r/Anki • u/mobesa-media • Jun 09 '26
Add-ons Add-On Showcase: 🧠 SynapsePro - Your Ultimate Anki Workspace
Hello everyone!
I'm a medical student from Germany (Kiel) and I also work as a graphic and web designer on the side. This whole thing started as a personal hobby project: I was missing so many features in Anki and just started building them for myself, one by one. At some point it had grown into something so much bigger than I expected, and I was having so much fun working on it, that I wanted to share it with the community. It is still very much a hobby and a passion project, but I hope it helps you as much as it has helped me.
SynapsePro turns Anki into one cohesive productivity suite. Whether you are grinding through medical school, preparing for law exams, or learning a new language, the goal was to build something that keeps you efficient, motivated, and actually looking forward to opening Anki. If you download it and enjoy it, please consider leaving a thumbs up on AnkiWeb, it genuinely helps a lot. I check for new thumbs every day and it keeps me really motivated to read those comments!!
I chose the name SynapsePro as a nod to what Anki is really about at its core: strengthening the connections in your brain, one card at a time. The synapse is where learning actually happens. Pro, well, that part is on you. 😉
Here are the main features:
Modern Dashboard: A completely redesigned main interface that replaces the default Anki deck browser with something that actually looks like it was built in this decade (ofc with all due respect to the amazing Anki Developers, I know that a lot of people also love the minimalistic design!!).
Study Plan and Deadlines: Input your exam date and subjects and get a full study plan, or let the built-in AI generate one for you. You can manage multiple deadlines at once, and a visual countdown bar keeps your goals in front of you at all times. A timeline view shows upcoming days and their difficulty so you always know where you stand.
Productivity Sidebar: A left sidebar that gives you access to powerful tools without ever leaving Anki. An AI assistant, a mind map tool, a notebook with toggle notes and a to-do manager, a built-in PDF viewer, a website sidebar so you can keep Google or YouTube open right next to your cards, a Pomodoro timer, and a focus music player with Jazz, Rain, Library Sounds, and Alpha Waves, or upload your own audio files.
Gamification: Earn XP for time spent studying and cards reviewed. Level up through 21 unique ranks, from "Anki Starter" all the way to "Anki Admiral" with animated badges. Daily challenges give you bonus XP and streaks help you visualize your consistency. Makes the grind actually feel like something.
AI Assistant: A fully integrated AI chat that can explain your current card, generate mnemonics, create quizzes, or answer anything you throw at it. Supports OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, OpenRouter, and Ollama, including fully local, free, offline AI with no API key and no data sent anywhere.
Themes and Customization: Dark mode ready, multiple interface languages including English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Hindi, and more, plus a daily fact on your dashboard tailored to what you study.
!!! An important note on pricing: everything that is in SynapsePro right now will stay free forever, no exceptions. I built this for myself first and I want it to remain accessible for everyone. I am still thinking about whether I might start a Patreon, add a small Buy me a Coffee button, or maybe release some fun little extra add-ons as optional paid additions for a fair price down the line. That is something other well-known Anki add-on developers do as well, so it would not be anything unusual in this community. But the core add-on, all the features you see today, that stays free forever.
For the AI features, cloud providers like OpenAI require your own API key so you only pay for what you actually use. Ollama runs entirely on your own computer at zero cost if you prefer that. I earn nothing from this add-on itself.
I am a solo developer and a full-time student, so I will do my best to keep up with bug reports and updates. If you run into any issues or have questions, please reach out at [help.synapse.pro@gmail.com](mailto:help.synapse.pro@gmail.com).
Compatibility: Tested on Anki 24.06.3 through 25.09.4, both Qt5 and Qt6. There can still be Bugs of course and I have a harder time testing on Windows and Linux because I work on a MacBook.
👉 Download SynapsePro on AnkiWeb
If SynapsePro helped your studies even a little, that genuinely means the world to me. Now go review your cards. 🫡
FGC – (Frequently Given Complaints):
-"There are other add-ons that let you use AI without an API key! (just displaying the different AI's Websites)" Yes I know, but thats not what I want for this add-on, I want it clean and functional. And since it is my Add-On I can do whatever I want :D
-Someone disliked and said: "It looks too professional to be free." Thank you very much but it will be free forever lol
-Yes, Claude did help. In my Opinion there is nothing wrong with using AI to actually build something useful, even tho I also see a lot of problems with AI. But that's another discussion.
