🙃 Anki on a Game Controller: the AnKing Setup for Mac
I built ControllerKeys to use a PlayStation controller as a productivity input device for my Mac. Generic stuff. Couch computing, OBS scene switching, window management. The med-student community found it on their own and has quietly become the strongest-converting segment of the user base.
I noticed it first in the Gumroad reviews. Someone wrote, “I spent multiple days trying to find a controller mapping app for MacOS that supported different layers for holding down triggers and after testing 10+ different ones which lacked this basic feature I came across this one.” Then in the YouTube comments. Then a recent post on r/medicalschoolanki, written by someone with no connection to me:
For a long time, I was looking for a proper macOS controller remapping app for Anki that was more powerful and flexible than Enjoyable, and I think I finally found it… For anyone coming from Windows and used to apps like reWASD or DS4Windows, this is honestly the first macOS solution I’ve tried that feels genuinely comparable.
So this post is for the next person searching “Anki controller Mac.” Here’s why a game controller is a strict upgrade for Anki review on a Mac, and how to set it up in two clicks using a community profile that’s already inside the app.
The Anki review loop is the most repetitive thing on a computer
A med student doing dedicated for Step 1 is reviewing Anki cards four to six hours a day for two months straight. That’s something on the order of ten thousand keypresses a day on the same six keys: 1, 2, 3, 4, space, Cmd-Z. Good, Again, Hard, Easy, show answer, undo. You hit them sitting at a desk. After a few hours, your wrist hurts, your shoulders pull forward, and you start finding excuses to stop reviewing.
The Anki review loop is the most repetitive structured input on a Mac, period. Nothing else comes close. Vim navigation, IDE shortcuts, video editing — none of it racks up that many keypresses in a single session. And the keypresses are uniform. Same six keys, over and over, for hours.
This is exactly what game controllers were designed for. Sustained repetitive input from a comfortable seated or reclined position, with every button under a finger that’s already touching it, no looking required.
What changes when you put Anki on a controller
Three things change immediately.
You stop hunching. You can recline on a couch, lean back in a chair, lie in bed. The controller goes wherever your hands go.
You stop looking at your hands. Game controllers were optimized for eyes-free input under pressure. Six identical keys on a keyboard require some hand-eye check. Differentiated buttons in fixed positions don’t.
The press itself stops costing anything. On a keyboard, hitting 1, 2, 3, 4 in succession is a small but real wrist motion. On a controller, it’s four taps of a thumb that’s already resting on the face buttons. Total motion is a few millimeters.
I wrote a longer piece on the locality argument here — short version: every button on a controller is within reach of a finger that’s already on it, so every shortcut is the same low cost. That property matters more in Anki than anywhere else, because you’re hitting those shortcuts more times per hour than anywhere else.
Setup: two clicks, using the AnKing community profile
Download ControllerKeys. Connect your controller via Bluetooth. Then inside the app:
Add Profile → Import Community Profiles → Anki - AnKing (USMLE)That’s it. The profile is plug-and-play for PlayStation controllers (DualSense, DualShock 4) and just needs a few button label swaps for Xbox or 8BitDo. It maps to Anki’s actual review actions and auto-activates whenever Anki is the frontmost app, so you don’t have to think about switching profiles.
The full Anki demo:
Use a Game Controller for Anki on Mac — ControllerKeys Demo
Default mappings (DualSense labels):
- X → Show answer / Rate Good
- Triangle → Rate Easy
- Square → Rate Hard
- Circle → Rate Again
- Right stick → Scroll up/down
- Left D-pad → Undo
- Touchpad → Mouse cursor (DualSense only)
Then a layer of chord combinations for power users:
- Cloze deletion
- Add card, suspend, bury, flag
- Set due date, preview, find & replace
- Delete card, replay audio
If you want to remap anything, the editor shows a visual diagram of your specific controller. Click the button you want to change, pick the new action.
