Japanese flashcards on iPhone

An iPhone is a good Japanese review device because it is already in your pocket. It is a bad place to run three overlapping SRS apps.

Name the material first. Then pick one owner for that material.

Three honest iPhone setups

Prepared Japanese cards

Inku is an iPhone app with ready-made kana, JLPT-labeled vocabulary, topic decks, phrases, and bundled audio. The current official site lists 2,568 vocabulary cards, 960 kanji, 208 kana cards and 407 phrases. Inku also supports personal cards and decks, with a browser learner available alongside the iPhone app. One Inku account and one Inku Pro work on iPhone and the web.

Use Inku when the bottleneck is “I want a Japanese review loop today” and you accept the library. Android phones and computers can use the browser learner. Choose another tool if you need a native Android app, Anki imports or custom templates.

Hear the audio in the trial. Inku’s own Inku vs Anki page states the library audio is professionally synthesized. Confirm current trial and price on inkujapanese.com and the App Store listing.

Inku’s official site is the product’s own starting page for decks and method. This guide is the Study Japanese 101 decision page for phone-first review.

Cards you already own

Anki is the portable engine. The official iPhone client is AnkiMobile, a paid app in the Anki ecosystem. Use it when the collection exists or will exist: class notes, mined sentences, a deck you trust.

Do not buy AnkiMobile to postpone choosing Japanese material. Empty Anki on a phone is still empty Anki.

The full prepared-versus-custom decision is Inku vs Anki.

Kana only

If the whole problem is hiragana and katakana, you do not need a vocabulary SRS yet. Use the two-week kana guide, the on-site kana quiz, and optionally Real Kana for dedicated iPhone kana practice.

Inku can hold prepared kana cards after that. It is not a handwriting workbook.

A weekday rule

1. Due reviews first.
2. A small number of new cards, or zero if due work already fills the commute.
3. Japanese that is not a card: one page, one clip, one conversation prompt.

The SRS workload simulator shows why five extra new cards are not free. It is not Inku’s scheduler.

What not to stack

Do not run Inku, AnkiMobile, and a third vocabulary app on the same nouns. Do not add WaniKani until kana is readable and you want a kanji sequence. That pairing is Inku vs WaniKani.

One iPhone review owner is enough. The rest of Japanese still happens outside the app.

Keep a way back

If you already have an Anki collection, keep its original backup while trying a new app. Use the portability comparison to distinguish a vocabulary import from a transfer of templates, media and review history.