How to Use Tags and Favorites in Flashcards to Study Smarter
A collection with a few dozen cards is easy to hold in your head. A collection with a few hundred is not. Tags and favorites in flashcards let you organize material by topic, flag the cards that keep beating you, and build a review session out of exactly what you need — without ever splitting one deck into ten.
A big flashcard collection turns into a mess without a system
A single collection is plenty when you're starting out — a few dozen cards on one topic, reviewed in one sitting. But collections grow. A language collection passes 500 words, an exam deck covers a full semester, and suddenly finding one specific card — or the ten cards you keep getting wrong — takes longer than actually studying. Tags and favorites solve exactly this problem: they let you organize flashcards inside a single collection instead of splitting everything into dozens of tiny, hard-to-manage decks.
Collections give you the boundary — this deck is "Spanish Vocabulary," that one is "Anatomy Exam." Tags and favorites give you the structure inside that boundary: what topic a card belongs to, and which cards deserve extra attention. Used together, they turn one big pile of cards into something you can search, filter, and target — the same collection you built when getting started with Repetit, just organized as it grows.
Neither tool is complicated on its own — a tag is just a label, a favorite is just a star. The friction usually shows up later, once a collection has grown past the point where you remember what's in it. Building the habit early, while a collection is still small, means you never have to go back and tag two hundred cards retroactively.
Everything blends together
Verbs, grammar rules, and random vocabulary all sit in the same list, with no way to study just one slice of it. A 300-card collection with no structure looks the same on day one and day three hundred — you just get used to scrolling past what you already know.
Hard cards disappear in the crowd
The five cards you fail every week look identical to the 200 you know cold — nothing marks them as needing extra work. Spaced repetition schedules a leech like any other card, so it can sit quietly in your queue for weeks before you notice the pattern.
Review feels random, not targeted
Before an exam or a trip, you want to drill one topic or your weak spots — not the whole collection from the top. Reviewing 400 cards top to bottom wastes time on material you've already mastered.
From one big pile to a searchable system
Organizing a collection with tags and favorites
Tags vs. favorites vs. collections: what's the difference
Repetit gives you three organizing tools, and it's easy to reach for the wrong one. Collections are the biggest container — a full deck, like "French Vocabulary" or "Anatomy Exam." Tags are labels you attach inside a collection — grammar, chapter 3, verbs — so you can group and filter cards without moving them anywhere. Favorites are a single flag on one card, marking it for extra attention regardless of what tag it carries. None of the three replaces the other two: a card still needs a home collection whether or not it has tags, and a tagged card can be just as likely to end up favorited as an untagged one.
The deck itself — every card lives in exactly one
Cross-cutting labels — a card can have several
A single flag — one card, one status
In practice, the three work as layers: pick a collection for the subject, add tags for the topics inside it, and reserve favorites for the small number of cards that keep failing. Most learners never need more than that — collections rarely grow past a handful, tags stay under ten, and a favorites list should always be short enough to review in a single sitting.
How to add and use tags on your flashcards
Tags work like labels on a card — short, reusable, and searchable. A single card can carry more than one tag, so a card can belong to "verbs," "irregular," and "chapter 4" at the same time. Unlike collections, adding or removing a tag never moves the card anywhere or resets its review progress — it's a purely organizational change.
- Open any card in a collection and tap the tag icon, or the tag field in the card editor.
- Type a new tag name, or pick one you've already used — Repetit suggests existing tags as you type, so you don't end up with "verb" and "verbs" as two separate tags.
- Add as many tags as make sense for that card — most cards only need one to three.
- Save the card. The tag now shows on the card and appears in the collection's tag filter list.
Sits in the same list as 400 other cards, with no way to isolate it.
Filterable in one tap — review just "verbs," just "A2," or both together.
A simple naming convention prevents most of the mess: lowercase, singular, and a consistent set of categories — a topic tag like verbs, a level tag like a2, and occasionally a source tag like textbook-ch4. Stick to one pattern and every new card takes seconds to tag correctly, instead of making you stop and think.
How to use favorites to flag your hardest cards
Favorites aren't about topic — they're about difficulty. Star a card when you notice you keep getting it wrong, when it needs a memory trick you haven't found yet, or when it's simply important enough that you want it back in front of you, regardless of what the spaced repetition schedule says. Think of the star as a sticky note on the card, not a permanent label — it's meant to come off eventually.
- During review or while browsing a collection, tap the star icon on any card to add it to Favorites.
- Favoriting doesn't change the card's spaced repetition interval — it just adds a marker you can filter by later.
- Revisit your favorites list anytime from the collection menu, independent of your regular review queue.
- Remove a card from favorites once it stops giving you trouble — the list should stay short and current.
A useful gut check: if you can't remember why a card is favorited, it probably shouldn't be. The list works best as a rotating set of five to fifteen cards — anything larger starts to feel like the same undifferentiated pile that tags are meant to fix.
Combining tags and favorites into a focused review session
The real value shows up when you filter. Instead of reviewing an entire 400-card collection, you can review only what matters right now. This is where the two tools complement each other most directly — tags answer "what," favorites answer "how hard," and a review session built from both answers "what should I study in the next ten minutes."
