Release Notes

Introducing the new List Widget: view cards that are ready to study, check on study progress of the list, and even create cards or start a study session right from the widget.

New Features

• New List Widget for glancing at your cards from the home screen, with many customization options.

Improvements

• In study sessions, longer cards that scroll used to disable the reveal and scoring swipe gestures to prevent conflicts. Now you can swipe from the corner of the screen to perform these actions.
• Added many missing voiceover labels across the app and fixed some broken ones.
• Advanced Learner: The Create Card shortcut action now transcribes audio if passed an audio file.
• Improved the text detection UI in the annotation editor.

Fixes

• Fixed question/answer text blocking other voiceover regions in the card editor
• Fixed scanning text from photos not working correctly in photos taken via the in-app camera.

This update surfaces helpful information to various screens: Studies display your progress, and all lists of cards and calendar days show the number of cards on each section (upcoming, available, and finished cards). In addition, Shortcuts actions like Study Card and Get Card play back recorded audio.

New Features

• Study progress is now visible when studying
• Card lists and calendar days now display section counts
• The Study Card and Get Card shortcuts action can now play audio in cards that have audio.

Improvements

• Hidden regions are easier to see in Get Card and other card-previewing Shortcuts actions.
• Hidden regions now better match search results in Shortcuts

Fixes

• Fixed hidden regions not honoring the "hide answer" setting in Shortcuts.

Fix poor study animations frame rate in folders and improve reveal and scoring gestures when cards are scrollable.

Say hello to a new Advanced Learner feature: Audio Transcripts. Now you can read your recordings in studies and in lists whenever it's inconvenient to listen to them.
In addition, you can now attach audio to new cards from Shortcuts, study performance is snappier on Mac and iPad, and the UI looks more solid (specially selection / inactive states) on Mac and iPad.

New Features

• Advanced Learner: Transcribe speech to text in flashcards, keeping the original audio file for reference. This works automatically on new recordings, or manually for anything imported.
• You can now attach audio files in the Create Card Shortcut - record audio in your flashcards without entering the app.

Improvements

• Mac, iPad Brought some Study Session performance / battery usage improvements from iPhone to Mac and iPad.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where invalid cards could be imported or exported in certain edge cases.
• Fixed losing typed in text if you add an image without dismissing the keyboard first. - <span
• Mac, iPad In Calendar, Don't highlight multiple rows when the same folder appears more than once.
• Mac Fixed overlapping text in Study Progress on Mac
• Mac Fixed layout spacing issues in Quick Entry on Mac class="platform-marker">Mac, iPad Fixed window inactive states, which were not graying accent colors and dimming content as expected.

This update makes the study view much smoother, specially when studying a folder. We also fixed several audio recording and copy/paste bugs.

Improvements

• Significantly increased animation performance and battery consumption when studying by preventing unnecessary work while a study session is active.
• Improved error reporting when pasting unsupported clipboard content
• Audio cards in lists have a slightly less prominent look

Fixes

• Fixed the audio recorder not playing back the whole file again after replacing an audio region.
• Fixed the audio recorder waveform not updating smoothly when the file starts increasing size.

Quality

• Many many tests were added in the making of this release, in preparation for more ambitious future updates.

This update introduces a much requested feature: audio recording and playback for card questions and answers! These can be recorded within the app, from the file picker, or imported en-masse from a folder. It also includes visual refinements, and fixes to Live Activities.

New Features

• Record audio directly on cards and play it back while studying.
• Import one or more audio files via drag and drop, the file picker, or folder imports.

Improvements

• Live Activity backgrounds now respect reduced luminance accessibility settings.
• Improved tap feedback of images in the CardEditor.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where answers could become slightly visible when the app returned to the foreground.
• Fixed previous Live Activities not ending correctly when a new study session is started.
• Fixed starting the correct study session when re-launching the app from a Live Activity.

This update introduces a Live Activity to keep track of your current study session, enables continuing studies on other folders when finishing a study session, adds a setting to help reduce the number of notifications coming from multiple folders, and brings multiple stability and performance improvements across Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

New Features

• Keep track and resume your active study session with a Live Activity that appears in the lock screen, Dynamic Island, and in Stand By Mode when you exit a study session midway.
• After finishing a study session, other folders that are ready to study can be navigated to and studied directly from the Study Completion screen. Upcoming folders can be navigated to as well.
• Separating notifications by folder can be turned off from Settings, which reduces the number of notifications if various folders become available at the same time. Tapping on notifications on this mode opens "Today’s Cards".

