Reps has a drawing pad built into the card editor. You can draw the front of a card, the back, or both, and on Apple Pencil models with a pressure sensor, pressing harder gives a thicker line.
Reading the name of a structure and recognising a picture of it are both easier than producing the structure yourself. A text card asks you to recall a word. A drawing card asks you to reconstruct a spatial arrangement, in order, with nothing on screen to prompt you.
That difference shows up in what it exposes. You can look at a diagram of the citric acid cycle, feel that you know it, and discover at the exam that you knew the shape of the picture rather than the sequence of the reactions. Drawing it from a blank pad does not allow that. Either the intermediates come out in order or they do not, and you find out in four seconds rather than in an exam hall.
Drawing works with any Apple Pencil, and also with a finger, or a mouse or trackpad on a Mac. Pressure sensitivity is the part that varies.
| Model | Pressure changes line thickness |
|---|---|
| Apple Pencil (1st generation) | Yes |
| Apple Pencil (2nd generation) | Yes |
| Apple Pencil Pro | Yes |
| Apple Pencil (USB-C) | No, constant width |
The USB-C Pencil has no pressure sensor, so it draws at a single weight. Everything else works normally with it.
Hover, double tap and tilt are not used.
A card can carry a photo as well. Photograph the labelled diagram from the textbook for the back of the card, and draw your attempt on a blank pad for the front. The comparison is the review.
Deciding what to draw forces you to decide what matters in the image, which is already most of the work. It is the same argument that runs through the rest of Reps: you write your own cards because writing them is where a large part of the learning happens.
Yes, with a finger, though the iPad is where this feature earns its place. A phone screen is small for anything with more than a few elements.
Any stylus that your iPad treats as a finger will draw. Pressure sensitivity is Apple Pencil only.
No. Drawings stay as drawings. Reps does not convert handwriting to text and does not search inside a drawing.
Cards hold photos and drawings as separate sides rather than layering ink over an imported image. Photograph the diagram on one side and draw on the other.