Will it read my handwriting?

Usually, and the honest way to find out is one photo — it takes about a minute. It’s read with a vision model rather than by character recognition, which handles slanted lines, arrows, marginal notes and diagram labels far better than OCR does. Legibility matters more than neatness: if you can read it back, it usually can too. Very faint pencil and heavy shorthand are where it struggles.

How many pages at once?

Five photos per upload. For a longer chapter, do it in passes, or scan the pages into a single PDF and upload that instead — a PDF with no extractable text is read the same way.

Do the pages stay in order?

Yes — they’re read in the order you picked them, so select them in page order. One thing the screen won’t do is mix kinds: photos and a document can’t go into the same upload, so scan-then-upload and photograph-then-upload are two separate passes.

They’re looked at rather than skipped, and labelled diagrams work well — a labelled cycle usually becomes several cards about the steps. A drawing with nothing written on it has less to go on, the same as it would for a classmate borrowing your notes.

Do I need an account?

Not to find out whether it reads your handwriting. The full demo takes one photo of a page with no account: it reads the page into text you can check and correct, then writes cards from it. Photographing up to five pages into a whole pack, with the study guide and quiz, takes a free account — no credit card, three packs a month.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes, and that’s the intended way to use this one: it runs in the mobile browser, installs to your home screen, and the photos are already there.

Handwritten notes to flashcards

Turn your handwritten notes into flashcards

A notebook is the one set of notes nobody wants to revise from twice, because reviewing it means reading your own handwriting again at exactly the speed you wrote it. Photograph up to five pages and Stydra reads them, writes the cards, and then makes you answer them from memory — no typing anything up first.

Photograph a page — it’s free Or try a page in the demo, no account

Uploading a PDF, slides or a Word file needs a free account, no card. The demo takes pasted text — or a photo of a page — and needs no account at all.

Try it on a section you can type out

This box reads typed text. Photographing the page itself is what the full demo does, also without an account — the link sits under the button.

Type or paste a section of your notes

Six flashcards come back. No account, no email, nothing to install.

Or open the full demo — it also reads a photo of a page

How it works

01
Photograph the pages
Up to five at a time, straight from your phone’s camera roll. They’re read in the order you picked them, so a spread stays in order. A scan or a PDF of the same pages works identically — you don’t have to know which kind you have.
02
They’re read with vision, not OCR guesswork
The pages go to a vision model rather than through character recognition, so a diagram with labels around it, an arrow between two boxes, and a line squeezed into the margin are all things it can use. Legibility matters more than neatness: if you can read it back, it usually can too.
03
Study it in a way that shows what you don’t know
Cards stream in as they’re written, one idea each, spread across the whole set of pages rather than clustering on the first one. Flip through them, or use Recall Mode: the card stays hidden, you type the answer in your own words, and it tells you which parts you actually had.

What you get

Flashcards written from your own pages, one idea per card
Recall Mode — type the answer from memory and get it graded, not just revealed
A quiz that explains the misconception behind each wrong answer
A study guide and key terms, typed up from the handwriting
A weak-spots session built only from the cards you keep fumbling
Spaced repetition, so hard cards come back sooner
A free share link, so the classmate who missed that lecture can study it too
An audio recap of the pages, for revising away from the notebookMax plan

Everything without a tag is on the free plan. See pricing for what the paid ones cost.

Re-reading your own handwriting is the least honest revision there is

Your notes are the most familiar text you own — you wrote every word of them, so they read back fluently whether or not you could reproduce a single one under exam conditions. That fluency is the whole problem: it feels like knowing, and it is only recognising. Photographing the page and being asked about it removes the page from the equation, which is the one condition your notebook can never create for you while you are holding it.

Questions

Will it read my handwriting?: Usually, and the honest way to find out is one photo — it takes about a minute. It’s read with a vision model rather than by character recognition, which handles slanted lines, arrows, marginal notes and diagram labels far better than OCR does. Legibility matters more than neatness: if you can read it back, it usually can too. Very faint pencil and heavy shorthand are where it struggles.
How many pages at once?: Five photos per upload. For a longer chapter, do it in passes, or scan the pages into a single PDF and upload that instead — a PDF with no extractable text is read the same way.
Do the pages stay in order?: Yes — they’re read in the order you picked them, so select them in page order. One thing the screen won’t do is mix kinds: photos and a document can’t go into the same upload, so scan-then-upload and photograph-then-upload are two separate passes.
What about diagrams?: They’re looked at rather than skipped, and labelled diagrams work well — a labelled cycle usually becomes several cards about the steps. A drawing with nothing written on it has less to go on, the same as it would for a classmate borrowing your notes.
Do I need an account?: Not to find out whether it reads your handwriting. The full demo takes one photo of a page with no account: it reads the page into text you can check and correct, then writes cards from it. Photographing up to five pages into a whole pack, with the study guide and quiz, takes a free account — no credit card, three packs a month.
Does it work on a phone?: Yes, and that’s the intended way to use this one: it runs in the mobile browser, installs to your home screen, and the photos are already there.

Photograph one page and see

One page is enough to tell you whether it reads your handwriting, and the full demo reads one without an account, in about a minute. The rest of the notebook goes in five pages at a time on a free account, no card.

Photograph a page — it’s free Or try a page in the demo, no account

See pricing for what the paid plans add.