Editing a flashcard

Every field on a card can be changed after it's created, not just the front and back. This article covers how to open a card for editing, what each field expects, and what changing a card actually does to its metadata and its place in the shared translation cache.

Opening a card for editing

From the card detail screen, tap the three-dot menu in the top-right corner. A dropdown appears with Edit and Delete. Tap Edit to open the edit form.

The form opens as a sheet with two sections, FRONT and BACK, mirroring the two sides of the card.

What you can edit

Every field a card can hold is editable here:

• Front text and back text
• The language assigned to each side
• Pronunciation, for both sides
• Synonyms (front side)
• Alternatives (back side)
• Definition, for both sides
• Example sentences, for both sides

Synonyms, alternatives, and examples are edited as JSON

Synonyms, alternatives, and example sentences aren't single lines of text. Each is a list, and the form asks you to type that list directly as a JSON array:

["quick", "rapid", "brisk"]

Each item goes in quotes, separated by commas, wrapped in square brackets. If what you type isn't a valid JSON array, the field shows an error and the card can't be saved until it's fixed.

Field limits

Front and back text are required. Every text field, including front, back, pronunciation, and both definitions, has a 500-character limit. Going over it shows an error in place.

Save stays disabled until two conditions are both met: something in the form actually differs from the card's current values, and no field currently has a validation error.

What can't be edited

Part of speech is assigned automatically when metadata is generated and isn't a field on this form. If it's clearly wrong, report it using the method described in Linguistic metadata.

Scheduling data (the card's state, stability, difficulty, and next review date) isn't touched by this form either. Editing a card's content doesn't reset or otherwise change where it sits in your review schedule. A card you're about to review today is still due today after you fix a typo in its definition.

What happens when you save

Saving marks the card as edited. This matters for one thing in particular: the card's link to the shared translation cache.

Common translation pairs share a single cache entry across all flangu users, which is what lets metadata appear instantly for words other people have already looked up (see Linguistic metadata). The moment you change any of front, back, synonyms, definitions, examples, alternatives, or pronunciation to something different from what the card already had, that link is broken. Your card becomes its own independent record. It no longer benefits from corrections the flangu team makes to that shared entry later, and it's no longer what the report-error flow points at.

Saving does not clear or regenerate any metadata field. Whatever you left in the Synonyms, Definition, Examples, Alternatives, or Pronunciation fields is exactly what the card keeps, unedited fields included.

Getting fresh metadata for an edited word

Because editing doesn't regenerate metadata on its own, changing the front or back to a genuinely different word can leave the old synonyms, definitions, or examples referring to the word that's no longer there.

To get metadata that actually matches the new text, clear out the fields you want replaced (leave them blank) and save. Then, from the card detail screen, request metadata the same way you would for a manually created card. This regenerates the empty fields for the current front-and-back pair.

Editing the same card on two devices