How merke.me works
Activate a deck, learn it, and let the system schedule your reviews.
The idea in 30 seconds
merke.me uses spaced repetition (SRS): instead of cramming, you meet each item again right before you would forget it. Three steps drive everything - activate a deck, learn its items once, then review them when they due. Reviews from all of your active decks are mixed into one queue.
Who is Merkules?
The elephant who shows you around merke.me is called Merkules - from the German merken (to memorise) and Hercules. An elephant never forgets, and that is exactly the job: holding on to what you have learned and putting it back in front of you just before it would slip away. When a notification tells you reviews are due, or warns you that your streak is about to break, that is Merkules. You choose when the streak reminder arrives in Settings (by default 18:00 your local time, with a last call at 21:00). You will also run into Merkules on your achievements, on the deck tiles and at the end of every session. The dashboard tour can be replayed any time from Settings.
1 · Activate a deck
A deck is a curated set of items for one level. Each level (A1-C2) has several decks side by side - core vocabulary, everyday vocabulary, collocations and grammar - and you turn each one on independently. Open Decks and flip the switch on any deck you want to study. Every deck stays open: on the free plan you can start 100 words and 30 grammar points from any level; a subscription lifts the limit.
The deck overview: the switch turns a deck on, the bar shows how much of it you have learned, and a finished deck goes green.
💡 Don't switch on ten decks at once. Reviews from every active deck land in the same queue, so start with one or two and add more once you are keeping up.
2 · Learn (lessons)
Activating a deck does not start quizzing you - first you learn its items in a lesson. Open Lessons to meet new words and grammar for the first time: meaning, , examples and audio. A lesson covers one deck and a handful of items at a time, and right after it you review exactly those items on their own. Only once you get an item right there does it count as learned and join your review queue, at the second level.
Everyday speech · A1
A lesson card: the word with its audio, the meaning, example sentences behind the second tab - and three ways on.
💡 Two settings shape this: **items per lesson** (how big one batch is) and the deck's **new per day** (how many a deck gives you in total). The lesson only splits the day's allowance into portions - it never raises it. If you stop before the review, nothing is lost: those items simply come back as new. Learning more today means more reviews tomorrow - pace yourself.
3 · Review - when should you?
This is the heart of the system. Each item climbs a fixed staircase of intervals: answer correctly and it waits longer before coming back; answer wrong and it drops back down. After the last step the item is mastered and leaves the queue for good. The golden rule: do your reviews when they are due, not when you feel like it.
Der ____ schläft.
A review, asked: the meaning as the question, the sentence it lives in as the hint - and the ä ö ü ß row for anyone without a German keyboard.
And answered: what you typed, the rank the item just reached, and when it comes back. In “Reveal & rate” mode you judge yourself with the two buttons instead of typing.
💡 In practice: clear your due reviews once or twice a day, and only then start new lessons. Skip days and the reviews pile up.
Make it yours
The same content, drilled the way you want. Everything below is a switch in Settings → Learning, changeable at any time - nothing here is decided once at sign-up. The defaults are the middle of the road: type the answer, single words, typos forgiven, audio on demand.
Type it, or turn the card over
Either you see the meaning and type the German yourself, or you see the German, reveal the answer and rate yourself No / Yes. Typing is stricter and sticks better; reveal is faster and works well on a phone.
How exact your typing has to be
Small typos still count, or the spelling has to match exactly, or - strict - capitals and the real umlauts count too. Strict is the setting for exam practice. Grammar exercises always want the exact form.
Whole sentences instead of single words
Switch on sentence context and a word you already know well comes back inside a full example sentence with one word blanked out, instead of on its own. You meet it the way you will meet it in the wild - in a clause, with a case ending and a word order around it.
The other direction: German → your language
Reverse mode shows the German word (or the German sentence, with sentence context on) and asks for the meaning. Recognition rather than production - useful when you read more than you write.
Listening, and which voice
Every word and example sentence is recorded. Play it on demand, or have it play by itself - separately for lessons and for reviews. You choose a male or a female voice.
How much comes at once
Items per lesson, items per review session, and how many new items each deck hands out per day. Three separate dials: the deck sets the daily allowance, the lesson only cuts it into portions, and the session size caps how much one sitting serves.
ä ö ü ß without a German keyboard
A row of ä ö ü ß buttons under every typing field. Or just type ae / oe / ue / ss - that always counts, and the app quietly shows you the real spelling afterwards.
Focus mode
No Enter key: a correct answer submits itself and the next card appears, but only once the whole word is typed, so it never jumps ahead mid-word. Off by default.
Two languages, set separately
The language of the interface and the language of the translations are two different settings. Run the app in German and still read the word explanations in your mother tongue - or the other way round.
