Bring Your Anki Decks to Sona

If you've built up decks in Anki, you don't have to start over. Sona can now import an Anki deck package (.apkg), the file Anki exports and the format AnkiWeb's shared decks download in, and turn it into Sona decks with their images and audio.

Export from Anki

In Anki, choose File → Export, pick Anki Deck Package (.apkg) and keep Include media ticked. A deck you downloaded from AnkiWeb is already an .apkg, so you can import it as it is. Files up to 120 MB are supported.

Import it on the web

Open Decks and click New deck, then Import at the top of the page. Open the Anki section, choose your file and click Upload and preview. Sona reads the deck and shows you what it will create before anything is saved:

• the decks it will make, and how many cards go into each
• the cards it can't bring over, and why
• how much space the images and audio need, next to what you have left

If it looks right, click Import. A large deck with lots of images can take a couple of minutes. You can leave the page, and a notification lets you know when your decks are ready.

In the iOS and Android apps

The apps get the same import with their next update. In the Decks tab, tap the import button next to +, open Anki, and tap Choose .apkg file to pick the file from your phone, for example from Downloads. The preview and the import work the same way as on the web.

How your cards come over

• Every Anki deck becomes a Sona deck, and a subdeck keeps its place in the name, like Spanish / Verbs.
• Basic, reversed and type-in-the-answer cards come over as front and back, with their formatting.
• A cloze note becomes one card per gap: the front hides that gap as [...] and the back shows the whole sentence.
• Extra fields, such as Anki's Back Extra, become the card's note, which you can open while studying.
• Images and audio are embedded in the cards, just like the ones you add yourself.

What doesn't come over

Your review history stays in Anki: imported cards start fresh in Sona's spaced repetition. Image occlusion cards aren't supported, a card with a side longer than 500 characters is skipped, and images linked from other websites or in a file type Sona can't show are left out. The preview lists all of this before you confirm, so nothing goes missing without you knowing.

Big decks and your plan

A deck larger than your plan's card limit per deck (50 cards on Free, 120 on Pro) is split into several decks, numbered like Biology (1/3), in the order the cards had in Anki. One import creates at most 10 decks, and on Free it also stays within the 10-deck limit; the preview tells you how many cards didn't fit. If the images and audio would exceed your plan's storage limit (250 MB on Free, 5 GB on Pro), the preview says so before importing, rather than bringing the deck over with pictures missing.

Find it again later

The import runs in the background. While it does, a small dotted ring next to the notification bell turns slowly, and when the preview is ready or something needs you, it shows a dot. Click it to get back to your import. In the apps, the same ring appears on the Today screen with their next update.

Nothing else changes

Importing is part of the Free plan, like creating decks by hand. Study, every Quiz mode, Browse, offline access and sync stay unlimited, same as before.

It's on the web now. The iOS and Android apps get it with their next update. Once your decks are in, How to Create a Useful Deck can help you refine them into decks you'll enjoy studying.