Custom Chinese Flashcards

A practical guide to custom decks: how to create personalized Mandarin flashcards, how public vs private decks work, and how to include decks in your flashcards library.

What are decks?

A deck is a collection of words that you can use for spaced repetition flashcards. You’ll see official HSK lesson decks and user-created custom decks.

Public vs private custom decks

  • Private deck: only you can see it. Great for personal study lists.
  • Public deck: anyone can add it to their flashcards library. Public decks should be reserved for high-quality decks that provide clear value for many users.

Decks default to private. You can switch a deck to public at any time.

How to create a custom deck

  1. Open My Decks.
  2. Click Create deck.
  3. Paste a word list (any format). Submit.
  • Deck names are AI-checked to prevent abuse.
  • Audio is generated in the background using the default female1 voice.

How to use custom decks for flashcards

Creating a deck doesn’t automatically add it to your flashcards. To include it in your study pool, go to Flashcards → Decks and click Add.

On the flashcards start page, you can choose whether to include:

  • HSK decks (official lesson decks)
  • Custom decks (public decks + your private decks that you added)
  • Mastered cards (to continue reviewing flashcards you have mastered)

Audio generation

  • Audio generates asynchronously per card.
  • While it’s running, you’ll see Generating audio… on that card.
  • If something fails, you’ll see a Generate audio button to retry.

Tips

  • Make sure public decks are high quality and are named clearly to match their contents.
  • Quickly add new words to private decks to expand your vocabulary.
  • Switch between the HSK decks, or custom decks easily when doing flashcards.