We love what Anki does for your memory. We just shipped the iOS app it never had time to build. Same FSRS algorithm, bit-exact with the reference implementation. Modern SwiftUI. iCloud sync that works. Widgets, Live Activity, Dynamic Island, on-device AI — all the iOS affordances AnkiMobile never reached. This is the long version of what's different and why we built it.
| Discito | AnkiMobile | |
|---|---|---|
| 30-second onboarding (no desktop, no AnkiWeb account) | Yes | No |
| iCloud sync that just works (no passwords) | Yes | Unreliable |
| FSRS-6 scheduling (bit-exact with py-fsrs) | Yes | Yes |
Reads your existing .apkg decks |
Yes | Yes |
| Home Screen widget + Lock Screen Live Activity | Yes | No |
| Dynamic Island review controls | Yes | No |
| Per-deck review reminders | Yes | No |
| Notification micro-reviews (rate from banner) | Yes | No |
| On-device AI card generation (iOS 26) | Yes | No |
| Lecture audio → flashcards (on-device) | Yes | No |
| Dark mode app icon + 5 reading themes | Yes | No |
| Apple Watch standalone review | Coming post-launch | No |
| One-time price (no subscription) | $14.99 once | $25 once |
Each section below is a real complaint from an AnkiMobile App Store review (1-3★), and how Discito answers it.
"I paid $25 without knowing I'd need a computer." — AnkiMobile review
AnkiMobile assumes you've already set up Anki on the desktop and have an AnkiWeb account ready. The mobile app is designed as a companion, not a primary tool. If you've never used Anki before, the first 20 minutes are spent figuring out which website to register on and how to push your first deck over to your phone.
Discito is mobile-first. Open the app, tap "New card," type a front and back, hit save. Your first review session starts in under 60 seconds. No desktop install, no AnkiWeb account, no "Sync your collection" dialog. The 4 bundled starter decks let you practice the review flow before you've created a single card of your own.
If you DO have an existing collection on the desktop, export to .apkg and AirDrop it to your iPhone — Discito reads it directly. Cards, decks, images, audio, tags, and FSRS state all carry over bit-exact (we tested against the py-fsrs reference implementation; the bit-exact import is what made us comfortable shipping it).
"Syncing is terrible. It refuses to sync. Account error." — AnkiMobile reviews (many)
AnkiWeb sync requires a separate account, separate password, and routinely fails when a desktop and a phone disagree about which copy is newer. The conflict-resolution UX is text-heavy and unforgiving. App Store reviews are full of horror stories about months of review history vanishing after a sync collision.
Discito uses Apple's CloudKit. Your data lives in your iCloud account. No separate password, no separate website, no "account error" screens. If you're signed into iCloud on your iPhone and iPad, your cards are already syncing. We rebuilt this from scratch on top of NSPersistentCloudKitContainer + CKAsset for images and audio — the same infrastructure Apple uses for Notes, Reminders, and Photos.
"Why don't you have widget included? Technology from 20 years ago." — AnkiMobile review
AnkiMobile predates almost every modern iOS feature: widgets (iOS 14), Live Activities and Dynamic Island (iOS 16.1), Lock Screen widgets (iOS 16), Control Center widgets (iOS 18), Focus Filters (iOS 16). Discito ships all of these in v1.
Home Screen + Lock Screen widgets show your due count and recent-card preview. Tap to launch directly into review. During a session, a Live Activity tracks your progress on the Lock Screen with Again/Hard/Good/Easy buttons in the Dynamic Island. The Control Center widget starts a session from any context. Focus Mode integration tells Discito to switch to your "Study" deck when you turn on the Study focus.
None of this is decorative. The notification micro-review feature (Pro) lets you rate a due card directly from the notification banner without opening the app — useful during a 30-second elevator ride. The Home Screen widget is what makes the daily review actually happen on days you'd otherwise skip.
Paste lecture text, drop in a PDF, or record a 45-minute class. Discito uses Apple Intelligence (iOS 26 Foundation Models) to draft Q&A cards you can review and edit before saving. It runs entirely on-device — no API key, no recurring fee, no data leaves your phone.
The lecture-audio feature uses SpeechAnalyzer for transcription, then segments and prompts the Foundation Model to generate flashcards from the transcript. Source-timestamp attribution stays on each card so you can jump back to the exact moment in the audio that produced a flashcard. For medical students, language learners, and bar-prep studiers, this is the feature that closes the loop from "I just attended a lecture" to "I have study material" without 90 minutes of manual card-writing.
Requires iOS 26 + Apple Intelligence (iPhone 15 Pro and later, M1 iPad and later). Every other feature works on iOS 18.6 and later.
"No reminder notification is in this app." — AnkiMobile review
Discito has global daily reminders, per-deck override schedules, and skip-if-met logic (no reminder fires if you've already studied today). Lite users get the reminder banner; Pro users can rate from the notification without opening the app. AnkiMobile doesn't have any reminders at all — you're expected to remember on your own, or set up an OS-level reminder externally.
"UI is about as intuitive as the first 5 minutes of learning Excel." — AnkiMobile review
AnkiMobile's UI is a port of the desktop app. It uses non-standard controls, custom keyboard handling, and review screens that don't follow any iOS convention. The settings have dozens of nested toggles labeled with terms from the desktop documentation.
Discito is built in SwiftUI on iOS 26 from day one. Standard navigation, standard pickers, standard sheets. 5 reading themes (Paper / Cream / Sepia / Charcoal / Midnight), dark-mode-first design, Liquid Glass on banners and toolbars, brand-consistent navy + gold palette. And yes — a dark mode app icon, because we ship one.
Your existing collection moves over in three steps:
Anki Deck Package (*.apkg) → check "Include scheduling information" → save.FSRS state is preserved bit-exact (we run the converter through both an internal property-based test and a fuzz harness with 1,200+ parametric cases). Cards, decks, subdecks, cloze cards, image occlusion cards, images, and audio fields all carry over. Tags are imported as-is.
One caveat: legacy SM-2 cards (anything created before you switched the desktop to FSRS) get converted using fsrs-rs's official memory_state_from_sm2 path — the same conversion the desktop uses. We've validated against the desktop's output and the deltas are within FP rounding.
Both apps are one-time purchases — no recurring subscription. AnkiMobile is $25; Discito Pro is $14.99 (founder pricing through end of 2026, going to $19.99 in 2027). Discito Lite is free forever with unlimited cards, full FSRS-6 scheduling, iCloud sync, and .apkg import — try before you buy.
Family Sharing is included with Discito Pro. AnkiMobile does support Family Sharing too.
Neither app charges you for sync. With Discito, that's because sync rides on your existing iCloud allocation; with AnkiMobile, sync runs through AnkiWeb (a separate free account you create).
Free to download. Full FSRS-6, iCloud sync, and .apkg import in the Lite tier. Try it for a week with your existing collection before deciding on Pro.