Improvements

• Visual refinements to the Calendar’s Today screen for Liquid Glass
• The Study Completion screen now shows how many cards are left per folder
• Advanced Learner: When hiding a Folder that has subfolders, you can optionally hide its subfolders as well.
• Mac Annotation text fields now become first responder immediately after being added

Fixes

• Mac Fixed context menus not appearing on all clickable areas of folders
• Mac Fixed the background of Settings in light mode
• Mac Fixed an issue where the Study view could scroll back up unexpectedly when using a trackpad

This update improves stability (Mac, specially), adds a folder picker to New card editors, and fixes notification previews of hidden areas.

New Features

• The folder name field is focused automatically when creating new folders
• Cards with Hidden Areas now display a thumbnail preview of the hidden areas in notifications instead of revealing the answer
• iPhone, iPad You can now change the folder new cards or annotations go to without having to navigate to it first

Fixes

• Dragging images on lists of cards now correctly uses the image filename as the default card answer.
• iPhone, iPad Fixed an incorrect "No cards found" message appearing after scanning and then converting scans to cards.
• Mac Fixed a crash that would sometimes happen when resizing windows that display lists of cards.

We redesigned the annotation editor, adding the capability of hiding areas of an image to study them and improved its text scanning UI. There's also stability fixes for Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

New Features

• Adding annotations no longer places an annotation in the center of the screen. Draw them directly in the area you wish to annotate, which is much more natural.
• Hidden Regions: You can now hide labels of diagrams and other specific areas of an image to study them.
• Shortcuts: The Create Annotations Action no longer requires existing annotations to launch the Annotation Editor, which will appear ready for you to create annotation cards.
• Image Annotations and Hidden Areas are now rendered in Archive import previews
• iPhone, iPad Improvements to the Annotation Editor's text scanner:
  • After recognizing text, long press to activate a lasso tool to select multiple scanned regions for merging or removing them.
  • Select between hiding the recognized text, or converting it to annotations.

Fixes

• Fixed duplicate card exports when exporting archives with annotations.
• Fixed race conditions when adding annotations and switching cards quickly.

This release brings major performance improvements to Anki import, adds Anki export, faster performance across editing and imports, new ways to create cards and annotations from the clipboard and Files, and redesigned Mac Settings. It also includes many stability fixes across Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

New Features

• Revamped the New Card button with new ways of quickly creating cards:
  • Added: Create Annotation Cards from photos in the Clipboard or from Files
  • Added: Create Cards directly from Photos, Files, Camera or Clipboard (image or text)
  • Added: Open QuickEntry with an URL in the clipboard to extract cards right away (Advanced Learner only)
• Added Anki export, letting you export your decks back to Anki.
• Import preview now supports sorting columns, making large imports easier to review.
• Mac Preferences are redesigned to use a tab-based layout.

Improvements

• Reduced import time of Anki decks by 70% in some instances
• Improved typing performance and responsiveness of the card and annotation editors on iOS.

Fixes

• Fixed Quick Entry card extraction not showing results immediately when opened directly in extraction mode.
• Mac Fixed a crash that would happen when opening certain folders with annotations.
• Mac Fixed Card Editor menu buttons not being in the correct place when typing longer cards

Now you can import Anki decks created with the latest versions of Anki. It supports Cloze cards and simple text/image combinations. It also brings fixes and polish across Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

New Features

• Added support for importing Anki decks with supported content like Cloze, images, and plain text. There's no image occlusion card support (yet). Import is accessible by drag/dropping .apkg files to folders or via the "Import..." menu.
• New Shortcuts actions for Anki imports. Other import-related shortcut actions now get better error reporting when things go wrong.

Improvements

• Import views now show a preview for all import types, not just CSV.
• iPhone, iPad Import Views now allow you to change the target folder

Fixes

• Audio now mixes correctly with background music during study.
• Fixed Import, when invoked from Context Menus, not figuring out the target folder correctly
• Fixed a case where score controls could get stuck after the app moved to the background.
• Addressed a threading issue that could lead to crashes in rare cases.
• iPad Icons and badges now visually dim when their rows lose focus.
• iPad Fixed a regression that caused iPad windows to not be resizable
• Mac Fixed menu bar items remaining disabled after canceling the photo picker.

