Does anyone know if there is a flashcard app that supports shortcuts?
I have a new dictionary workflow with Microsoft Translate and it would be super nice to have a flashcard set with everything I look up – the thing I am searching on the front and the answer on the back.
Maybe that is even possible with a csv file with two columns and having another shortcut script asking the columns in random order… that would be ideal!
Has anyone maybe an idea how to accomplish something like this? Maybe with other Apps, combinations? 
It actually sounds like you have a reasonable starting point figured out already 
I’m a big fan of Anki for flashcards. It’s super-powerful if you get into it though the more advanced stuff can have a bit of a learning curve.
I haven’t played around with it but I did discover recently that they have a URL scheme for adding cards: https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/am-manual.html#url-schemes
It sounds like this could be used with Shortcuts to achieve what you want to do, and using an app such as Anki would be advantageous to learning over, say, a spreadsheet, because of its built-in spaced repetition.
Otherwise, if you use Anki there is also an option to import from a csv file so you could add to that and import every so often. I have a Keyboard Maestro macro that looks up a verb on SpanishDict, basically grabs the conjugations out of the HTML, and saves them to a csv I can later import into a specially-designed Anki deck. I’m quite proud of it but I think there is a glitch somewhere that I need to fix; I’ve had a few dodgy cards lately!
There may be other app options—I have been using Anki so long that I really have no idea!
1 Like
Thank you for the Tip! Sadly the iOS App costs 27$ and that’s to much for me right now. But I have a look at the OSx version which looks pretty nice!
Yes indeed! I managed to get it working!
For anyone who is interested:
This shortcut uses Microsoft Translate to translate anything you throw at it and writes the Vocabulary in a csv file called “Vokabeln.csv”
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/30bbb49badec4a1eb3b8da090420a14a
And this shortcuts uses the “Vokabeln.csv” file to ask you the vocabulary:
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/f7cddb5943e94a2a996165b21042723f
EDIT:
I added a way to easily add vocabulary from MacOsX to the Vokabeln.csv file with an automator app and shell script:
Chose App in Automators
- Ask for Text
- Run Shell script:
echo -e "$@\n$(cat "pathToFile")" > "pathToFile"
Now if you enter your vocabulary separated by comma f.ex. “german, english” it will be added to the csv and is included in the shortcut 2 above – for learning the vocabulary.
Ah, yes, the iOS version is a little expensive but I’ve found it to be worth it over the years. They have a web version which you can in theory use on iOS too, but obviously that wouldn’t give you access to the URL schemes.
The Mac version is free which means you can check out all the features without any cost, which is great.
So I finally found an app that works like a charm for me. Lernbox App
It is capable of opening txt files and check automatically if there are new entrees copying them to the vocabulary. So I always open the app with a shortcut which loads the txt file, so its always up to date. For adding new vocabulary, I use the shortcuts above, so every word I look up is automatically added to the txt-file. That works pretty great!
Edit: So for completion, here the whole setup. You need a file, Vokabeln.txt in the shortcuts directory and the app Lernbox:
Transalting to German
Translating to English
Vocabulary Training
Menu to have all at your fingertip
1 Like