Onigiri is an experimental add-on that replaces the standard Anki interface with a modern, highly customizable, and personalized dashboard, completely transforming how Anki looks. It's designed to keep you motivated to study your cards every day. This add-on is in early beta; so far, it has only been extensively tested on macOS. If you try this add-on on other platforms, know that you will be a pioneer.

Onigiri (お握り), also known as omusubi (おむすび) or rice balls (🍙), is a traditional Japanese recipe rich in carbohydrates, which are essential for providing energy—so you can study your Anki cards! This is the intention of Onigiri: to give you the proper motivation to study with a beautiful new layout for Anki (暗記)—an extra carbohydrate to give you that boost!

Join the discord today to receive updated news on Onigiri and previews of future updates.

• Anki is democratic: Anki is a tool used by people everywhere. Every user should have the right to adapt it to their needs, with the colors and aspects they want. Onigiri helps make Anki even more democratic and user-friendly.
• Great design can motivate: Motivation can lead to greater productivity and encourage students to study and visit the app more often. Research has proved that a well-structured and user-friendly design can, in fact, cultivate motivation.
• Calm defaults, powerful options: The base experience stays simple. Advanced controls are discoverable, not overwhelming — letting users grow into complexity at their pace
• Consistency with flexibility: Users can change the look and feel without breaking core Anki paradigms—cards, reviews, intervals—allowing muscle memory to remain effective.

You may wonder, "But Anki works well already, why should I change?" I know—Anki works—but Onigiri helps it feel great to use. By refreshing the interface with calm defaults, readable typography, and gentle cues, Onigiri lowers friction and raises motivation—so you show up to your cards more often, with more energy.

Onigiri is currently at Beta version, it was only tested so far on Mac, with no major bugs registered. Here is how you can have the Early Birds version of Onigiri.

1. Visit Onigiri's official GitHub page
2. Go to "Releases" and download the most recent version of Onigiri—it will always be a .ankiaddon file.
3. Download it and click on the file to open, it will re-direct you to Anki.
4. With the add-on installed, restart Anki and see the magic happen.

If you have any issues while using Onigiri, please don't hesitate to post an issue, let's make this add-on as smooth as possible. Those are some potential bugs you might find, I'm working to solve them:

• I had, throughout development, some issues when it came to card formatting on Reviewer while using an image background, this is due to the interaction of CSS functions of the add-on and the card, if you notice anything, let me know.
• I noticed some lagging on the deck container on main menu, this is probably due to the rendering of the deck view and still something I'm working on.
• Some settings require you to restart Anki, so if you clicked "Save" and nothing happen, you likely found a setting that requires restarting. Also, some settings just require you to do a refresh, just click "D" to refresh the main menu.
• This add-on interacts badly with some other add-ons, such as Shige's Leaderboard (that doesn't display, since it has a conflicting function with Onigiri) and The KING of Button Add-ons (some colors, backgrounds or alignment of the buttons can look different than planned).
• As any add-on that deals with animated backgrounds in .gif and .webp formats, you will notice that Anki uses a high percentage of CPU, so do not worry, this is not a bug, this is a strucutral problem of Anki and that is expected, those two formats are processed on the CPU and since its rendering constantly, it takes a higher CPU percentage.
• As soon as you download it, your external add-ons that should show up on your main menu will not appear. You should go to Settings -> Main Menu and organize your add-ons the way you wish on the add-ons grid. This is not a bug, your add-ons are "archied" inside Onigiri.

This project is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0). In short: you’re free to use, study, and modify this code—but if you run it as a service or distribute modified versions, you must make your source available under the same license.

I’ve put a lot of time into designing and maintaining this work. Please respect the license and my effort:

• Don’t copy parts of this project into closed-source or commercial products.
• If you build on it, credit the original and keep your changes open.
• If you find value here, consider contributing back or supporting the project.

Thanks to the Anki and Ankimon community for teaching me the essentials on coding and add-on development!

I’m actively shipping updates and new features. If my add-ons helped your studies or workflow, consider supporting my work. Your contribution keeps the project maintained and free for everyone.

The following projects and resources informed the design and development of this add-on:

• Color palettes and themes: Catppuccin, Dracula, Rosé Pine, Nord, Solarized, Antinote themes.
• Visual and thematic inspiration: Mochi Cards
• Add-on precedents by Shige: Enhance main window, Rearrange home addons, Anki Re-design (all by Shige)
• Functional and UI guidance: Inspired by Review Heatmap (by Glutanamite) and Modern Material Theme.
• This addon uses html2canvas v1.4.1 by Niklas von Hertzen, distributed under the MIT License.