ankimarkable — Anki reviews with a pen whiteboard

What it is

Real Anki on your Paper Pro — not a viewer. It runs Anki's actual Rust backend (rslib): a true .anki2 collection, the FSRS scheduler with per-grade interval previews, and genuine AnkiWeb sync (incremental, with automatic full-download recovery; media included). Cards render with their own HTML/CSS templates and images, and LaTeX math renders on-device.

The part no other client has: an AnkiDroid-style pen whiteboard over every card. Work the answer by hand with the marker — low-latency inking tuned for the colour e-ink panel — then reveal and compare before you grade.

About sync

ankimarkable speaks Anki's own sync protocol. It works with AnkiWeb today, but Ankitects' terms reserve AnkiWeb sync for the official clients — third-party access is unsanctioned and could be withdrawn, and use is at your own risk. The supported-forever path is Anki's built-in self-hosted sync server (Anki 2.1.57+, one command on any home machine or VPS) — setup instructions included. This product is not affiliated with or endorsed by Ankitects Pty Ltd.

New in 1.3.0 — write upside-down

The whiteboard now follows the screen orientation. Hold the tablet right-side-up or upside-down — portrait either way — and ink lands under the pen tip; the system UI already rotated for you, and now the pen does too. Out of the box the app reads the tilt sensor and remembers the last confidently-held orientation (so writing flat on a desk just works). For exact tracking of the UI's own rotation there's a bundled optional one-file plugin, screenOrientation.qmd, which exports the system rotation for the app — and any other QTFB app — to follow. Install/uninstall instructions in the README.

New in 1.2.0 — write while zoomed, card flags & a real sync report

The pen no longer pauses when you pinch-zoom: strokes now live in the card's own coordinate space, so you can write at any zoom step and your ink scales and stays anchored through zoom and scroll (write small detail at 2.0× and it lands proportionally finer back at 1.0×). The ⋮ menu grows a Flag… picker — all seven Anki flag colours, each named so the picker reads fine in black-and-white, plus remove; flagging keeps the current card up, undoes with Undo, and syncs to your other clients. And Sync finally tells you what happened: a tap-to-dismiss summary with added/modified and removed counts, a media line, and any AnkiWeb server message — from the home screen too, and when a sync fails the message names the actual cause (DNS, timeout, auth…) instead of a bare "NetworkError".

New in 1.1.0 — two-finger scroll & pinch-zoom

Long cards are no longer cut off: drag with two fingers to pan (fast partial refreshes while you move, one clean colour pass when you stop — and your ink scrolls with the card). Pinch snaps between 1.0×/1.25×/1.5×/2.0× with a real reflow: text gets bigger and rewraps to the card width, so nothing hangs off the side. A single finger on the card still does nothing — palm safety is untouched.

Features

• AnkiWeb sync — your existing decks, schedule, and media, both directions.
• Pen whiteboard — pressure-sensitive marker ink over the card, working eraser end, stroke undo, palm rejection. Ink persists through Show Answer and clears on grade.
• LaTeX / MathJax math — \(...\), \[...\], and [latex] blocks rendered on-device by a bundled MicroTeX helper: fractions, big operators, \perp, \stackrel, \boldsymbol, blackboard/calligraphic letters; inline math baseline-aligned with the card text. TikZ diagrams display via Anki desktop's pre-rendered SVGs.
• Home screen — collapsible deck tree with due counts and your review streak.
• Colour ↔ black-and-white toggle — tap the deck counts (top-left) and the whole frame flips modes, grade bar included (both modes are in the screenshot above). Colour is lovely for image-heavy decks; B&W renders text crisper and sidesteps the colour panel's slower settle. Tap again to switch back.
• Review chrome — new/learning/review counts with an underline marking the current card's queue; Undo (strokes first, then your last grade); bury card / suspend note / flag (all seven colours, named for B&W mode) from an overflow menu.
• Sync report — every sync ends on a summary of what moved: added/modified and removed counts, media, and any server message; failures name their real cause.
• FSRS grade bar — Again / Hard / Good / Easy with real next-interval labels.
• Safe by construction — a standalone AppLoad app: no xochitl injection, no boot-bank risk, survives firmware updates gracefully.

Requirements

• reMarkable Paper Pro (11.8").

• xovi + rm-appload installed on-device (free; links in the README).
• An AnkiWeb account. No other paid item is required — this is fully standalone.

Install

1. Drop the anki/ AppLoad folder into /home/root/xovi/exthome/appload/anki/.
2. Copy mathpng + the microtex-res/ fonts into /home/root/.ankimarkable/.
3. Put your AnkiWeb credentials in /home/root/.ankimarkable/ankiweb.txt.
4. Launch from the AppLoad menu and tap Sync.

Source & license

AGPL-3.0 — the full source lives at github.com/fatfort/ankimarkable (it links Anki's AGPL rslib, and honestly that's how it should be). Buying the bundle gets you a tested, ready-to-install build with the math helper and fonts packaged — and funds the roadmap (1.1.0's scroll + pinch-zoom and 1.2.0's zoomed inking, flags and sync report came from it).

Caveats

• Tested on firmware 3.26.0.68; e-ink waveform behaviour can shift across firmware. Updates are provided on a best-effort basis.

• Review-only by design: authoring stays on desktop/AnkiWeb.