Holiday mode
Going away? Pause the reviews. Every due date moves with you, holiday days don't break your streak, and ending it early makes everything due at once.
An exam date
Set the date and the level, and the dashboard works out the daily dose: what is still unlearned, how many new items a day that means, and whether your recent pace is enough.
Reminders, on your schedule
Email and push notifications for due reviews and for a streak about to break, at the hour you pick - or off entirely.
💡 None of this is a one-way door. Change a setting, do a session, change it back - your progress is stored per item and does not care how you were asked.
What counts toward your level
Every item you learn earns XP, and XP is what raises your account level - vocabulary, grammar and collocations alike, from every deck you activate.
The Core is something narrower: all grammar points plus the 10,000 most frequent German words. Mastering the whole Core is exactly what level 99 means, so that is the only pool the "x / y of the Core mastered" line on your profile counts.
The two numbers are meant to differ. A word outside the top 10,000 still earns XP, still shows as mastered in your progress panel, and still counts toward achievements - it simply is not part of the level-99 goal. Switch the progress panel to Core and you will see the same figure the level card shows.
💡 The Core runs across the decks, not between them: most decks hold a mix of Core and non-Core words, so there is no “Core deck” to pick.
More tools
Cram - practise items you have already learned freely, without changing their SRS schedule. Handy before an exam. Switch on Unlimited session and it never runs out: each time you finish the selection, the queue resets into a new round and practice continues until you end it.
Stats - your accuracy trend, a review forecast and a heatmap of your activity.
Grammar library & search - look up any grammar point or word at any time, and bookmark the ones you want to revisit.
Streak - keep your daily run alive by being active every day. Any small activity counts: doing reviews, learning a new lesson, practising (cram, trainer, tests) or finishing a reading text. Miss a whole day and the streak resets to 0.
Languages - the interface language and the language of the translations are two separate settings. You can run the app in German and still read the word explanations in your mother tongue. merke.me picks that up from your browser, and you can change it in Settings at any time.
FAQ
Why don't I see any reviews right now?
Reviews appear only when items fall due. Something you just learned has already had its own review right after the lesson, so it comes back a few hours later; otherwise come back later or learn new items in a lesson.
How many lessons should I do per day?
Whatever you can review consistently. A steady 10-20 new items a day beats 100 in one burst followed by an unmanageable review pile. A lesson serves 5 at a time by default; both that and each deck's daily allowance are adjustable in Settings.
What does “mastered” mean?
An item you answered correctly at every step of the staircase, up to the four-month interval. Mastered items leave the review queue - you have learned them.
What happens when I get an item wrong?
It drops back down the staircase and returns sooner, so you see it more often until it sticks again. Nothing is ever lost.
What is the account level and “Grandmaster”?
Your account level (1-99) grows with your progress: every item earns experience (XP), and the higher its rank the more it gives - mastering gives by far the most. Level 99 equals all of the grammar plus the 10,000 most common words; each level needs more XP than the last. Anything beyond that (rarer words, collocations) still counts and carries you into the open-ended **Grandmaster** tier, which keeps climbing.
I'm going away - do I come back to a mountain of reviews?
Not if you turn on **holiday mode** (Settings → Learning). Every due date moves with you, and holiday days don't break your streak. End it early and everything that would have piled up becomes due at once.
Can I add my own memory hook to a card?
Yes - on the answer side of a review card and on every vocabulary, grammar and collocation page there is a small **mnemonic** field. It's yours alone, and it shows up whenever the card comes back.
I'm sitting an exam. Can the app tell me how much to do per day?
Set the date and level under Settings → Learning and the dashboard shows the countdown: what's still unlearned, how many new items a day that means, and whether your recent pace is enough.
The app called my answer wrong, but it means the same thing.
Then tell it so. Under a wrong answer there is a **“Count … as right”** button that stores exactly what you typed for this item; from then on it counts. You can review the list on the item's page (up to eight answers per item) and take entries back at any time.
Can I bring back an item I have already mastered?
Yes. On the item's page, the progress card offers **“Bring back”** for anything mastered. It returns as Journeyman I and is due right away - so a word you notice you have lost is one click away from the queue, without resetting the whole deck.
Can I choose which items a lesson contains?
Yes - **“Pick items yourself”** in the “Advanced” menu of the Learn card on the dashboard. You get the items that are next in line and tick the ones you want (up to your lesson size), in any order you like; “Shuffle” mixes them. Whatever you leave out simply stays where it was.
How do I stop a session halfway through?
With the button in the top-left corner of the session. It asks first and says what happens: everything you answered is saved, the cards you got wrong are finished off, and the ones you have not seen yet stay due for next time.
Ready to try it?
You can learn 100 words and 30 grammar points from any level for free, no card needed. If you already speak some German, the placement test finds your level first, so you don't wade through what you know.
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