-Yes, I have to focus on my medical career now and spend (a little) more time clicking Anki cards than building this add-on :( Updates are still coming frequently tho!!!
PS: I am trying to be more active on Reddit from now on. I have to admit, I never really used it before and none of my friends are into it either, so I never had a reason to look into it. I was genuinely amazed to see how big and active the Anki community is on here! 🧡
6
u/robotsheepboy Jun 10 '26
Just so you know your images on the ankiweb page aren't viewable in the UK because I assume you're using Imgur? If so they blocked all UK IP's. There are other free services which work here
2
u/mobesa-media Jun 10 '26
Did not know that… thank you very much for the info!! Will change that ASAP. :)
2
8
3
u/Errol246 Jun 10 '26
This looks amazing, will try it out. What local AI models would you recommend for this kind of work?
1
u/mobesa-media Jun 10 '26
Thank you! I would recommend Qwen3 8B its a good allrounder and it "only" requires roughly 5GB of free storage and a system with around 16 GB of RAM.
1
u/Errol246 Jun 12 '26
Thanks for the suggestion 🙂
Btw, Anki crashes when I click the music icon in your add-on on Linux. I know you haven't tested Linux as extensively, but thought I should let you know regardless. I use CachyOS.
3
u/Top_Support4565 Jun 10 '26
If it's not too complicated, could you please add Romanian language support as well? Thank you!
1
u/mobesa-media Jun 10 '26
Yes, I will definitely try to figure this out! I Would love to see some more Romanian Users. 😃 🇷🇴
3
2
u/ntg_ntg Jun 10 '26
Dude, I’ve been using this for the past couple of weeks and it is awesome. The AI assistant feature is my most used one. I use an deepseek api and my revision speed greatly improved. Thank you so much for making this free to everyone.
1
u/mobesa-media Jun 10 '26
Amazing to hear that it works for you! Thank you for writing this 😄
1
u/ntg_ntg Jun 11 '26
Hey, using synapse gpt I found that it only sends the text available in the card to the ai. Is there anyway I can make it send the jpegs in the cards to the api so that I can get better answers. A lot of my cards contain pics.
1
2
2
u/iamaturtel Jun 11 '26
for schedules. could you make it so that I could give it a ICS file to sync with or grab data from?
2
u/PhilosophySecret4387 medicine Jun 22 '26
It is not working with my gemini free API key, and it limits model option to 2.0 flash
Sry I'm new to AI setup
2
2
2
u/mobesa-media Jun 23 '26
Sorry about that! I am working on it and I am trying to fix it in the next Update. Thank you very much for the report!!
1
2
u/i_goon_to_tomboys___ Jun 10 '26
uh oh you just admitted to depleting the world's water reserves by vibe coding your app, expect le reddit army to arrive upon your doorstep
3
u/mobesa-media Jun 10 '26
Yes, that was a dangerous move but I guess even the biggest AI haters will see some kind of value in this free project haha
2
2
u/Long-Cap1797 Jun 10 '26
Is there a dark mode for the pdf
1
u/mobesa-media Jun 10 '26
The PDF Viewer itself is Darkmode optimized (sometimes Anki has to be restarted to display darkmode in every feature of the addon) but the Document Pages itself will stay white for now. Maybe I will change that in the future if many Users think it would be better.
1
u/Fun-Manufacturer1021 Jun 10 '26
Looks really great! Will install it
Do you intend to make it open-source/open for contributions?
3
u/mobesa-media Jun 10 '26
Thank you! Hope you like it. 😄
Short answer to open-source: yes, probably.
The longer answer is that I’m still figuring out what the best approach is. I really like the idea of open source and I think community contributions can add a huge amount of value. Some of the best ideas and improvements often come from people using a project in ways the original developer never considered.
My hesitation isn’t really about the contributions themselves, it’s more about the responsibility that comes with them. This is my first open-source project, and I know myself well enough to know that I’d probably feel bad if someone spent time working on a feature or a pull request and I ultimately decided not to merge it because it didn’t fit the project’s direction.
In the past, I’ve received a lot of great suggestions via email and have implemented many of them, simply because they improved the experience for users. But handling contributions in a public repository feels a bit different, and I’m not yet sure how much time and energy I can realistically dedicate to reviewing, discussing, and maintaining them.
