Free · No account · Works offline

The elegant flashcard app that helps you learn more effectively.

Memcard picks out the handful of words you are about to forget and asks you about them — about fifteen minutes a day. No account to create, no subscription, and nothing leaves your computer.

Download for macOS

Version 1.0.0 · Free and open source · macOS 12+ · Windows 10+

Search

Today

40cards

12 new · 28 to review · about 15 min

Start

Streak

6

Don't stop today

Decks

Japanese N5 Vocabulary

19% · 279 cards
18

TOPIK 1 Basic Vocabulary

63% · 355 cards
22

Open the app and it already knows what today looks like.

15 minutes
A session short enough to finish before work
No account
Nothing to sign up for, no password to remember
Offline
On a plane, on the train, in a dead spot
Free
Open source, and there is no paid tier

Why this works

Forgetting is not a discipline problem

A word you meet once fades within days. That is simply how memory behaves, and trying harder does not change it. What does change it is meeting the word again right before it slips away — and each time you do, it fades more slowly.

How much you rememberthe moment it would slip away1 day1 week3 weeks2 months5 monthsReviewed with MemcardLearned once, never revisited

Every time you get a word right, Memcard pushes it further out — a day, then six, then a couple of weeks, then months. Get it wrong and it comes straight back.

You never decide what to study

The app opens on a single number: how many cards are due today, and roughly how long they will take. There is no queue to build and no list to keep.

A wrong answer is not punished twice

Miss a word and it simply comes back later in the same session. Nothing is deducted and nothing is lost — you just see it again.

Hard words show up more often

Every word is tracked on its own, so the ones that keep slipping come around far more often than the ones that already stuck.

How it works

Three steps, and two of them happen without you

There is no setup ritual, no daily target to configure, no deck to assemble before you can start.

  1. 01

    Open it

    The Today screen answers one question — what do I study now, and how long will it take. One button, and nothing competing with it.

  2. 02

    Answer for fifteen minutes

    The same word comes back asked several different ways, so you end up remembering the word rather than the position of the right answer.

  3. 03

    Close it

    Every card you answered gets scheduled for the day you are about to forget it. Tomorrow the app opens on the right number again.

Inside a session

Four ways of asking the same word

Recognising a word in a list is not the same as recalling it. Memcard asks each word from several angles and only counts it done after you have got it right two or three times — so you cannot coast on the shape of the answer.

2 / 10
New word

ばん

evening

ban · 晩

ばん べんきょうします

I study in the evening

Continue

Space to continue

5 / 10
Build word

evening

ばん
ねおばんきみ

Correct · back in 5 days

1–9 to pick a tile · Backspace to undo · Enter to check

7 / 10
Pick meaning

ばん

ban · 晩

1evening
2wake up
3finish
4work

1–4 to answer quickly

3 / 10
Pick the word

evening

1あさ
2ばん
3ひる
4よる

1–4 to answer quickly

  • New word — The first time a word appears it is only shown to you, never scored. There is nothing to measure yet.
  • Build the word — No empty boxes hinting at the length — just a cursor after the last letter you placed.
  • Pick the meaning — Four options, one keystroke each, and no partial credit.
  • Pick the word — The same question in reverse: from the meaning back to the word itself.

On the days you never open it

One word, three seconds, while you are doing something else

Some days you will not open the app at all. Memcard expects that, so it can slip a single card in front of you while you work — the size of a notification, answered with one key, then gone. It is how the app reaches people who never remember to sit down and study.

  • Choose how often it appears, or turn it off completely.
  • Pause it for an hour, until tomorrow morning, or until you say so.
  • Space, Enter, Esc — you never have to reach for the mouse.
Quick review

친구

chin-gu

Do you remember what this word means?

Show meaningGot it
Space to show meaning · Enter got it · Esc skip

What you get

Everything you would otherwise have to build yourself

Decks that already exist

Install a ready-made deck and start the same minute, instead of typing three hundred cards before you learn anything.

Or bring your own list

The words already sitting in your spreadsheet come in as a file, and go back out as one whenever you want them somewhere else.

One computer, several people

Separate profiles keep decks, progress and streaks apart, so nobody is looking at anybody else's cards.

Always one click away

A small icon in the menu bar starts a session, pauses reminders, or simply stays out of the way. No badge, no red dot.

Wed 09:41
Review next card
Pause reviews
Show main window
Settings…
Switch profile…
Quit

Reads the way you like

Light and dark follow your system or your choice, with four text sizes. Every setting applies the moment you touch it — there is no Save button anywhere.

Vietnamese and English

The whole app in either language, with proper fonts for kana, kanji and hangul so the characters do not look wrong.

Your data

Nothing to sign up for, nothing to lose track of

There is no account, so there is no password to reset, no email to confirm and no server holding your progress. Memcard reaches the internet twice — when you browse the deck library and when you check for a new version — and you start both yourself.

You keep

  • Your cards and progress, in a file on your own computer
  • The ability to export any deck to a file whenever you want it elsewhere
  • Public source code, so every claim on this page can be checked

Does not exist

  • No account, no sign-in, no email address
  • No tracking, no analytics, no advertising
  • No cloud sync — your computer holds the only copy

The trade-off, said plainly: there is no cloud backup. Move to a new computer and you start over, unless you export your decks to a file first. Better you hear it now than discover it later.

Fifteen minutes a day, starting today

Download it, open it, pick a deck. There is no account step and no email to confirm — you are answering your first card within a minute.

Download for macOSmacOS 12 or later · Apple Silicon and IntelMemcard.dmgDownload for WindowsWindows 10 or laterMemcard-Setup.msi

Would rather build it yourself? The source is on GitHub — install Rust and run cargo build --release.

Questions

Worth knowing before you start

Is it really free?

Yes. Memcard is free and open source under the MIT licence. There is no Pro version, no subscription, and no feature waiting behind a paywall.

Which languages can I study?

Any of them, in principle — a card is just a front and a back. The app has identity characters and proper fonts built in for Japanese, Korean and Chinese, and the community deck library currently leans that way.

Can I use the word list I already have?

Yes. Import a CSV or JSON file, and export any deck back out the same way. Your words are never locked into a format only this app can read.

Will it sync between my laptop and my desktop?

No, and this version does not intend to. Your cards live on one computer. To move a deck, export it to a file and import it on the other machine — study progress does not travel with it.

Where exactly is my data kept?

On macOS, in ~/Library/Application Support/dev.Memcard.Memcard/. On Windows, in %APPDATA%\Memcard\Memcard\data\. It is an ordinary file you can copy or back up yourself.

How does it decide when to show a word again?

It uses SM-2, the spaced-repetition schedule behind most flashcard apps of the last thirty years. Each card carries its own ease value, so a word you keep missing returns far more often than one you find easy.

Will the popup interrupt me while I work?

It is the size of a notification and closes with a single key. You choose how often it appears, and you can pause it for an hour, until the morning, or until you switch it back on yourself.

What if I delete something by mistake?

There is no undo anywhere in the app. In exchange, anything that loses data asks first, spells out the consequence with real numbers, and the default button in that dialog is always Cancel.

Is there an iPhone or Android version?

Not yet. Version 1.0 is a desktop application for macOS and Windows.

Something else on your mind? Open an issue on GitHub.