Does Importing an .apkg Keep Your Scheduling?

Yes — as long as the export included scheduling. When it did, the .apkg carries each card's state, its due date, its interval, reps, lapses, its FSRS memory and the entire review log. When it didn't, there's nothing to carry. Whether importing an .apkg keeps your scheduling is settled before the file ever reaches an importer.

Short answer

• An .apkg exported with scheduling holds card state, due date, interval, reps, lapses, FSRS memory and the full review log.
• The export decides, not the import. No app can restore progress the file never contained.
• Decks downloaded from AnkiWeb shared decks have had their scheduling removed on purpose. Your new app isn't losing it.
• Export one small deck yourself with the scheduling box ticked, import it, and compare three cards. Five minutes.

What actually travels inside an .apkg

An .apkg exported with scheduling is a record of exactly where every card stands. The Anki manual is blunt about it: with the option on, "scheduling information such as your review history will be exported." That last part matters more than the due date. History is what a scheduler needs to keep predicting.

Here's what the file holds, and what it doesn't.

"State" is more literal than it sounds. A card sitting in learning carries the steps it has left, not just a label. A suspended card stays suspended, a buried one stays buried, and a leech keeps its count. That's why a good import doesn't just hand you the right due dates — it hands you the right queue tomorrow morning.

FSRS is the reason the review log deserves attention. The algorithm keeps a per-card memory — stability and difficulty — stored in the card's own data. Move the log and the memory, and the next interval you're shown is the interval you would have been shown anyway.

The export decides, not the import

Leave the scheduling option off, and Anki removes the entire scheduling information, including marked and leech tags. That's the documented behaviour, checked against the Anki manual on exporting on 20 April 2026. The file that lands on your disk simply has no progress inside it.

This is the part most answers get backwards. They walk you through the import. But an importer can only read what's there. If the export dropped your history, no app — mine included — can invent it back.

It explains the most common disappointment in this whole topic. A deck you downloaded from AnkiWeb shared decks arrives with its scheduling stripped, by design, so you start clean rather than inheriting a stranger's intervals. People import one of those, see every card marked new, and conclude that .apkg files lose progress. They don't. That one never had any.

The reverse control exists too. Since version 23.10, the import side can drop scheduling on request by leaving "Import any learning progress" unticked, per the manual on packaged decks, checked the same day. So you get two switches: one at export, one at import. Both have to point the right way.

You can tell which kind of file you're holding without importing it. Ask where it came from. A file you exported yourself, from your own collection, with the box ticked, has your history in it. A file someone sent you or that you pulled off a sharing site almost certainly doesn't. When you're unsure, import it into an empty collection first and look at one card.

What StudyDaily reads from that file

I wrote the importer, so I can tell you precisely what it takes.

It reads the card's state, its due date, its interval, reps and lapses, whether it was suspended or buried, and the FSRS memory stored in the card data. Then it replays the review log entry by entry into the review history, keeping each rating, each interval and how long you took.

I checked this again on 20 April 2026. The test collection came through with stability: 12.5, difficulty: 4.2, reps: 9 and lapses: 2. Its three review events were intact and its due date hadn't moved. Export it straight back out and the card data still reads {"s":12.5,"d":4.2}. Round trip, nothing shaved off.

Two things worth knowing before you try it. Scheduling is applied to the cards the import creates, so re-importing on top of cards you already have won't overwrite the progress you've built locally. And the whole behaviour sits behind a checkbox that's ticked by default — untick it and you get the cards clean.

You can watch this happen on your own deck faster than you can finish reading this page: open StudyDaily in your browser and import a copy. Nothing to install, and reviewing never asks you for an account.

What doesn't come across

Deck presets are the usual gap. Your daily limits, learning steps and new-card order may not travel with the file, depending on how it was exported. Budget a minute to set them again on the receiving side.

Add-ons are the other one. Anything an add-on computed lives in the add-on, not in the file. Custom scheduling code doesn't survive a move to a different scheduler either, which is the point of moving.

Then there's the layer that isn't scheduling at all, and it's worth a look after any import. Media files, MathJax and note templates usually come through, but heavily customised card types can render oddly on the other side. Check one card of each type you actually use. It takes a minute and it's the difference between a collection you trust and one you keep second-guessing.

And one limit on my side, said once: StudyDaily has no multi-device sync. Each install keeps its own collection, and moving between them goes through .apkg or CSV — the same door you came in by, open in both directions.

Before any of this, make a verified backup first. Restoring a file you never opened isn't a backup.

Check whether your .apkg keeps your scheduling in five minutes

Don't take my word for it, or anyone's. Test it on something small.

1. Pick your smallest real deck. Export it as .apkg with the scheduling option ticked.
2. Import that file, leaving the learning-progress option on.
3. Open three cards you know well and compare due date and interval against the original.

If the three match, the whole collection will match — the importer doesn't treat your big decks differently. If they don't, go back to step one and check the export box, because that's where it went. Whether an .apkg keeps your scheduling is a question you can answer yourself before lunch, and it's the only answer worth trusting.

Two guides go deeper from here. Picking one deck or the whole collection tells you which export to reach for. The measured version of what gets lost puts numbers on it. Both hang off the full move, start to finish.

Questions people ask

Does a deck downloaded from shared decks keep its scheduling?

No. Shared decks are published without scheduling information, so the file arrives with no due dates, no intervals and no review history. Every card shows up as new. That's the intended behaviour: you're meant to start the deck on your own terms rather than inherit a stranger's intervals. No importer can recover data that was never written into the file.

What happens if I import the same .apkg twice?

The second import won't overwrite the progress you've built. Scheduling is applied to the cards an import creates, so cards already in your collection keep their own state, due date and history. You'll get any notes that are genuinely missing. If you want a truly clean slate, import into an empty collection rather than importing twice and hoping.

Can I import the cards without the scheduling?

Yes. The import dialog has a learning-progress option, ticked by default; untick it and the cards arrive as new. That's what you want for a deck someone else made, where their intervals tell you nothing about what you know. Keep it ticked for your own collection, which is the case this whole page is about.

Will two devices stay in step afterwards?

Not automatically. StudyDaily doesn't sync between devices — each install holds its own collection, and you move between them with .apkg or CSV exports. If you study mostly in one place and want the second device current now and then, that's a two-minute export. If you need constant two-way sync, it isn't there yet.

Anki and AnkiWeb are trademarks of their respective owner. StudyDaily is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by them. Product names are used here only to describe compatibility and to compare features.