Onigiri is an experimental add-on that replaces the standard Anki interface with a modern, highly customizable, and personalized dashboard, transforming how Anki looks completely, a way to keep you motivated to study your cards everyday.

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 to provide energy, so you can study your Anki cards! This is the intention of Onigiri, to give you the proper motivation to study your cards with a beautiful new layout to Anki (暗記), an extra carbohydrate to give you that boost to study.

• Anki is democratic: Anki is a tool that is used by everyone, from every corner of the world, every user should have the right to adapt it to their own needs, with the colors and aspects that they want. Onigiri helps Anki become an even more democratic and user-friendly experience.
• Great design can motivate: Motivation can bring more productivity and motivation for students to study, to visit the app more often and be drawn to it. Research has prooved 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—so muscle memory still works.  

You may wonder "But Anki works good 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 raise motivation – so you show up to your cards more often, with more energy.

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.
• 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 structural 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.
• When you download it, your external add-ons will appear archived, go to Settings -> Menu -> Main menu and organize your "Archived External Add-ons".
• You might find that Onigiri makes Anki "slow" due to Gamification Mode, this is a symptom of registering data while you study, and is considered normal, I will work towards optimization on future updates.
• Onigiri does not work with older versions of Anki, only 25.07.5 and 25.09, please keep your Anki updated for a better experience.

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.

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), Modern Material Theme, and Coloris

Thanks to the Anki and Ankimon community for teaching me the essentials on coding and add-on development! A special thanks to @Ouranos for the special help identifying bugs.

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. Join up our Discord