Why this is the Enjoyable replacement on Mac
Most people who’ve already tried using a controller for Anki on Mac know about Enjoyable. It hasn’t been updated in over a decade. It can’t bind Cmd-Z, which is a problem because Cmd-Z is undo in Anki and you will misclick. It doesn’t support layers, chords, the DualSense touchpad, or any of the modern controller features. The Reddit post above is right that, until now, Mac users coming from reWASD or DS4Windows on Windows had nothing comparable.
ControllerKeys is what Enjoyable would have become if Yukkuri Games had kept shipping. Same core idea — controller as Mac input device — but with the modern features stack: layers, chords, profile-per-app auto-switching, lightbar control on DualSense, touchpad as mouse, undo, sequences, the whole thing.
The deeper demo with chord combos:
Control Anki using a Game Controller (Xbox, PlayStation, 8BitDo + More)
The price argument
ControllerKeys is $10 on Gumroad. It’s also open source, so if you want to build it yourself from GitHub, nothing’s stopping you.
If you’re a med student you are already $1,000+ into UWorld, Boards & Beyond, Pathoma, AnKing supplements, Sketchy, and the rest of the dedicated stack. A $10 tool that prevents wrist injury and lets you study from a recliner is rounding error. The math is obvious.
If you’re not a med student but found this post because you do a lot of Anki for language learning, board exams, or professional certs — same argument. Spaced repetition only works if you actually keep doing the daily review, and the daily review is exactly the part that gets uncomfortable on a keyboard.
Get it
- App: ControllerKeys ($10, Mac)
- Source: GitHub
- Discord: link inside the app — there’s a profile-sharing channel where users post their custom layouts
If you set it up and it’s working, post about it somewhere. The whole reason ControllerKeys has any Anki support at all is because med students kept finding it and telling their classmates, and every additional shared profile makes the next person’s setup that much shorter.
I built ControllerKeys to use a PlayStation controller as a productivity input device for my Mac. Generic stuff. Couch computing, OBS scene switching, window management. The med-student community found it on their own and has quietly become the strongest-converting segment of the user base.
I noticed it first in the Gumroad reviews. Someone wrote, "I spent multiple days trying to find a controller mapping app for MacOS that supported different layers for holding down triggers and after testing 10+ different ones which lacked this basic feature I came across this one." Then in the YouTube comments. Then a recent post on r/medicalschoolanki, written by someone with no connection to me:
> For a long time, I was looking for a proper macOS controller remapping app for Anki that was more powerful and flexible than Enjoyable, and I think I finally found it... For anyone coming from Windows and used to apps like reWASD or DS4Windows, this is honestly the first macOS solution I've tried that feels genuinely comparable.
So this post is for the next person searching "Anki controller Mac." Here's why a game controller is a strict upgrade for Anki review on a Mac, and how to set it up in two clicks using a community profile that's already inside the app.
## The Anki review loop is the most repetitive thing on a computer
A med student doing dedicated for Step 1 is reviewing Anki cards four to six hours a day for two months straight. That's something on the order of ten thousand keypresses a day on the same six keys: 1, 2, 3, 4, space, Cmd-Z. Good, Again, Hard, Easy, show answer, undo. You hit them sitting at a desk. After a few hours, your wrist hurts, your shoulders pull forward, and you start finding excuses to stop reviewing.
The Anki review loop is the most repetitive structured input on a Mac, period. Nothing else comes close. Vim navigation, IDE shortcuts, video editing — none of it racks up that many keypresses in a single session. And the keypresses are uniform. Same six keys, over and over, for hours.
This is exactly what game controllers were designed for. Sustained repetitive input from a comfortable seated or reclined position, with every button under a finger that's already touching it, no looking required.
## What changes when you put Anki on a controller
Three things change immediately.
You stop hunching. You can recline on a couch, lean back in a chair, lie in bed. The controller goes wherever your hands go.
You stop looking at your hands. Game controllers were optimized for eyes-free input under pressure. Six identical keys on a keyboard require some hand-eye check. Differentiated buttons in fixed positions don't.
