Anki Review Timeline

简体中文

A template-independent Anki Desktop add-on that places a compact creation and review timeline at the end of the card front. Hover over, or focus, the whole timeline to inspect the card's review history and current FSRS state.

Why this add-on?

Anki card templates cannot read card creation time or review-log history. This add-on reads those values directly from the local collection, so it works across note types without adding fields or editing card templates.

Features

• Keeps the timeline at the end of the front on both the question and answer sides.
• Uses a neutral creation marker and rating-colored review markers.
• Opens one complete status panel when the timeline is hovered or focused.
• Shows creation time, first and latest review, total reviews, and rating counts.
• Lists each answered review with its exact time, resulting interval, answer time, and historical FSRS difficulty when Anki stored one.
• Shows current retrievability, stability, normalized difficulty, and desired retention when an FSRS memory state is available.
• Automatically follows Anki's Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese UI; all other interface languages use an English fallback while preserving the locale's date formatting.
• Flips and clamps the panel near viewport edges, with a compact mobile-width layout.
• Isolates its styles in a Shadow DOM to avoid conflicts with card CSS.
• Excludes manual forget/reschedule records (ease = 0) from answered-review counts.

Compatibility

• Anki Desktop only. AnkiMobile and AnkiDroid do not load desktop add-ons.
• Developed and tested on Anki 26.8.1 for Windows.
• Review history works with or without FSRS. Current-state metrics and historical difficulty appear only when Anki has stored the corresponding FSRS data.

Install

1. In Anki, open Tools > Add-ons > Get Add-ons....
2. Enter the AnkiWeb add-on code 1232577300 and confirm.
3. Restart Anki.

Open the AnkiWeb add-on page.

Install manually

1. Download anki-review-timeline.ankiaddon from the latest GitHub release.
2. In Anki, open Tools > Add-ons > Install from file... and select the downloaded package.
3. Restart Anki.

Build from source

1. Clone this repository.

2. Run the tests and build the package:

   python -m unittest discover -s tests -v
   powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\scripts\build.ps1
   

3. In Anki, open Tools > Add-ons > Install from file... and select dist/anki-review-timeline.ankiaddon.

4. Restart Anki.

For local development, the following command builds, installs, and verifies the add-on in the current Windows user's Anki profile:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\scripts\install-local.ps1

The installer preserves Anki's meta.json and any files not owned by this project.

Use and configuration

Review a card normally. The timeline appears after the front content and stays at the front/back boundary after the answer is revealed. Hover over it with a mouse, or focus it with the keyboard, to open the panel.

Use Anki's add-on configuration screen to change:

{
  "max_visible_reviews": 30,
  "show_time": false
}

• max_visible_reviews controls how many recent review dots are drawn (clamped to 1–100). The panel still lists the complete history.
• show_time adds hours and minutes to dates in the top summary. Individual review rows always include time to the minute.

Understanding the FSRS values

• Retrievability is an estimate of the probability of recalling the card now. It changes as time passes.
• Stability is the interval over which retrievability is expected to fall from 100% to 90%.
• Difficulty is Anki's FSRS difficulty normalized from its internal 1–10 scale to 0–100%.
• Target is the desired retention configured for the card.

These are descriptive values read from Anki; the add-on does not alter scheduling.

Privacy and data safety

All processing happens inside Anki. The add-on makes no network requests and does not modify notes, cards, templates, review history, or scheduling data. It only reads the active card and its local review log to render the panel.

Development

src/anki_review_timeline/  Add-on source packaged for Anki
tests/                     Pure-Python data tests and browser fixture
scripts/build.ps1          Builds the .ankiaddon package
scripts/install-local.ps1  Installs and verifies a local development copy
docs/                      README screenshots

Run the verification steps before submitting changes:

python -m unittest discover -s tests -v
node --check .\src\anki_review_timeline\web\timeline.js
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\scripts\build.ps1

License

Copyright © 2026 qrkks. Licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 or later (AGPL-3.0-or-later). See LICENSE.