This update add new Shortcuts actions and updates for the new Extract Cards feature, improves card extraction, and fixes several study, help, and Quick Entry issues across iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

New Features

• Added an option to the "Open Quick Entry" Shortcuts action for opening it in Extract Cards mode.
• Added a new “Extract Card from Text” Shortcuts action to turn text into study cards in the background.
• Mac Help now links to the web manual

Improvements

• Improved AI card extraction to favor shorter, more useful cards and avoid low-value results
• Better error handling when extracting cards from articles. It no longer falls back to extracting from the whole page when an article isn't found because this leads to low quality cards.
• Reviewed and corrected help and error messages across the app.
• iPhone, iPad Improved legibility of icons in the import preview view
• Mac Tip views for Quick Entry and AI Card Extraction now open in separate windows

Fixes

• Automatically add a number suffix to new folders created from Shortcuts when an existing folder with the same name is found.
• Fixed reloading and animation glitches at the end of a study session.
• Translated various untranslated strings
• iPhone, iPad Fixed help sheets for Quick Entry not being available
• Mac Fixed placeholder text alignment in Quick Entry.

This update brings a great improvement to Quick Entry: Enter any text or url, and it extracts cards sequentially using Apple Intelligence. It's a great starting point for a deck! Note: This feature is available in Advanced Learner and only on devices and regions where Apple Intelligence is available.

New Features

• Advanced Learner: You can now extract cards from arbitrary text or URL in Quick Entry, making it easier to turn longer passages into study material.

Improvements

• Restored Quick Entry help and improved layout and button alignment
• Reduced visual bouncing when cards are recognized in Quick Entry
• Mac Quick Entry on Mac is redesigned to feels more mac-like

This update focuses on improving Mac and iPad: smoother Continuity between devices, better menu bar state handling, and lots of polish throughout the app.

Improvements

• Continuity now works for cards and calendar dates (make sure to update all devices to 1.5.7 to get this benefit)
• Mac, iPad Continuity and opening from Shortcuts is now smarter about which window to use
• Mac, iPad Some menu bar menus that weren’t useful without selection or cards now disable correctly
• Mac Refinements to default window sizes

Fixes

• Fixed Quick Entry appearing on Continuity at times when it shouldn't
• Fixed the truncation issues in the "Show Study Progress" and "Get Folder" Shortcuts action
• Fixed a scenario where sometimes it wouldn’t be possible to delete certain folders.
• Mac Fixed search empty states not being centered on Mac
• Mac Fixed incorrect background tinting of shortcut snippets on Mac

This update includes showing checkmarks on folders when they are finished, accessibility improvements, color/contrast refinements, a new shortcut action and a rotation fix.

New Features

• To make it easier to identify which folders you are done with, they appear with a checkmark over them when all of their cards are finished.
• Added a new “Delete Folders” Shortcut action to help clean up old Folders in your library

Improvements

• Improved accessibility on larger text sizes for the study progress view (it scrolls if it doesn’t fit) and final interval picker
• Refined theme divider colors and updated some button styles.
• Added a few extra accessibility labels for icon-only buttons

Performance & Reliability

• Fixed a leak when calculating study status in the background - in some cases, restarting it would keep the old calculation running.

Fixes

• Fixed hide/show answers button having poor contrast when it’s showing answers
• Fixed an issue in Plus/Max devices where the Study View could appear blank after rotating the device.
• Removed incorrect background mode from the Open Calendar shortcut (it’s a foreground-only action).

This update brings powerful new automation capabilities with Shortcuts, Siri integration, improves typing performance on mac and makes it easier to swap questions and answers on cards.

New Features

• Benkyo Box now works with Shortcuts and Siri, unlocking powerful automations. You can do almost anything that you can do in the app within Shortcuts:
  • Check your current study progress for the day
  • Study cards (even outside the app! - just use the Get Card action with the answer hidden)
  • Score, swap questions and answers, move, and delete cards.
  • Get filtered lists of cards (ready to study, all completed and all in a folder/list).
  • Launch most screens of the app, such as a date on the calendar
  • Import cards from text or CSV (with or without launching the app for confirmation)
  • Change any Setting, such as theme, sounds on/off, etc
  • Change properties on folders, such as hiding them from studies
  • and more :D
• Folders and various useful pre-defined App Shortcuts now appear in Spotlight results

Improvements

• Mac Significant typing performance increase on the Card Editor.

Fixes

• iPhone, iPad Fixed the edit button not working correctly when activating multi-select
• iPhone, iPad Improved reliability of running in the background, the system should not close the app in the background as often.

This update mainly fixes Quick Entry syntax highlighting, widget/notification background update reliability and other bug fixes.

