Why Does the Same Flashcard Keep Coming Back?

A card keeps coming back for one of four reasons: it's still in its learning steps, you've been missing it, its ease has sunk too low, or the card itself is hard to learn as written. Only the last one needs you to change anything other than how you rate.

1. It's still being learned

New cards repeat in the same session before they get a real interval. In Decks a new card comes back after 1 minute and then 10 minutes before it graduates to 1 day. That's by design.

2. You keep missing it

Again sends a card back to relearning: it returns in 10 minutes, and its interval starts over at 1 day. If you miss a card every few reviews, it will feel like it never leaves.

3. Its ease is at the bottom

Each Again lowers a card's ease, and Good doesn't restore it, so after several misses the interval grows slowly even when you get it right. Pressing Easy when it really is easy is the way back up. See what is ease hell.

There's also an edge case when intervals are rounded down to whole days: at a 1-day interval with an ease below 2, multiplying and rounding down gives 1 day again, so a correct card can come back daily forever. Anki and Decks both prevent this by making Good and Easy add at least one day.

4. The card is the problem

A card you've failed many times is called a leech. Anki flags leeches after 8 lapses by default; Decks doesn't flag them. Either way, the fix is usually to rewrite the card:

• Too much on it? Split it into smaller cards, one fact each.
• Confused with another card? Add a hint that tells them apart.
• No context? Add an example sentence.

How to write good flashcards covers this in more detail.