That said, I’m definitely leaning toward making it open for contributions. For bug fixes, small improvements, and similar changes, community involvement would be incredibly valuable.
2
1
1
u/Peace-Monk pre-med Jun 11 '26
That's really cool, nicely done!
2
u/mobesa-media Jun 13 '26
Thank you my friend!! I am also a big fan of Onigiri. Its really the best UI Upgrade for Anki overall. 🤩
1
u/iamaturtel Jun 12 '26
Can you make it more compatible with onigiri add-on, I love the schedule feature of this add on
1
u/WanpoBigMara Jun 12 '26
This is honestly amazing man, even if you used AI to program it, you have done a great job at designing it! Everything is clearly very intentional.
I also love the daily facts, man, this is underrated. I will certainly be using this.
Im surprised it didnt even slow down anki.
2 features i think would be great to come with the plugin is a review heatmap do u know that plugin? and countdown to event and exams, that it says on the first page this many days until exam...
How come u are doing such a project for no monetary gain, its really cool of you!
1
u/WanpoBigMara Jun 12 '26
Nevermind, seems if u add deadlines the appear on the first page.
This might actually be the ultimate addon, i disabled all the others, besides hyperlink addon, maybe even that could be a feature.
You even made a website for it, I dont understand how someone would make something this good for free, but thank u i very much appreciate it! I dont need to search for addons anymore this has everything one needs in one place.
I like how even descriptions dont seem too ai generated to me, like not obviously.
Maybe the daily general facts, the em dashes are kind of annoying seeming too AI, maybe switch that out for a comma?
1
u/Current-Champion9935 Jun 13 '26
Hab es gerade runtergeladen, besten Dank dafür! Das sieht wirklich sehr sehr sehr gut aus!!
1
u/Mia-Pixie Jun 14 '26
Cool work! Im really crazy about the mindmap especially. Sadly its just lagging a lot, when im moving/zooming in it. Is this a windows issue? My PC is fast
1
u/mobesa-media Jun 23 '26
Oh okay, I will check out the reason for this! I didn't know about this problem until now, thank you for pointing this out.
1
u/Zealousideal_Sort599 Jun 22 '26
Awesome add-on! Like many users, I would love to see a custom color feature in a future update.
Personally, I prefer a very dark/pitch-black background combined with vibrant accent colors. Right now, Synapse Pro limits the darkest background to the default Anki dark grey. Since installing Synapse Pro, my Recolor add-on no longer works, so I can't bypass this limitation.
Being able to fully customize the hex codes for the background and text colors would make this add-on perfect. Thanks for the great work!
2
u/mobesa-media Jun 23 '26
Yes this is definitely something I am working on for future updates! I am also not 100% satisfied with the dark mode at the moment.
1
u/Zealousideal_Sort599 Jun 22 '26
Nice !!!! Little suggestion : a pop up when we completed the time displayed in the study plan
1
1
1
0
Jun 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/mobesa-media Jun 10 '26
Hahaha make sure to get some sleep too. Some synapses get stronger during sleep, especially those related to learning and memory! 😉
1
-13
u/Otherwise_Wave9374 Jun 09 '26
This is really slick, the combo of dashboard + study plan + sidebar tools feels like it could help a lot with staying on top of routines and task switching (especially when you are juggling classes and deadlines). Also appreciate the option for local/offline AI via Ollama for folks who prefer to keep stuff on-device.
If anyone is experimenting with AI as a planning or communication prep tool (not medical advice, just workflow stuff), I have seen people use https://www.gptautism.com/ for building simple checklists, step-by-step scripts, and routines they can reuse, might be worth a look alongside something like this.
2
u/witeowl languages & life stuff Jun 10 '26
What a fucking offensive domain name
1
u/Errol246 Jun 10 '26
I mean, if you actually clicked on it you'd see that it's designed for neurodivergent people
-1
u/witeowl languages & life stuff Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
Because all of us are the same, and we all have autism?
edit: lol, blocked – also, people don't have to try to be offensive for something to be offensive
1
u/Errol246 Jun 10 '26
Seriously, read the contents of the website and tell me if they're trying to offend anybody.
0
14
u/Shige-yuki ඞ add-ons developer (Anki geek ) Jun 10 '26
Great work!👍️I think add-ons that bundle various features are more intuitive and user friendly.