- Open a collection and tap Filter, or the tag/favorites icons in the collection toolbar.
- Select one or more tags to review only that slice — for example, just "chapter 5" the night before a quiz.
- Switch to the Favorites filter to drill only the cards you've flagged as difficult.
- Start a review session from the filtered list — spaced repetition still applies, just scoped to the cards you selected.
What to tag, depending on what you're studying
Language learners
Tag by part of speech (verbs, nouns), grammar topic (past tense, subjunctive), and level (A1–C1) so you can drill one grammar point without reviewing the whole vocabulary list. A single collection can then carry a whole language, from absolute beginner to advanced, without ever feeling unmanageable. See how this fits into a full vocabulary and spaced repetition plan.
Exam prep
Tag by chapter or unit, matching your syllabus, so the week before each exam you can filter to exactly the material it covers. Favorite anything that appeared on a past exam or that your professor flagged as important, and you'll have an instant last-minute review list. See a full plan in our exam prep with flashcards guide.
Professionals
Tag by specialty, drug class, statute, or client type so one reference collection serves multiple contexts without duplicating cards. Favorites become a running list of the facts that come up in real cases or on shift, which is often more useful than any static reference — see examples for medical and law flashcards.
Mixed-topic collections
Tag by source — textbook, lecture, article — when one collection pulls from several places, so you can trace a hard card back to where it came from. It also makes it easy to spot if one source is generating most of your favorited cards, which usually means that material needs a different explanation, not just more repetition.
Three tagging mistakes that undo the whole system
A new tag for every card
Naming a tag after the exact card instead of a shared topic — "hablar-yo-form" instead of "verbs" — means every tag ends up with exactly one card in it. The filter list balloons, and grouping stops working entirely. Reuse the same handful of topic tags across many cards instead.
Tagging by how hard a card feels
Adding tags like "hard" or "review-again" duplicates what favorites already do, and clutters a tag list that should describe topics. Keep tags for what a card is about; use the star for how much trouble it's giving you.
A favorites list that never shrinks
Cards get starred during a rough week and never unstarred once they're learned. Months later the favorites list is just a second collection, and filtering by it stops narrowing anything down. Clear it out whenever a card stops failing.
Collections, tags, and favorites at a glance
| Tool | Scope | Best for | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Collections | One deck | Separating unrelated subjects | Spanish Vocabulary vs Anatomy Exam |
| Tags | Cross-cutting, several per card | Grouping by topic inside one collection | verbs, chapter 3, irregular |
| Favorites | One flag per card | Flagging cards that need extra attention | Cards you fail repeatedly |
Use this as a quick decision guide the next time you're not sure where a piece of material belongs: start from Collections and work down the table until you find the row that matches the size of the problem you're actually solving.
Checklist for a tagging system that stays useful
Fewer than 10 tags per collection — a short, memorable list beats dozens of one-off labels. If you can't recall your own tags without looking, it's time to merge a few.
Same tag, same spelling, every time — "verb" and "verbs" behave like two different tags, splitting one group into two that neither filter finds completely.
Favorites stay short and current — remove a card once it's no longer a problem, the same way you'd take a sticky note off a solved problem.
Tags describe topic or source, not difficulty — that's what favorites are for. Mixing the two purposes into one tag list is the fastest way to make it useless.
You've tried filtering by tag and favorites before your next review session, not just added them — a system nobody uses isn't saving anyone any time.
When tags aren't enough, and you actually need a new collection
Tags solve most organizing problems, but not all of them. If two subjects have nothing in common — say, a language you're learning and a certification exam for work — reviewing them in the same session doesn't help either one, no matter how you tag it. That's the signal to split into a separate collection, not to add another tag.
A rough rule: if you'd never want to see two topics in the same review session, they belong in different collections. If you sometimes would — like reviewing all of "chapter 3" regardless of whether it's vocabulary or grammar — a tag inside one collection is almost always the better fit.
FAQ: tags and favorites in flashcards
What's the difference between tags and favorites in flashcards?
Tags are topic labels — a card can have several, and they group cards inside a collection so you can filter by subject. Favorites are a single flag on one card, marking it for extra attention because it's difficult or important, independent of any topic.
Can I filter a review session by tag?
Yes. Open a collection, use the tag filter to select one or more tags, and start a review session — spaced repetition scheduling still applies, just scoped to the cards that match your filter.
How many tags should I put on one card?
One to three is usually enough. A card tagged "verbs, irregular, chapter 4" is still easy to filter; a card with ten tags just adds noise without making it easier to find.
Does favoriting a card change its spaced repetition schedule?
No. Favoriting only adds a marker you can filter by — it doesn't move up the card's next review date. To review a favorited card sooner, filter your review session by Favorites and study it directly.
Should I use tags or create a new collection to organize by subject?
Use tags when the material still belongs together — different topics inside the same language or exam. Create a separate collection when the material is unrelated enough that you'd never review it in the same session, like two different languages.
Can I combine tag filters with the favorites filter?
Yes — filtering by a tag and by favorites at the same time narrows a review session down to the difficult cards within one specific topic, which is the fastest way to fix a weak spot before a deadline.