Make Anki cards while you read
Double-click a word on any page and Wordwise turns it into a finished Anki card – definition matched to the sentence, pronunciation, translation – exported in one click. You never stop reading.
20+ languages, auto-detected. Works with Anki, AnkiConnect, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Brave.
The problem with making cards after you read
Reading is where you meet new words, and the sentence you meet them in is the best flashcard material you will ever get. But making the card on the spot means stopping: open Anki, copy, paste, format. Do that ten times and you've read nothing.
So most learners postpone. Words go into a list, the list goes stale, and the sentences – the part that makes vocabulary stick – are gone by the time you sit down to make cards. A word without its sentence is just a dictionary entry.
The card has to be made while you read, from the sentence you read it in, without interrupting you. That's the whole design goal of Wordwise.
From sentence to Anki card in a few seconds
Here's the whole workflow, on the kind of sentence that trips learners up.
Step 1 – Double-click the word
Depuis ton départ, tu me manques plus que je ne l'aurais imaginé.
You're reading a French novel and hit tu me manques. Word-for-word it looks like "you miss me" – but it means the opposite. This is exactly the kind of word where the sentence matters.
Step 2 – Get a card that understands the sentence
Wordwise reads the sentence and explains that in tu me manques, the person being missed is the subject – "I miss you", not "you miss me". A generic dictionary entry for manquer ("to miss, to lack, to fail") would have left you to figure that out alone.
Step 3 – Edit if you want, export, keep reading. Every field is editable before export. One click sends the card to your Anki deck and syncs it, so it is waiting in tonight's review queue. The lookup-to-card step is gone – see all the ways to export words to Anki.
Works wherever you read online
News articles, blogs, Wikipedia, web novels, documentation – if it is a webpage, you can mine it. Wordwise auto-detects the language, so switching from a Spanish article to a German one needs no settings change, unlike profile-based tools such as Yomitan (see the full comparison).
Reading on a Kindle instead? Your Vocabulary Builder words can become the same kind of cards – here is the Kindle-to-Anki workflow. And if you have an old word list waiting, the Anki dictionary behind Wordwise handles those too.
Making Anki cards while reading: FAQ
How do I make Anki cards while reading without losing my place?
Use a tool that builds the card at the moment of lookup. With Wordwise, you double-click the word, glance at the generated card, and press export – the whole exchange takes a few seconds and you never leave the page. The card keeps the sentence you were reading, so the context comes with you into Anki.
Is this the same as sentence mining?
It's the low-friction version of it. Sentence mining means collecting real sentences from your reading and turning them into flashcards. Wordwise automates the collecting: the sentence around your word is captured with the lookup, appears on the front of the card with the word highlighted, and the definition is written to match that exact sentence.
Does it work on any website?
Wordwise works on regular web pages – news sites, blogs, Wikipedia, documentation, web novels. It runs as a browser extension in Chrome, Firefox, and Chromium-based browsers like Edge and Brave.
What if I look up an inflected form, like a conjugated verb?
The card files under the base form. Look up "corrió" and the headword is "correr"; look up "ran" and it is "run". Your deck doesn't fill up with duplicate cards for every conjugation you happen to meet.
How many cards can I realistically make in a reading session?
As many as you look up. Since each card costs a few seconds instead of a minute or two of copy-paste, an article that yields ten unknown words yields ten finished cards – with sentences – by the time you reach the end. The bottleneck becomes your reading, not your card-making.
Do I review the cards in Wordwise or in Anki?
In Anki – that's the point. Cards export to your deck in one click via AnkiConnect and sync automatically, so they show up in your normal review queue on desktop and phone. Wordwise also keeps your lookup history if you want to revisit a word or export it later.
Read the article,
keep the vocabulary
Your next reading session can fill your Anki deck by itself.