About

iPhone as Anki Remote turns your iPhone into a remote control for Anki desktop on your computer. Shake to show the answer, tilt to rate, double-tap the back of the phone for Easy, whistle, blink, or wave to pause. Your computer shows the cards; your phone is the clicker. It exists so people do not need to buy a clicker, and so reviews work away from the keyboard: on a treadmill desk, in the kitchen, across the room.

How it works

• Motion: the phone's own motion sensors detect shakes, sustained tilts, and double back-taps. Small leans, single jolts, and single taps are rejected on purpose.
• Face: an on-device face model reads eyebrow raises, double blinks, long blinks, and smiles from the front camera.
• Sounds: the mic listens for whistled notes, including slides up and down, plus desk taps.
• Wave: a hand waved over the top of the phone shows up as a dip in front-camera brightness, and pauses the remote. iOS does not expose the true proximity sensor to web pages, so this is the honest stand-in, and it needs light.
• Driving Anki: through the free AnkiConnect add-on at http://<desktop-ip>:8765, the page shows answers and rates cards exactly as if you pressed the keys.
• Test mode: the app prompts one gesture at a time and scores it, with a named hint on every wrong answer. Points, streaks, levels, and badges make practice a game, and practice stays the core.

Every mapping is remappable: four presets cover common setups, or build your own. Everything is stored on your phone only.

Honest limits

• Home practice tool, not a teacher, therapist or safety device. Everything runs on your device and your home network: no video, audio or images are sent anywhere. Feedback is automatic and can be wrong.
• Same WiFi only. The phone and the computer must be on the same home network. It will not work across the internet, and that is by design.
• Desktop Anki only. It drives Anki desktop. The Anki phone apps do not run AnkiConnect.
• Detection can misfire. Gesture recognition is automatic and probabilistic. A gesture right after an action is ignored (cooldown), and Undo is always one tap or keypress away.
• Your camera light and the browser's mic indicator stay on while those inputs run; no web page can hide them. Motion, camera, and mic turn fully off when you hide the tab.
• Not made by Anki. This is an independent home tool, not affiliated with Anki or Ankitects.
• Accessibility framing: it is a convenience tool, not an assistive device and not a medical device. If you need reliable hands-free computer control, look at the platform's built-in switch access and voice control alongside this.

Learn more

• Anki (apps.ankiweb.net): the free spaced-repetition app this drives.
• AnkiConnect (AnkiWeb listing 2055492159): the free add-on that lets local pages talk to Anki.
• AnkiConnect source and config docs (github.com/FooSoft/anki-connect): where webBindAddress and webCorsOriginList are documented.
• Anki Manual (docs.ankiweb.net): how spaced repetition and the Again/Hard/Good/Easy buttons work.

Links verified October 2026. This tool is not affiliated with any of them.