The press itself stops costing anything. On a keyboard, hitting 1, 2, 3, 4 in succession is a small but real wrist motion. On a controller, it's four taps of a thumb that's already resting on the face buttons. Total motion is a few millimeters.
I wrote a longer piece on the locality argument [here](/every-shortcut-within-reach.md) — short version: every button on a controller is within reach of a finger that's already on it, so every shortcut is the same low cost. That property matters more in Anki than anywhere else, because you're hitting those shortcuts more times per hour than anywhere else.
## Setup: two clicks, using the AnKing community profile
[Download ControllerKeys](https://kevintang.xyz/apps/controller-keys). Connect your controller via Bluetooth. Then inside the app:
```
Add Profile → Import Community Profiles → Anki - AnKing (USMLE)
```
That's it. The profile is plug-and-play for PlayStation controllers (DualSense, DualShock 4) and just needs a few button label swaps for Xbox or 8BitDo. It maps to Anki's actual review actions and auto-activates whenever Anki is the frontmost app, so you don't have to think about switching profiles.
The full Anki demo:
[Use a Game Controller for Anki on Mac — ControllerKeys Demo](https://youtu.be/LzPXAVWfE5o)
Default mappings (DualSense labels):
- X → Show answer / Rate Good
- Triangle → Rate Easy
- Square → Rate Hard
- Circle → Rate Again
- Right stick → Scroll up/down
- Left D-pad → Undo
- Touchpad → Mouse cursor (DualSense only)
Then a layer of chord combinations for power users:
- Cloze deletion
- Add card, suspend, bury, flag
- Set due date, preview, find & replace
- Delete card, replay audio
If you want to remap anything, the editor shows a visual diagram of your specific controller. Click the button you want to change, pick the new action.
## Why this is the Enjoyable replacement on Mac
Most people who've already tried using a controller for Anki on Mac know about [Enjoyable](https://yukkurigames.com/enjoyable/). It hasn't been updated in over a decade. It can't bind Cmd-Z, which is a problem because Cmd-Z is undo in Anki and you will misclick. It doesn't support layers, chords, the DualSense touchpad, or any of the modern controller features. The Reddit post above is right that, until now, Mac users coming from reWASD or DS4Windows on Windows had nothing comparable.
ControllerKeys is what Enjoyable would have become if Yukkuri Games had kept shipping. Same core idea — controller as Mac input device — but with the modern features stack: layers, chords, profile-per-app auto-switching, lightbar control on DualSense, touchpad as mouse, undo, sequences, the whole thing.
The deeper demo with chord combos:
[Control Anki using a Game Controller (Xbox, PlayStation, 8BitDo + More)](https://youtu.be/nGogr5Nx5mw)
## The price argument
ControllerKeys is $10 on Gumroad. It's also open source, so if you want to build it yourself from [GitHub](https://github.com/NSEvent/xbox-controller-mapper), nothing's stopping you.
If you're a med student you are already $1,000+ into UWorld, Boards & Beyond, Pathoma, AnKing supplements, Sketchy, and the rest of the dedicated stack. A $10 tool that prevents wrist injury and lets you study from a recliner is rounding error. The math is obvious.
If you're not a med student but found this post because you do a lot of Anki for language learning, board exams, or professional certs — same argument. Spaced repetition only works if you actually keep doing the daily review, and the daily review is exactly the part that gets uncomfortable on a keyboard.
## Get it
- App: [ControllerKeys](https://kevintang.xyz/apps/controller-keys) ($10, Mac)
- Source: [GitHub](https://github.com/NSEvent/xbox-controller-mapper)
- Discord: link inside the app — there's a profile-sharing channel where users post their custom layouts
If you set it up and it's working, post about it somewhere. The whole reason ControllerKeys has any Anki support at all is because med students kept finding it and telling their classmates, and every additional shared profile makes the next person's setup that much shorter.