Kindle flashcards
are gone. Your words may not be.

Nov 3, 2026 · 5 min read

Amazon began removing the Kindle Flashcards feature on 22 August 2024 and said existing cards would stay viewable until November 2024. The word list behind it, Vocabulary Builder, is reported to remain, though sources disagree, so check your own Kindle. You can export the words and review them in Anki.

What happened to Kindle flashcards

Flashcards are no longer a working Kindle feature. Good e-Reader quotes Amazon's statement: "On August 22nd, 2024, we have begun to remove the Flashcards feature." From then on you could not add, edit or delete cards or decks, only view existing ones until November 2024.

The article says the feature was being removed from the main Kindle app on Android, iOS and Fire tablets, and discontinued on Kindle e-readers too. Good e-Reader's page shows no publication date of its own, so it is placed at late August or early September 2024 from its content.

Do e-readers still have flashcards?

The sources disagree, and the question stays open. The eBook Reader blog (6 September 2024) pointed out that Amazon's own page only mentions "the Kindle app" and never clearly covers e-readers. It also reported that Vocabulary Builder "will remain so you can still review looked up words, just not using flashcards". Good e-Reader, on the other hand, wrote that Vocabulary Builder "was another name for Flashcards".

Before the removal, Pocket-lint (updated 7 September 2024) described a Flashcards button at the bottom of the Vocabulary Builder screen, with Mark as Mastered on each card. A July 2026 guide from LingoBlend (updated October 2026) still lists a flashcard mode, though it is a third-party site and could be reusing older descriptions. No Amazon statement or post-November-2024 report that settles it was found.

The check is quick. Open a book, tap the top of the screen, tap the three dots, and choose Vocabulary Builder. If you see your words with their definitions, the list is there. If there is a Flashcards button on yours, the feature survived on your model. If there is not, it is gone from yours.

What is left: the word list

What you most likely still have is the list itself. Every word you looked up on the Kindle is stored in a file called vocab.db, with the sentence it came from. Vocabulary Builder was the screen that showed that file, and flashcards were one way of reviewing it. The list also needs the Kindle to be registered to your Amazon account, because it syncs to the cloud, according to a January 2024 thread on MobileRead.

Words you looked up in the Kindle apps are a different story. The sources consulted say Vocabulary Builder never covered those, which the iPhone and app page goes through.

Getting your words out

If you want a way to review them, start by getting them off the Kindle. Plug it into your Mac, copy system/vocabulary/vocab.db somewhere safe (the system folder is hidden in Finder, ⇧⌘. shows it), and drop the file on the free converter at /kindle-vocab-to-csv. It runs in your browser, nothing is uploaded, and it can make plain cards with the word on the front, or cloze cards with the word blanked out of its sentence. Both come out as a file Anki imports.

The export page has the Terminal version, and the Anki page covers the import. If you only wanted your old Flashcards decks, it is unclear where Amazon's data request page lives now, and the eBook Reader blog warned in September 2024 that all flashcards would be removed from Amazon's servers later that year. If you never requested them, assume they are gone.

Reviewing in Anki, or somewhere else

Anki does the part Kindle flashcards did, and does it better. The scheduler spaces reviews by how well you remembered each card, and cloze cards test the word inside the sentence you met it in, which is the harder and more useful direction. The cost is that you have to run the import yourself, which is the reason people drifted to the built-in feature in the first place.

If you do not want Anki at all, a spreadsheet with the word and sentence works for a few hundred words. Past that you will want something that schedules the reviews for you.

Where LeafyApp fits

LeafyApp has its own review, for words you look up on a Mac. Press ⌥A, box a word on any screen, and it is saved with its sentence, source and date. The review then shows fill-in-the-blank cards made from that saved sentence, scheduled with FSRS-5.

It does not read vocab.db, so it will not recreate your Kindle flashcards. Use the converter above for those. LeafyApp is for what you read on a Mac from now on, including a book open in Kindle for Mac if the box catches the text. It does not run on iPhone or Android. The privacy page says what leaves your Mac: only the word and its sentence.

Questions people ask

Does Kindle have flashcards?
Amazon began removing the Flashcards feature on 22 August 2024, per Good e-Reader quoting Amazon's statement, with existing cards viewable until November 2024. Whether e-readers kept any flashcard mode is disputed between sources, so check Vocabulary Builder on your own Kindle.

Why are my Kindle flashcards missing?
Because Amazon removed the feature in 2024. Good e-Reader reports it was removed from the Kindle app on Android, iOS and Fire tablets and discontinued on e-readers. The word list in Vocabulary Builder is reported to remain.

How do I export Kindle flashcards?
Not from Amazon's side any more. Your looked-up words are in vocab.db on a Kindle e-reader, and the free converter turns that file into a CSV or an Anki deck in your browser.

How do I put Kindle flashcards into Anki?
Copy vocab.db off the Kindle, then use the converter to make plain or cloze cards, and import the file into Anki. The Anki walkthrough has the import steps.

Can I get the old Kindle Flashcards decks back?
Probably not. The eBook Reader blog said in September 2024 that all flashcards would be removed from Amazon's servers later that year, and no current Amazon page for recovering them could be found.

Kindle, Fire and Amazon are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Anki is a trademark of its respective owner. LeafyApp is an independent app, not affiliated with or endorsed by Amazon or Anki, and the names are used here only to describe compatibility and for comparison.