Build your vocabulary, word by word.
A vocabulary trainer for language learners. Open it and the first word is already on screen. Tap to see the answer, say how well you knew it, and Yak decides when you see the word again.
Hon springer varje morgon. She runs every morning.
What makes it different
Open and practise
No home screen, no deck picker, no “start session” button. The first word is already there.
Words, not cards
No decks, no templates, no “due in 4 days”. The scheduling stays out of sight.
Starts where you are
A quick, optional check finds your level. Yak moves you up when you are ready.
Why it exists
General flashcard apps like Anki are powerful, but they make you build and manage the cards yourself. Yak is made only for learning vocabulary, and for learners who are not linguists.
It brings the words, sorted by level, and it shows grammar only where it helps: the gender of a noun, the forms of a verb, a short hint when a word has more than one meaning.
“The user's mental model is words, not cards.”
From the app's spec
What it does
Rate yourself
One tap shows the answer. Then pick Didn't know, Hard, Knew it or Easy. The FSRS scheduler plans the next review.
Both directions
Knowing a word when you see it and saying it yourself are different skills. Yak tracks them separately.
Grammar where it helps
The gender of a noun, the forms of a verb, and audio for each word.
Practice+ drills
Short drills for the tricky parts: noun genders, irregular verbs, adjective forms and plurals.
Your own words
Add a word and Yak fills in the pronunciation, the part of speech and the inflections.
One meaning at a time
A word with several meanings gets one card for each meaning, each with its own example.
What it won't do
Each of these was left out on purpose. Yak is also not a dictionary. For that, there is Lemma.
- Decks to manage
- Due dates and intervals on screen
- Streak pressure
- Leaderboards
- Accounts
- A paid tier
- Analytics
How it's built
- Stack
- Preact, TypeScript, Vite
- Scheduler
- FSRS, through ts-fsrs
- Word list
- Kelly Project CEFR lists, Wiktionary and ipa-dict, curated by hand
- Storage
- IndexedDB, on your device. Word list updates keep your progress.
- Backup
- JSON export and import
Known limits
- One language for now: Swedish, for English speakers. German, Spanish and French are planned.
- Some of the short hints for words with several meanings are still being reviewed by hand.
- Audio uses text-to-speech, so it sounds different on each device.
- No sync between devices. Use JSON export to move your progress.