Custom Margins with Randomizer

Card Margins: adjustable (and optionally randomized) text margins for reviews.

Control how wide and tall the text area is on your cards, with a simple settings window and live preview. Works with any note type: no template editing needed.

Features • Left/right and top/bottom margins as a percentage of the window, so the layout scales when you resize Anki. • Optional maximum text width, plus line spacing and text size controls. • Presets (Full, Wide, Medium, Narrow) and a "same value on both sides" option. • Random margins (off by default): each new card gets a slightly different text window. Set a constant value or a min–max range for each direction. Margins move in 2% steps and always change by at least 2% from the previous card. The answer side keeps its question's layout. • Shortcuts during review: Alt+M settings, Alt+R random on/off, Alt+[ / Alt+] narrower/wider (all rebindable in Config). • A welcome window explains everything on first launch; reopen it with the "?" button in the settings.

Open settings from Tools → Card Margins… or the add-on's Config button.

Why vary the text window? After hundreds of reviews it is easy to slip into autopilot and recognize a card by its shape on screen (where the lines break, where the answer sits) rather than by what it actually says. Small, random changes to the layout break up that visual sameness and are meant to keep your attention on the content.

This is an experiment, not a proven technique. It draws on research on study context: in a classic study, people who studied the same material in two different rooms recalled more than those who studied it twice in one room (Smith, Glenberg & Bjork, 1978), and environmental context effects on memory have held up in later meta-analysis (Smith & Vela, 2001). It also fits the broader idea of "desirable difficulties," where some variation during practice can help long-term retention (Bjork & Bjork, 2011). However, a related idea, that making text harder to read improves memory (Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer & Vaughan, 2011), largely failed to replicate (Rummer, Schweppe & Schwede, 2016), and a meta-analysis found no reliable benefit (Xie, Zhou & Liu, 2018). Varying the text window has not been tested in spaced repetition specifically. If it distracts you, turn it off and use fixed margins.

References Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. A. (2011). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. In M. A. Gernsbacher et al. (Eds.), Psychology and the Real World (pp. 56–64). Worth Publishers. Diemand-Yauman, C., Oppenheimer, D. M., & Vaughan, E. B. (2011). Fortune favors the bold (and the italicized): Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes. Cognition, 118(1), 111–115. Rummer, R., Schweppe, J., & Schwede, A. (2016). Fortune is fickle: null-effects of disfluency on learning outcomes. Metacognition and Learning, 11(1), 57–70. Smith, S. M., Glenberg, A., & Bjork, R. A. (1978). Environmental context and human memory. Memory & Cognition, 6(4), 342–353. Smith, S. M., & Vela, E. (2001). Environmental context-dependent memory: A review and meta-analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8(2), 203–220. Xie, H., Zhou, Z., & Liu, Q. (2018). Null effects of perceptual disfluency on learning outcomes in a text-based educational context: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 30(3), 745–771.

Notes • Applies to the review screen. The card previewer uses your fixed (constant) values. • If a note type hard-codes pixel font sizes on inner elements, the text size control won't scale those elements; margins and width always apply. • On macOS, Option+key may type a symbol instead of triggering a shortcut; rebind to e.g. Ctrl+Shift+[ (Cmd+Shift+[) in Config. • Requires Anki 2.1.50 or newer.