Fixes

• Fixed a crash in Settings -> Appearance
• Fixed an issue where syntax highlighting in Quick Entry would not work correctly
• Reworked widget updates to stay within the daily refresh system quota.
• Improved reliability of notification and widget updates triggered by silent push notifications
• Mac/iPad Fixed deactivating some menu bar items when they can't be used
• Mac Fixed the widget not refreshing reliably on Mac (depended on app being active)
• Mac Show calendar days in the day view, since the toolbar is too small to show it
• Mac Hide the app badge on when the app is not running, similar to apps like Mail.

This update includes performance improvements, fixes for Mac-specific issues, and better stability when importing and exporting content.

Improvements

• Optimized several database queries to improve import speed and overall responsiveness.

Fixes

• Fixed a widget crash when loading non-cached data from SwiftData.
• Fixed the card list not updating after changing calendar selections when restoring a previous window session.
• Fixed a crash when exporting unsorted cards via drag and drop.
• Fixed exported archives missing rectangles when using drag-and-drop.
• Fixed annotation pointer curvatures when rectangles are short.

Benkyo Box 1.5.2 is here — and with it, the very first Mac release of Benkyo Box!

New Features

• The score control (and other miscellaneous buttons) now have Liquid Glass style applied to it.
• Mac, iPad Added support for dropping text files, folders, CSVs, and images directly into lists of cards and folders.
• Mac, iPad Expanded menu bar options, including a new Cards menu, import/export menus, and a shortcut to study today's cards (Command + Shift + P).
• Mac, iPad Drag and drop now works more broadly: across different apps and within the app. The current selection can also be dragged into other apps as a shareable archive.

Improvements

• Darker annotation canvas color in the Onigiri dark theme.
• Renamed some sections such as "Progression" -> "Study Intervals" for clarity.
• iPad The "Add Card" button is now consistently in it's own group and separate from other buttons so that it's easier to find.
• Mac Tooltips for most buttons

Fixes

• Fixed an issue in Quick Entry where the cursor would reset to the first position after typing the first few characters.
• Fixed some Library context menus not appearing until several long-press attempts.
• Improved import reliability: temporary files are now cleaned up more robustly.
• Mac, iPad More reliable edit mode management across multiple windows, both on iPad and Mac.
• Mac, iPad Do apply the menu bar actions to the topmost window

This update focuses on polish, small design touches, and a handful of important fixes for both iOS and macOS.

Improvements

• Added helpful tooltips to buttons for clearer guidance.
• Hidden annotation icons are now easier to spot.
• Edit-mode controls are shown only when you’re actually editing, keeping the interface cleaner.
• The study view overlay now uses a refined glass effect for a smoother look.
• Folder picker refinements make selecting the right folder simpler and more reliable.

Fixes

• Prevented selecting invalid folders in the Folder Picker.
• Corrected the height of the Progress label on smaller devices.
• Improved edit-mode management across multiple windows by sharing the active window’s model through the environment.
• Cleaned up corner radii in the import text editor.
• Fixed incorrect aspect ratios in thumbnails for images with drawings.
• Resolved an overlay issue on iOS 18.5.
• Addressed macOS build issues and improved French demo data.
• Internal adjustments to keep XCUITest row tapping working.

This release also includes updated help text translations and other behind-the-scenes refinements to keep Benkyo Box running smoothly.

New Liquid Glass redesign for iPhone and iPad. Many windowing features have also been incorporated from the upcoming Mac version into the iPad app as well, making it even more capable.

New Features

• Redesigned with Liquid Glass
• The application badge now shows the number of cards left to study.
• Background refresh for study counts.
• iPad Open folders and cards in new windows for easier multitasking (use the context menu in the card list).
• iPad Drag and drop images into the Text Editor to quickly set the question or answer to an image.
• iPad When selecting multiple cards, a multi-card preview and context menu actions makes more intuitive to work with multiple cards at once.

Improvements

• Faster performance when resizing windows with Card Editors open.

Fixes

• Smaller drawings are easier to see in the Card Editor
• Fixed crashes related to multi-card selection, annotations, and the feedback screen.

Fixes

• Fix a performance issue that would cause the Study View to slow down.

New Features

• Show the number of cards left to study in the app icon's badge.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where dragging on the score control didn’t work when cards couldn’t be scrolled.

While we work on bringing Benkyo Box to macOS, we’ve added new features and fixes that improve the experience on iPad. These are included in this release:

New Features

• iPad You can now open cards in new windows, perfect for multitasking.

Improvements

• Improved overall support for multiple windows, with card editors that update in real time when changes occur in other windows.
• The import sheet on iPad now automatically adjusts to its content.
• Pressing Return or Escape can now close the Study View.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue that occurred when opening a folder that contained only subfolders and no cards inside.

