How to Import Anki Decks Into a New App

TL;DR

• Export your Anki deck as plain text/CSV (Notes in Plain Text), keeping the front/back columns.
• Common formats: comma (CSV), tab, and semicolon-separated word pairs.
• Word pairs transfer cleanly. Scheduling history, ease factors, and media usually do not.
• LingoBlend imports CSV, plain text, and Anki-style lists, then runs its own SM-2 spaced repetition and 5 games on them.
• Plan to relearn timing from scratch in any new app.

Importing Anki decks means exporting your existing cards as a plain-text or CSV file, then using another app's list-import feature to read that file and recreate each word pair. The vocabulary comes with you; the review schedule almost never does, so treat the move as a fresh start on timing with a head start on content.

Why move decks at all

Anki is a phenomenal memorization engine, but it is deliberately minimal. If you want your vocabulary to live inside a reading experience, tappable stories, listening drills, and games, you eventually outgrow bare flashcards. The good news: your word list is portable data, not a locked format. A deck is ultimately rows of "target word, known-language meaning," and nearly every serious app can ingest that.

This matters because vocabulary in isolation is fragile. Krashen's input hypothesis (Krashen, 1985) argues we acquire language by understanding messages slightly above our level, not by drilling detached pairs. Moving your list somewhere you can read those words in context is a real upgrade, not just a UI change.

The common export and import formats

Before you export anything, understand the four text shapes almost every tool speaks. They differ only in the character that separates the two sides of a card.

The trap in CSV is commas that appear inside a field ("well, actually"). Proper CSV wraps those values in quotes. If your translations contain commas, prefer tab-separated export, which sidesteps the problem entirely.

How to export from Anki

Anki's built-in export produces exactly the plain-text file you need.

1. Open Anki on desktop. Select File → Export.
2. Set Export format to Notes in Plain Text (.txt).
3. Choose the specific deck (or "All Decks").
4. Uncheck "Include HTML and media references" if you only want clean text. Media (audio, images) will not survive a plain-text move anyway.
5. Save the file. Open it once in a text editor to confirm each line reads front⇥back.

That file is tab-separated by default. If a target app expects commas or semicolons, a quick find-and-replace in any editor converts it. Keep a backup of the original before you edit.

Step-by-step: importing into a reading-and-games app

Here is the concrete walkthrough using LingoBlend, which accepts CSV, plain text, and Anki-formatted (semicolon) lists and auto-detects the format for you.

1. Open the app and go to the Dictionary tab.
2. Tap Add List to open the import screen.
3. Paste your exported text directly, or pick the file from your device.
4. The importer scans the first few lines and auto-detects whether you used comma, tab, semicolon, or one-word-per-line.
5. Review the preview — each detected pair is shown so you can catch a mis-split before committing.
6. Confirm the import. Words land in your dictionary and immediately become eligible for spaced-repetition review and all five games.

A practical detail worth knowing: on the free tier this list import is capped (three imports per month), so consolidate a big deck into one file rather than importing in many small batches. Pricing specifics live on the pricing page.

Once imported, those words are no longer static cards. They feed Flashcards, Matching, Fill in the Blank, Listening, and Word Quiz, and they can appear inside blended reading — where target-language words are woven into text you paste, an approach rooted in the diglot weave method (Robbins Burling, 1968).

What transfers, and what honestly does not

This is the part most guides skip. Be clear-eyed about it.

Transfers reliably:

• The word pair itself: target term and its meaning.
• Any extra plain-text you kept in a column, if the importer maps it.

Does not transfer:

• Scheduling history. Due dates, intervals, ease factors, and lapse counts are internal to Anki's database. A text export contains none of that. Every imported word starts as "new" in the destination app.
• Media. Audio clips and images referenced by your cards are stored separately and won't ride along in a plain-text file.
• Complex note types. Cloze deletions, multi-field templates, and reversed cards flatten to a single front/back pair or break entirely.

Why can't the schedule come along? Because spaced-repetition state is algorithm-specific. Anki uses a modified version of the SM-2 algorithm (Woźniak, 1990); a destination app running its own SM-2 variant has no meaningful way to translate another program's ease factors into its own queue. The honest expectation is: you keep your vocabulary, you restart the clock.

That restart is less painful than it sounds. Re-encountering words you already half-know produces fast, high-confidence reviews that graduate quickly. In LingoBlend, new words follow short early steps (10 minutes, 1 hour, 8 hours) and then move to day-based intervals that start at 1 day and 6 days before expanding by an ease factor (up to a 180-day cap). Words you truly know sail through the early steps in a single session.

Import vs. rebuild vs. dual-app

You have three realistic paths. Pick based on how much your old scheduling is worth to you.

For most learners the export-and-import path wins. Your review history has diminishing value the moment you change tools, but your curated word list — often built over months — is genuinely worth carrying forward.

Make the imported words stick

Once your list is in, lean on the things a plain deck can't do. Dual coding theory (Paivio, 1971) shows we remember material encoded both verbally and visually better than either alone, so attaching an image or a memory trick to tricky words pays off. Reading those same words in context — through blended text or graded stories — turns passive recognition into durable knowledge. The reasoning behind these methods is laid out on the science page, and language-specific starting points live at Spanish, French, and Japanese.

FAQ

Can I import an Anki deck directly as an .apkg file?

Usually not. .apkg is Anki's packaged database format, and most other apps cannot read it. Export your deck as Notes in Plain Text first, then import that text or CSV file into the new app.

Will my review history and due dates come over?

No. Scheduling data — intervals, ease factors, and due dates — stays inside Anki's database and is not part of a text export. Every word arrives as "new" and rebuilds its own schedule in the destination app.

What's the safest export format to avoid broken imports?

Tab-separated (Anki's plain-text default) is safest because translations rarely contain tab characters. CSV works too, but commas inside a translation can split a line incorrectly unless the values are quoted.

How many words can I import at once?

That depends on the app. In LingoBlend, list import is available to everyone, with free accounts limited to three imports per month, so it's best to combine a large deck into one file. See the pricing page for current limits.

Do I need to keep using Anki after importing?

Only if preserving your exact review schedule matters to you. If you're comfortable restarting the timing, a single clean export lets you consolidate everything into one app that also handles reading, listening, and games.