Making your own Anki deck takes five steps: create the deck, add notes with the Add button, pick Basic or Cloze, import a file if you already have a word list, and set how many new cards per day. All five come from Anki's manual and are below. The slow part is not any of them. It is writing the cards, which is why the second half is about not doing that by hand.
The short version of how to make an Anki deck
In Anki, click Add. The Add window has a note type at the top left and a deck at the top right. Click the deck name, then Add to make a new one. Type the front and the back, press ⌘↩, and the card is made and filed in that deck. That is a deck with a card in it.
Basic or Cloze: pick the note type before you type
Anki stores notes, and cards are made from them. The Add window defaults to Basic, with a Front and a Back field and one card per note. Use it for a word and its meaning.
Cloze is the other one most people need. You type a whole sentence in one Text field, select the words to hide and click the [...] button. The manual's example turns "Canberra was founded in 1913." into Canberra was founded in {{c1::1913}}.. The c1 numbers the deletion, and each new number makes another card. Holding Option while you click [...] reuses the previous number instead of adding a new one. For vocabulary, a cloze built from the sentence you met the word in is often a better card than a bare word on the front. Small cards also grade faster, which the too time-consuming page goes into.
Making a deck from a CSV or a word list
If your words are already in a spreadsheet, skip typing. Anki's File menu has Import. The manual says any plain text file with fields separated by commas, semicolons or tabs can be imported, provided it is UTF-8. A spreadsheet must be saved as plain text first, for example CSV from a spreadsheet app.
Anki works out the number of fields from the first non-commented line and tries to guess the separator, which you can change in the import options. You then say which column goes to which field. Tags can come from a column. If the file has a deck column, each note goes to the deck named in its row, which is the quickest way to build several decks from one sheet. Duplicates are judged on the first field, and you choose whether to update, ignore or import them anyway.
Two small catches. Tick "Allow HTML in fields" only if your text has formatting; turn it off if it contains angle brackets you want kept literal. And decide the first column carefully, because it decides what counts as a duplicate.
New cards per day, the setting that decides if you quit
Every deck has its own options. Click the gear beside the deck, choose Options, and find New cards/day. The manual describes it as controlling "how many new cards can be introduced each day you open the program", and notes that if you miss a day the next day is back to the original setting rather than catching up. Whatever number you put in comes back as reviews later, so keep it small enough for a bad week.
Anki also lets decks nest, with :: separating levels, such as Chinese::Hanzi. The manual suggests broad decks, not one per lesson, and using tags for finer sorting.
The faster route on a Mac
The manual route works, and the typing is still the bottleneck. If the cards are words you met while reading, LeafyApp removes it. Press ⌥A in any app and drag a box over a word. macOS text recognition reads that patch of screen, you get an explanation in the sense the sentence is using, and the word is saved with its sentence, source and date. There is no card to write.
When you want a deck, you choose the words, look at the card preview, and either export or send them. With the free AnkiConnect add-on set up, "Add to Anki" in the word view picks a deck from the arrow or "New Deck…", a whole folder can be given a deck, and "Send every word" sends everything from then on. Anki has to be open for that, or the words wait in LeafyApp and go over next time. The setup is on the Anki setup page, and if it will not connect, this is the fix list. LeafyApp can also export to Anki, CSV, Excel, JSON or PDF, which gives you the file import above without the typing.
It is a Mac app for Apple Silicon on macOS 14 and up, with no iPhone version. It builds cards from what you looked up, not from a textbook chapter or a lecture you never boxed. For that, the manual route above is the one. More on the card side in the card maker page, and on whether to use Anki at all in Anki alternatives on Mac.
Questions people ask
How do I make my own Anki deck? Click Add in Anki, click the deck name, then Add to create a new deck. Fill in Front and Back, press ⌘↩, and the card goes in that deck.
How do I create an Anki deck from a CSV? Save your spreadsheet as a UTF-8 plain text file such as CSV, then use File → Import in Anki. Map each column to a note field, and add a deck column if the cards should go into different decks.
How can I make an Anki deck from a word list faster? Import the list as a text file, so you do not type each card. Or collect the words while you read: LeafyApp saves each lookup with its sentence, then sends it to Anki or exports a file.
How do I make Anki cards faster? Use Cloze for sentences, import from a file when the words already exist, and capture the word and sentence at the moment you meet it. Keep new cards per day low, because every card returns as reviews.
Should I use Basic or Cloze for vocabulary? Basic suits a word and a meaning. Cloze suits a word inside the sentence you found it in, with the word hidden, which keeps the context.
Make the deck out of what you already read.
Free while LeafyApp is in beta. One download, macOS 14 and up.
Anki and AnkiConnect are trademarks or product names of their respective owners. LeafyApp is an independent app, not affiliated with or endorsed by Anki, and the name is used here only to describe compatibility.