How to make flashcards from a PDF on your Mac

In Koi, a PDF becomes flashcards in two steps: import it, then ask for study notes. You get a new page with a summary, the key points, flashcards and a quiz, and a Study pill that quizzes you one card at a time.

1. Open Koi's Documents panel (the top button on its dock) and choose Import, or use File, Import… in the menu bar, then pick the PDF. Word files, PowerPoint slides, Markdown and plain text work the same way.
2. Koi reads the file on your Mac and makes a page of its words. Nothing goes online for this step.
3. Open that page's document menu and choose Make study notes. The page's words go to Koi's AI, which writes a new page: a summary, the key points, flashcards, and a multiple-choice quiz that's kept as flashcards too.
4. Click the Study pill over the flashcards. You see the front of a card. Press Space for the back, then rate it Again, Hard, Good or Easy, or press 1 to 4.
5. Come back tomorrow. Each card returns when it's due, spaced out the way Anki does it.

What Koi can't do, before you start: it's a Mac app with no iPhone app and no sync, so your cards stay on the Mac you made them on. There's no Anki export. And it needs a paid plan, with no free tier and no student price.

We make Koi, so read this with that in mind. Everything about Koi here is what the app does today. Facts about the other apps come from their own sites, checked October 16, 2026. We didn't time anything or grade any app's cards.

Make study notes writes a page of its own next to the one you imported, so the original stays as it was. The new page has four parts:

• A summary of the whole file, in a few paragraphs.
• The key points, as a list you can skim before a class.
• Flashcards: a front and a back for each idea worth remembering.
• A multiple-choice quiz, kept as flashcards as well, so it goes into the same review.

It's an ordinary Koi document, so you can change anything. Fix a card that missed the point, delete the ones you already know, add a table or an equation next to them. The flashcards are a table with two columns, the front and the back, and you edit them like any other table.

Slides and Word files go through the same Import, and Koi reads them on your Mac too. What comes in is the file's words, so the more of a deck is written out, the more Koi has to make cards from. A slide that is only a picture gives it little to work with.

Make study notes sends up to 120,000 characters of a page's words, which is roughly 20,000 words. For a whole textbook, import it a chapter at a time: you get a page of notes and cards for each chapter, which is easier to study anyway.

Everything above also works by asking. Tap Fn + ⌘ to talk to Koi, then say what you want:

• “Import my biology slides” brings a file in as a page.
• “Make study notes from this” writes the summary, key points, cards and quiz.
• “Make flashcards from this page” writes real flashcards right on the page you're looking at.
• “Let's study these cards” opens the study window.
• “Quiz me on what I got wrong” goes back over the cards you missed.

A call with Koi uses its AI, which is online: your voice goes to the AI provider while the call lasts. More on that in Koi, the assistant that sees your screen.

Prefer to write cards yourself? Type /flashcards on any page and you get the same two-column table, empty. Type a front, press Tab, type the back, press Return for the next card. You can paste a spreadsheet in, too.

Writing cards and studying them uses no AI. When each card is due is kept with the page, in Koi's database on your Mac. And since the cards sit in a normal page, they can live right under your class notes, with the equations and tables they came from. Our page on Koi's notes and documents covers the editor.

Spaced repetition shows you a card again just before you'd forget it. A card you rate Again comes back soon. One you rate Easy waits much longer. Over a few weeks, the cards you know drift apart and the hard ones keep coming back.

Koi spaces cards out the way Anki does, with the same four ratings: Again, Hard, Good and Easy, and you only study what's due that day. Anki itself now offers FSRS, which its manual calls an alternative to its legacy SM-2 algorithm, plus settings to tune every step. Koi has no settings for this. If you want to tune your schedule, Anki is the better tool.

A class can skip the PDF. Tap Fn + ⌃, or click Record on Koi's dock, and pick In person. Koi listens through your Mac's microphone, writes the words down on your Mac as it goes, and keeps the sound on the page so you can play it back.

When it ends, the page asks whether to summarize it. Say yes, and the transcript's words go to Koi's AI, which adds a summary, the key points, flashcards and what the class was told to do. The audio never leaves your Mac. More on recording with Koi.

Ask your lecturer before you record, and check your school's rules. Some universities limit recording, or sending recordings to an AI service. Koi doesn't announce itself to the room.

Koi isn't the only way, and it isn't the cheapest. Here's how the apps people use for this compare, from their own sites, checked October 16, 2026.

• Anki is free on Mac (macOS 13 or later, Apple silicon and Intel), with free AnkiWeb sync, AnkiDroid free on Android and AnkiMobile at $24.99 on iPhone. Its cards can hold pictures, sound and video, and add-ons extend it. It doesn't read a PDF for you: you make the cards.
• RemNote has a Mac app for Apple silicon and Intel. Its free plan has unlimited notes and flashcards, 3 annotated PDFs and 5 AI cards from text, PDFs and slides. Pro is $8 a month, and Pro with AI, which adds its Learn PDF tool, is $18 a month or $216 a year.
• Knowt makes notes, study guides and flashcards from PDFs, slides and videos, with a free learn mode and a spaced repetition mode. Its site lists the web, iPhone and Android, not a Mac app.
• Mochi is a Markdown flashcard app with a Mac app for Intel and Apple silicon. Free works offline with no sign-up, and Pro, $5 a month, adds sync across devices.

Where Koi wins: one step turns a file into a summary, key points, cards and a quiz, the file is read on your Mac, and the cards live inside your own notes next to your recorded classes. Where it loses: no phone app, no shared decks, no free plan, and Anki and RemNote let you shape the review far more.

• Importing: nothing. The PDF, Word file or slides are read on your Mac.
• Writing and studying cards: nothing. Cards, and when each is due, are kept on your Mac.
• Make study notes: the page's words, up to 120,000 characters, go to Koi's AI provider. What comes back is kept only in the new page on your Mac.
• A call with Koi: your voice goes to the AI provider while the call lasts.
• A recorded class: the sound stays on your Mac. Its words go to the AI only if you say yes to notes.

Your documents aren't synced or copied anywhere else. That also means they're on one Mac only, so back them up the way you back up the rest of it.

There's no free plan and no student price. Pro is $20 a month, or $192 a year, after a 3-day free trial that needs a card and includes limited Koi use. Making study notes and calls with Koi count as Koi usage. Writing and studying cards don't, because they use no AI.

Lifetime is paid once: $59 for the first 25 buyers, then the price climbs as it sells. It keeps documents, flashcards, dictation and recorded classes for good, plus Koi credit worth a fifth of what you paid. That credit never expires, but it is limited: once it's used, study notes need a top-up. See the plans.

If your equations matter as much as your cards, our list of notes apps with LaTeX for Mac covers the editors that handle both.