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Comment by cosmic_cheese | Hacker News Reader

The macOS services model seems like a good fit for this kind of thing. Services are little bits of context-aware functionality that apps expose to enable integration between apps without active developer involvement. An example, in most Mac apps if you select text, right-click to open the context menu, and open the Services submenu you’ll see a number of services that do something with the highlighted text.

Ideally the SRS app would make services available to facilitate quick creation of new cards, so for example one might highlight some text, right-click, and select Services → New SRS Card… which then opens an in-place lightweight card creator dialog.

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I hadn't thought of this; thank you for bringing this up. I will actually read into this. I didn't write it in my original comment, but I almost mentioned the OS because I'm coming round to the idea (albeit slowly) that the OS needs to provide some sort of hook into this capability natively for both maximum adoption and also ease of use (for both developer and end user).

Perhaps Shortcuts are now powerful enough to do this as a PoC, providing the SRS has some sort of open API that Shortcuts can take advantage of.

> the OS needs to provide some sort of hook into this capability natively for both maximum adoption and also ease of use (for both developer and end user)

I’m absolutely of this mind, but unfortunately it also depends on developers’ willingness to make use of these hooks, and it’s becoming increasingly uncommon for third party apps to have any integration or automation affordances, especially any specific to any particular platform. It’s become the norm to ship the absolute bare minimum, which is the lowest common denominator “it runs”.

A great shame, I see your point. I guess it comes down to the developer treating their product as something that could "help people" or something that "pays the bills". Hopefully the former would lead them to caring enough to spend the extra time for these significant QoL improvements.

This reminds me of the share feature on mobile phones which gets plenty of use by developers. Seems quite possible to make something like this on a standard OS

Anki has AnkiConnect which is exactly this, I think

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2055492159

IIRC Yomichan (been a long time since I needed tools like that) is a Chrome extension that lets you mouseover words and it'll show you the meaning. I think you can invoke something in Chrome that will trigger the Anki Connect API and send the info to Anki to create a card.

I've never bothered with this, but I think that's what you're looking for.

This is how anki already works on Android, using a custom intent.

I have anki on Android and I never see options to use it from another app. Do I need to set something up?

Hi Lee,

We have 4 levels of integration:

* Some apps which integrate with AnkiDroid via our Content Provider based API (see [0]). This integrates with the Android permissions system, but you may also disable all integrations in the AnkiDroid Advanced Settings. AnkiConnect support (REST API) can also be enabled using a third party app.

* System Context Menu (ACTION_PROCESS_TEXT): Selecting text in most apps should provide an 'Anki Card' option in the context menu. This may need to be enabled in AnkiDroid: Settings - General. This may also need to be enabled on your system (system dependent: long press text in an app, expand the context menu to 'more items' and select 'Manage Apps')

* Android Share Menu: Select text and select 'Share', this enables use of our 'Instant Note Editor' for cloze deletions, as well as our standard 'Add Note' screen[1]

* Android Intents (should work with Tasker)[2]

[0] https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/wiki/Third-Party-A...

[1] https://github.com/criticalAY/GSoC-Report/blob/main/README.m...

[2] https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/wiki/AnkiDroid-API...

Thanks! This is very useful.

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