Features
Decks and topic packs
MemDecks has two kinds of word grouping and they do different jobs. A topic pack is a themed, difficulty-tiered list of English words that feeds the pump one word at a time; you subscribe to it. A deck is a set of cards you add to your collection in a single action; you import it. Subscribing changes what MemDecks offers you next. Importing changes what you own.
The difference in one table
| Topic pack | Deck | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A themed list of English words, split into difficulty tiers | A set of cards |
| What you do with it | Subscribe | Import |
| Effect on your collection | None directly — it feeds the pump | Adds cards immediately |
| Pace | One word at a time, in difficulty order | All at once |
| Who makes it | MemDecks | MemDecks, you, or an Anki export |
| Where in the app | Translator → Packs | Decks |
Topic packs
A topic pack is a curated list of English lemmas on one theme, maintained by MemDecks and split into difficulty tiers. Subscribing to a pack puts its words into your queue; pressing Next word in the Translator draws from it.
As of 2 September 2026 there are 21 topic packs holding 1,392 pack entries across 1,302 distinct English words — some words, such as everyday verbs, belong to more than one pack.
| Pack | Words |
|---|---|
| Daily actions | 184 |
| Food | 125 |
| Nature | 107 |
| Body | 75 |
| Emotions | 73 |
| Time | 71 |
| Work | 71 |
| Travel | 66 |
| Home | 62 |
| Numbers | 60 |
| Greetings | 58 |
| Music | 55 |
| Weather | 54 |
| Clothing | 53 |
| School | 51 |
| City | 50 |
| Sports | 49 |
| Tools | 43 |
| Family | 36 |
| Colors | 29 |
| Starter | 20 |
New MemDecks accounts are subscribed to the Starter pack automatically, so the pump has something to offer before you have chosen anything.
How pack tiers work
Each pack is divided into difficulty tiers — five for most packs, four for Starter — and you work one tier at a time. MemDecks offers the next tier when two things are true at once: every word in the current tier is in your collection, and average progress across those cards has reached 70%.
The second condition is the interesting one. Collecting a tier is not finishing it; you have to have practised it. This is the only place in MemDecks where progress gates access to anything, and it gates only the next batch of new words, never a feature.
How the queue is built
MemDecks rebuilds your queue from your subscriptions whenever they change. It takes the candidate words from the current tier of every pack you follow, drops anything already saved or dismissed, sorts what is left by difficulty, and then interleaves the packs round-robin so several subscriptions advance together instead of one finishing first.
Words you skip are not thrown away. A skipped word moves to the back and returns after everything you have not yet seen, with more-skipped words returning last.
Decks: ready-made, your own, and imported
A deck is a set of cards added to your collection in one action. Three kinds exist.
Ready-made decks published by MemDecks. The core set as of 2 September 2026 is five decks of ten cards each: Everyday Verbs, People & Family, Home & City, Time & Life, and Describing Words. They ship with their own artwork and are language-neutral — the same ten English words, translated into whichever study language you have selected. Importing a ready-made deck requires an account.
Decks you build. You can create your own deck, add cards to it, and choose whether it is private, unlisted, or public. This is how a teacher or a study group shares a specific word set.
Decks imported from Anki. MemDecks reads an exported .apkg package and converts its notes into cards, media included. The feature is marked beta: Anki note layouts vary enormously and not all of them map onto a MemDecks card.
Which one should you use
Subscribe to a topic pack when you want MemDecks to decide what comes next in a sensible order and you would rather meet words a few at a time. Import a deck when you want a specific set of words now — usually because a game needs a card count you do not have, or because someone gave you a list.
They are not exclusive. A common shape is one deck to fill the collection quickly plus two or three pack subscriptions running in the background.