Image to flashcards: turn photos of notes into a deck
Upload a photo of your notes and QuerySpark writes flashcards from what is actually in it, so you can drill the key terms on exactly what your course covers. PNG, JPG, WEBP, TIFF and more.
- No credit card
- Free plan after the trial
- Cancel anytime
Drop a PDF, slides or notes
or paste a YouTube link
Quick answer
How do you turn a photo of your notes into flashcards?
Upload a photo of your notes, a screenshot or a picture of a textbook page. QuerySpark reads the text with OCR, which handles print and neat handwriting, picks out the terms and ideas worth remembering and writes a flashcard deck with spaced repetition built in. It takes about a minute. Files can be up to 5 MB on the free plan, and iPhone HEIC photos need converting to JPG. New accounts get a 3-day Pro trial with no credit card; the free plan then includes 20 flashcards a month.
- Handwritten notes, screenshots and textbook pages
- Text cards: your photo is not placed on the card
- Free plan: 20 flashcards a month
- CSV export for Anki and Quizlet
How it works
How to turn a photo of your notes into flashcards
- 01
Photograph one page at a time
Fill the frame with a single page, flat and well lit. Crop out the facing page of a notebook so its text does not get mixed into your cards.
- 02
Upload and choose flashcards
We read the text, then decide what deserves a card: terms, definitions, formulas, and the why-and-how ideas behind them.
- 03
Check any card that looks odd
If a card has a strange word in it, the handwriting was probably misread at that spot. Compare it with your page before you start memorising it.
- 04
Review with spaced repetition
Rate each card as you go. Hard cards return sooner, easy ones fade out, so a page of notes becomes a few minutes of review a day.
Example
Flashcards from Handwritten notes
A sample of what you get from a photo of your notes on chemistry. Yours is written from your own file.
Strong acid
An acid that dissociates completely in water, e.g. HCl
Buffer
A weak acid and its conjugate base that resist pH change
pH + pOH at 25 °C
14
What your flashcards include
- Term and definition cards for every key concept
- Concept cards that ask why and how, not only what
- Cards sized to your material: a short reading gets a short deck
- Spaced repetition built in: no deck settings to configure
How you study them
Flip, rate how well you knew it, and move on. Cards you find hard return sooner; cards you know well fade out until just before you would forget them.
Best for: vocabulary and definitions, formulas and dates, daily ten-minute review.
How we read photos of handwritten notes
Photos go through Google Document AI OCR, which reads print and most neat handwriting. Snap a page of your notebook or a textbook page and study it a minute later.
Get the best results
- One page per photo, filling the frame.
- Include diagrams' labels; they make good questions.
How to turn handwritten notes into flashcards
Photograph each page, upload the photos and choose flashcards. The OCR reads print and neat handwriting; very messy handwriting can lose words, so type up the definitions you most need if a page is hard to read.
Some note styles turn into cards especially well. Notes written as term then definition, or with headings and short bullets under them, map almost one to one onto cards. Cornell notes are ideal: the cue column on the left already reads like a stack of card fronts.
Can ChatGPT make flashcards from pictures?
ChatGPT can read a photo of your notes and list question and answer pairs from it. To study them as flashcards you then copy them into a flashcard app and set up the review schedule yourself.
QuerySpark goes from photo to a deck you can review immediately, with the schedule handled for you. One thing neither does here: if by 'flashcards with pictures' you mean cards that show an image, QuerySpark's cards are text. Your photo is the source, not part of the card.
Glossaries, vocabulary lists and key-term boxes
Some pages are practically flashcards already. A textbook glossary, a vocabulary list from a language class or the key-terms box at the end of a chapter gives a clean deck from one photo, because each line is already a term and its meaning.
For language vocabulary, make sure both columns are in the frame and not cut off at the edge of the photo, or you will get cards with only half the pair.
Image to Anki or Quizlet, and when Anki is the better tool
Export the deck as CSV; Anki imports it through File, Import, and Quizlet through its import box. There is no direct export to either.
If what you need to memorise is a labeled diagram itself, such as an anatomy figure or a map, Anki's image occlusion feature is the better fit: it hides parts of the picture and asks you to name them. QuerySpark reads a diagram's labels as text but does not hide parts of the image.
Things that trip people up with photos of handwritten notes
Shadows and steep angles cost accuracy. Shoot flat, in good light.
iPhone HEIC photos are not supported. Set the camera to Most Compatible, or screenshot the photo.
Very messy handwriting may lose words; type up the key definitions if that happens.
Questions about photo to flashcards
QuerySpark is free to start with the 3-day Pro trial with no credit card. The free plan then includes 20 flashcards a month. It runs in the browser on your phone, so you can photograph and upload in one go.
Neat, consistent joined-up writing is usually read well. Rushed or very slanted cursive can lose words. Check a few cards against the page the first time you try a new notebook.
No. The cards are text written from what the photo says. If you need the picture itself on a card, a tool built for image cards, like Anki, is a better fit.
Yes, and screenshots are the most reliable images to read because the text is sharp and flat. Screenshots of slides, e-books and revision sites all work.
iPhones save photos as HEIC by default, which is not supported. Change Camera, Formats to Most Compatible so new photos save as JPG, or screenshot the photo.
Scan the pages into a PDF with your phone's document scanner and upload that. Scanned PDFs are read with the same OCR, up to 120 pages per upload, and count toward your PDF page allowance.
Yes, most neat handwriting. Print is read near perfectly; rushed handwriting may lose the odd word.
Yes. Upload each page and generate a set from them together.
Yes. Export any deck as CSV, which both Anki and Quizlet import.
Yes, to start. New accounts get a 3-day Pro trial with no credit card. After the trial the free plan includes 1 study session, 20 questions and 10 PDF pages a month, and you keep everything you made. You can also try the question generator on pasted text without an account, 3 times a day.
Still stuck? Email us.
Make flashcards from your photos of handwritten notes
Start with a 3-day Pro trial. No credit card, and you keep everything you make.
