add-on works only with Anki 2.1 and the V2 scheduler.
There are three implementations:
GitHub: https://github.com/ig3/anki-limitnew
Ideally, you will complete study of all due cards every day. If you do, you will see your review cards according to the spaced repition algorithm. If you don't, your reviews of some cards will be delayed and learning will not be as effective. If you are unable to study for a few days, you may have more reviews due than you can complete in a day and adding more new cards will only make the problem worse. You need some time without any more new cards to catch up, then you can study new cards again. Otherwise, you may be perpetually overloaded and not learning effectively, going into a downward spiral of failure.
Each deck has a limit on new cards per day. This is a fixed number and if you complete your study each day, you will see this number of new cards each day. That's great, as long as you don't get overloaded and fall behind. You make steady progress.
Reality is, some cards are easier than others and some days are better than others. On a good day with easy cards, you could study many new cards and still complete all due reviews. On a bad day or with more difficult cards, adding too many new cards will make you fall behind and if you have limited time to study, you may not be able to complete all due reviews. If you fall behind for other reasons (i.e. you are unable to study for a few days) adding new cards before you are caught up just makes it harder to catch up.
But Anki shows the same number of new cards every day, regardless of your workload and how well you are coping.
One simple solution is to set your new card limit to 0 then add new cards by custom study. This way you can add as many new cards as you want, whenever you have capacity but not add any when you are overloaded. Effectively, you manage the number of new cards manually.
Another is to edit your deck options to reduce your new card limit when you are overloaded and increase it when you are not. Again, you are managing the number of new cards manually.
Yet another is to set Anki scheduling options to show new cards after reviews. If you don't complete your reviews, you will not see any new cards. This is automatic but you will see all your new cards together, at the end of your study and each deck is handled separately. If you have multiple decks, you may spend time studying new cards in one deck, then not have time to finish all the cards due when studying a subsequent deck.
With this add-on you can limit the number of new cards you see based on number of overdue cards, number of cards scheduled and number of cards viewed and you can set limits for the totals of these across all decks and for each deck individually.
The limits work regardless of study order (new cards first, last or mixed with reviews).
If you are coping well you will not have any overdue cards and the sum of
cards viewed and scheduled will be below the limits you set. In this case
you will see the full number of new cards you have configured as
New cards/day in you options for New Cards.
If you have overdue cards or the sum of scheduled and viewed cards exceeds the limit you configure for this add-on, then the number of new cards you see will be reduced. The reduction is gradual, reacing zero at the maximums you set. Limits and maximums can be set for each deck and for totals across all decks.
The objective is to studay as many new cards as possible without becoming overloaded so that you can complete all scheduled reviews each day. If you do become overloaded, then hold off new cards completely, until you catch up with scheduled reviews.
New cards a limited based on number of overdue cards and workload: the
sum of cards scheduled and cards viewed for the day. This is an
approximation of the time and effort you are putting in to studying.
Workload: the number of cards due to be reviewed plus the number of card views on the day.
If you view the same card several times (e.g. as it progresses through your learning steps) then each view of the card contributes to workload. The workload is not the number of unique cards, but the total number of card views, regardless of which card. At the start of the day no cards have been viewed, but some number of cards are due. By the end of the day, if you complete review of all cards due, the remaining cards due is 0 but you will have viewed some number of cards. The sum of due and viewed cards the the approximation of workload. It tends to increase as you will view hard cards more than once.
Overdue: the number of cards overdue for review is simpler. If you complete all scheduled reviews each day, this number will be 0 but if you don't complete all scheduled reviews then you will accumulate overdue cards.
OverdueMax: the upper limit on overdue cards, beyond which no new cards per day will be reduced to 0.
For the limit based on overdue cards there is one parameter: OverdueMax.
The new cards limit is reduced if there are any overdue cards. It is
reduced gradually, down to 0 when the number of overdue cards exceeds
OverdueMax. For example, if New cards/day is 20 and OverdueMax is 10,
then if you have 0 overdue cards you may see 20 new cards but if you have 5
overdue cards you may only see 10 new cards and if you have 10 or more
overdue cards you will not see any new cards.
