Custom & filter decks

A file deck is tied to one note. A custom deck isn’t — it collects cards from anywhere in your vault into one review queue. Custom decks are just a different view onto your cards: they keep their original scheduling and history, so studying “everything tagged #midterm” doesn’t fork your progress.

There are two kinds, and the difference is how membership is decided:

	Custom (manual) deck	Filter deck
Membership	Cards you pick by hand	A saved query, evaluated live
Stays up to date?	No — you add/remove cards yourself	Yes — matching cards join automatically
Best for	A one-off curated set	”Always show me cards where…”

Both live in the Custom section of the deck panel, and both can be reviewed, browsed, crammed, examined, exported to Anki, renamed, and reset. Deleting one removes the grouping only — never the underlying cards.

Both are built in the flashcard manager.

Manual custom decks

A hand-curated set. In the flashcard manager, tick the cards you want, choose Add to custom deck, and either pick an existing one or Create new deck. To change it later, select it in the manager’s edit dropdown, add or remove cards, and Save.

Filter decks

A filter deck stores a rule, not a fixed list — membership is recomputed every time. Because it’s a live query, you can’t add or remove individual cards by hand; you edit the rule instead (its Edit filter menu item reopens the builder).

Building a filter

In the flashcard manager, click Filter to open the builder:

Add one or more rules, each a field + operator + value.
With more than one rule, choose Match all (every rule must pass) or Match any (at least one).
A live “n cards match” count updates as you type.
When it looks right, choose Save as filter deck and give it a name.

Fields you can filter on

Field	Matches on
Card state	New or Review
Card type	Header + paragraph, table, cloze, image occlusion, spatial
Deck	One or more specific decks
Deck tag	The deck’s `#decks/...` tag
Card tag	A per-card tag
Source file / Breadcrumb	The note, or the heading path above the card
Due date / Last reviewed / Created	Date comparisons
Difficulty / Stability / Interval (min) / Repetitions / Lapses	FSRS numbers
Is leech / Is dense	Card health flags
Is suspended / Is buried	Scheduling status

Operators adapt to the field — text fields offer contains / does not contain / equals, tag fields offer has tag / does not have tag / has any of, numbers offer greater than / less than, dates offer before / after / is due, and card state offers is new / is due.

Examples

By card tag — a filter deck where Card tag has tag exam gathers every card you tagged #exam while writing, no matter where it lives.
Trouble cards — Is leech is True, to drill only the cards you keep forgetting.
This week’s material — Deck tag contains decks/biology and Created after a date.