New Features

• Cards now show a progress indicator around their current study frequency. This indicates how close you are to finishing a card.
• The theme picker now displays the theme's main tint color besides the theme name.

Fixes

• Increased the tap area of the study button, which was too small.
• Fixed the study button blinking tint colors on initial load.

New Features

• CSV import now allows selecting more than one text column for the question and the answer
• Long questions and answers can now be scrolled if they don’t fit on the screen.

Performance Improvements

• Improve scroll performance on lists with simple image/text cards
• Improved startup time

Fixes

• Fixed some menu tint colors in iOS 18 (regression from iOS 26 updates)
• Fix a layout issue in the study button tip
• iPad Fixed a crash in the card list that could sometimes happen when turning on multi-select
• iPad Folder Info and Import sheets have a standard size more common to iPad apps

Fixes

• This hotfix fixes image annotations no longer working due to an update in 1.3.2

This release improves the feel of the scoring control by making its interactive area more forgiving and by making the gauge pointer actually follow the drag location (when dragging on the gauge). It also includes a plethora of underlying updates related to the upcoming iOS 26 and Mac version.

Improvements

• The radial score control is easier to interact with: its drag area is more forgiving, and the gauge follows the gesture movement radially instead of linearly for a more natural feel.
• Improved calendar scrolling: fixed inset issues and increased tap areas for the header.

Fixes

• Fixed sidebar not sizing correctly in larger devices
• Fixed some JPEGs not appearing with the correct size after importing them
• More efficient multi-window support for iPad (windows no longer duplicate data in memory that they shouldn’t)

Underlying changes

• Preparations for iOS 26 with updated styles, icons, and compatibility fixes.
• Controls updated for compatibility with the future Mac version: Calendar, Quick Entry and Import ported to Mac, and system menu bar support (for iPad as well).

This release brings fixes and improvements to the image annotation editor.

Performance Improvements

• Resizing annotations is faster

Fixes

• Annotations now resize correctly at all zoom levels
• When editing annotations, they move to the top so that they are easier to edit

This release adds subtle but satisfying sounds throughout the app, with various sound themes for you to choose from. It also includes many under the hood changes for our upcoming macOS version, some of which improve the iPad version as well.

New Features

• Sound effects for scoring, card reveals, swipe actions, animations and other areas. Customizable with 5 sound themes to choose from.
• Custom notification sound to help you distinguish Benkyo Box notifications from other apps. 5 notification options to choose from as well.
• We heard many of you want the study control to go from right to left, so we added the option to configure this in settings.

Performance Improvements

• Performance: Faster startup time with a little sacrifice in app size

Fixes

• Fix incorrect popup menu colors in iOS 18.4
• Sketching: Increase contrast between drawing canvas and background
• iPad Collapsing / Expanding folders in the library won't do so for every window of the app
• iPad Cleanup sidebar styling and increase split view content width in larger devices

This release primarily add and improves translations. It also makes it default to not repeat cards within a study session so that you can finish them more quickly. The spaced repetition intervals stay the same, so you'll still see cards again after some time.

New Features

• New translations: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, Canadian French and Japanese

Improvements

• Cards don't repeat in study sessions by default. This can still be changed in Settings.
• Reduced app size
• Reduced initial cards import time.
• Improve localized dates and lists, using language conventions

Fixes

• Annotations moved to a folder no longer disappear when you delete their original folder

This release brings Benkyo Box to Spanish (Latin America, United States and Spain), the first translation of many to come. As a nice side effect, it also brings consistency and style improvements to all English text found throughout the app.

Fixes

• Improve Onigiri theme legibility in dark mode.
• iPad Add more hover effects to buttons that were missing it

This release focuses on iPad polish and bug fixes, with some of them benefitting iPhone.

Improvements

• Hiding answers on iPad also hides the answers in detail view, so that they don't spoil your studies. They can still be seen by tapping or editing them.
• The Hidden Answers toggle is now in the toolbar, making it easier to access
• iPad Layout polish and better hover support

Performance Improvements

• Faster pre-fetching of 3d models (still might delay on some devices)
• Prevent sound effect delays

Fixes

• Annotations would previously layout incorrectly when switching between 2 annotation cards from different images
• Fix study button was not being centered correctly on all screen sizes
• iPad Study View score bar doesn't lose finger tracking

Fixes

• Remove beta migration code that should not be running in production

Say hello to Benkyo Box 🧡, your new favorite way to learn things 🧠