For the limit based on workload there are two parameters: WorkloadLimit and WorkloadMax. The new cards limit is reduced if the workload exceeds WorkloadLimit. It is reduced gradually, down to 0 when the workload exceeds WorkloadMax. Depending on your preference, WorkloadLimit and WorkloadMax can be set equal for an abrupt cutoff of new cards, or WorkloadMax can be set greater than WorkloadLimit for a gradual reduction.
WorkloadLimit: the lower limit, beyond which new cards per day begins to be reduced from its configured value.
WorkLoadMax: the upper limit, beyond which the new cards per day is reduced to 0.
The add-on has the following configuration parameters:
To change the configuration, start Anki and open Tools -> Add-ons, select the limitnew add-on and click Configure. Set values for the two parameters, then click OK.
This parameter may be set to true or false.
If it is true, then new cards are limited per deck. Three new parameters are added to the New tab of deck options:
These parameters are configured per option group. Each deck has an option group configured. By creating multiple option groups, each deck can be configured differently.
These parameters work as described above but the workload and overdue cards are calculated separately for each deck. If decks are nested, then the calculations include cards overdue, due and studied for a deck and its sub-decks.
This parameter may be set to true or false.
If it is true then new cards are limited based on total workload: the sum of cards due and studied across all decks, and total number of overdue cards.
The limits are configured in add-on configuration parameters totalWorkloadLimit, totalWorkloadMax and totalOverdueMax. These work as described above.
This parameter is only used by the older implementations. Implementation for Anki 2.1.28 and later ignores it.
This parameter may be set to min or max.
If both enableDeckLimits and enableTotalLimits are true, then this parameter determines whether the number of new cards for a given deck is the maximum of the two limits or the minimum of them.
This parameter only works for the older implementations. For the current implementation (Anki 2.1.28 and later) the number of new cards is always the minimum.
This parameter may be set to an integer.
If enableTotalLimits is true, this is the total workload beyond which the new card limit will be reduced. The total workload is calculated by summing the cards studied and reviews and learning cards scheduled across all decks.
Recommendation: Set workloadLimit to the number of cards you can study in a couple of hours, or however much time you have available to study each day. If you need only a few seconds per card, you might set your limit to 2,000 or higher. If you spend more like 30 seconds per card, then you might set your limit to about 200.
This parameter may be set to an integer.
If enableTotalLimits is true, this is the workload beyond which the new card limit will be reduced to totalMinimumNew. The total workload is calculated by summing the cards studied and reviews and learning cards scheduled across all decks.
If workloadMax is greater than workloadLimit then the new card limit will be gradually reduced as workload increases from workloadLimit to workloadMax.
Recommendation: Set totalWorkloadMax to the workload beyond which you don't want to see any new cards. If you want your new cards to be all-or-nothing, set totalWorkloadMax to the same value as totalWorkloadLimit.
This parameter may be set to an integer.
If enableTotalLimits is true, this is the number of overdue cards beyond which the new card limit will be reduced to totalMinimumNew.
Recommendation: Set totalOverdueMax low. You will only have overdue cards if you fail to study all scheduled reviews. This is a strong indicator that you are overloaded, in which case adding more new cards will not be helpful.
This parameter may be set to an integer.
If enableTotalLimits is true, this is the minimum that new cards will be reduced to based on total workload and overdue cards.
Recommendation: Set this to the number of new cards you want to see every day, regardless of your overall workload. It should be low enough that even when you are seriously overloaded, you will be able to recover reasonably quickly.
This parameter may be set to an integer.
If enableDeckLimits is true, this is the default value of the option group Workload Limit parameter.
This parameter may be set to an integer.
If enableDeckLimits is true, this is the default value of the option group Workload Max parameter.
This parameter may be set to an intenger.
If enableDeckLimits is true, this is the default value of the option group Overdue Max parameter.
This parameter may be set to an integer.
If enableDeckLimits is true, this is the default value of the option group Minimum New parameter.
If enableDeckLimits is set to true, then deck options will include three
new parameters: Workload Limit, Workload Max, Overdue Max and
Minimum New. These values will not appear in the add-on configuration
file. They only appear in the deck options. They work the same as the
corresponding total parameters in the add-on configuration, except the
workload and overdue cards are for the partucular deck. However, if you
have nested decks, then the number for the parent deck include those of the
sub-decks.
Custom study allows you to increase the number of new cards for the day. This alters the deck, rather than creating a filtered deck. The implementation doesn't actually change the new card limit. Instead, it adjusts the count of new cards studied. If you allow 10 more new cards, the new card limit is unchanged but the count of new cards studied is reduced by 10, possibly to a negative number. Then, as you study more new cards, the count of new cards studied is increased. You can study more new cards until the count reaches the new card limit.
When your workload is less than your WorkloadLimit, this should work as expected but when the add-on has reduced your new card limit, the result can be a bit confusing.
Consider if your new card limit is 20 cards and you study 20 new cards. With the older implementations, your count of new cards is 20, your limit is 20 and Anki will not show you any more new cards. If you continue to study so that your total number of reviews exceeds your WorkloadMax, then this add-on will reduce your new card limit to 0. Now, your new card limit is 0, but your count of new cards is still 20. If you then add 10 more new cards by custom study, your new card limit is still 0 and your count of new cards is reduced to 10, but 10 is still more than 0 so you will not see any more new cards. If you then allow another 15 new cards, your count of new cards studied is reduced to -5 (these adjustments are cumulative). Since -5 is less than 0, you will see 5 more new cards.
The latest implementation is different. It changes the number of new cards you will see by changing the number of new cards seen, rather than the limit on new cards. Thus, it works consistently with how custom study works: to make Anki believe you have studied more or less new cards than you actually have. Being consistent with how custom study works, it will, hopefully, be a little less confusing if you do custom study.
Filtered decks are for study outside the normal spaced repitition algorithm and deck configuration.
This add-on does not limit new cards in filtered decks. This includes filtered decks you create manually and those created by custom study.
Filtered decks do have reviews due and studying a filtered deck contributes to the count of card views - increasing the total workload for the day. This will not affect per-deck limits (assuming the filtered deck is not a sub-deck of the deck being studied) but it will affect the limits based on total workload.
The new card limit of a sub-deck cannot be more than the limit of its parent deck. This limitation is imposed by the Anki v2 scheduler. This is true even if one studies only the sub-deck. This add-on may reduce the new card limit of the parent deck and as a result limit the new card limit of the sub-deck, regardless of the configuration of the sub-deck.
The latest implementation uses hook scheduler_new_limit_for_single_deck, introduced with Anki 2.1.22. For older versions, the old monkey patch integration is used. This version of the add-on is much simpler.
The old implementation has only two configuration parameters:
These are applied to workload calculated across all decks. There is no support for per-deck workload limits.
For example, you can set configuration to:
{
"workloadLimit": 200,
"workloadMax": 250
}Any other configuration parameters will be ignored.
Some improvements to the calculations of workload and adjustment of new cards from Issue #5 with many thanks to JazzyJangles for testing and pointing out problems. Still not perfect but about as good as it will get with the limitations of Anki, and certainly better than previous. This still has a lot of prints for debugging.
Possibly fix a bug during load. Anki sometimes calls the reviewer_did_answer_card hook before the collection has loaded (i.e. before calling the collection_did_load hook. In this case, the add-on is not initialized and per-deck configuration is not yet available. In this case, return without doing anything if reviewer_did_answer_card hook is called.
Fix a bug in previous release that reduced new cards to 0 in many cases.
Add options to set a minimum on how low new cards will be reduced.
A new implementation that works with Anki 2.1.28 and later.
Added limit on overdue cards as an alternative basis for limiting new cards. Having overdue cards is a strong indication that you are overloaded. While your number of scheduled and viewed cards are likely to be high in such a case, you might want to limit new cards purely on the basis of overdue cards, regardless of workload.
Comment out print statements.
A major rewrite to address some performance issues.
For Anki 2.1.22 and later, the scheduler_new_limit_for_single_deck hook is used for integration. Neither _groupChildrenMain nor _deckNewLimitSingle are monkey patched. For older versions of Anki, the old implementation is still used - monkey patching _groupChildrenMain and _deckNewLimitSingle.
The new implementation supports workload limits per deck, with configuration in deck options, and total workload limit with configuration in add-on options.
Database queries to determine workload (cards due and cards studied) are rewritten to improve performance and results are cached to avoid re-running them unnecessarily. The cache is cleared when cards are reviewed.
This pylib hook is used to reduce the limit on new cards per deck, based on workload.
This GUI hook is used to clear the cache of number of cards due and studied when a card is answered.