Bury vs Suspend Anki

INTRODUCTION

Halfway through a review session, a card appears that does not belong right now. Maybe the wording is broken. Maybe a sibling card just spoiled the answer. Maybe the topic is irrelevant until next semester. Anki gives two options: bury or suspend. Most users treat them as interchangeable. They are not. Picking the wrong one can silently wreck a schedule or make a card disappear forever. According to a 2013 review by Dunlosky et al. in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, only two study methods earned a "high utility" rating: practice testing and distributed practice. Bury vs suspend in Anki determines how both of those techniques apply to individual cards. This article breaks down exactly what each function does, the memory science behind Anki's automatic sibling spacing, the factual errors that competing guides keep repeating, and a clear decision framework for choosing the right action.

What Bury Actually Does

Burying a card hides it until the next calendar day. When Anki's internal clock rolls over (set by the "next day starts at" preference), every buried card returns to the queue automatically. No manual action needed. The Anki manual describes burying as useful "if you cannot answer the card at the moment or you want to come back to it another time."

There are two kinds of burying. Manual burying happens when the user presses the minus key (-) during review, or selects "Bury Card" or "Bury Note" from the More menu. Automatic burying happens for sibling cards. If a note generates two cards (a forward card and a reverse card, for example) and one comes up for review, Anki can bury the sibling so both do not appear in the same session. This is controlled by three toggles in Deck Options: "Bury new siblings," "Bury review siblings," and "Bury interday learning siblings."

One critical nuance: Anki only auto-buries siblings that are new or review cards. Cards still in the learning state are not buried, because timing is more urgent for those cards. But studying a learning card will bury its new and review siblings.

Burying does not reset learning steps. It does not change the ease factor. It does not affect FSRS memory state. The card comes back the next day in exactly the same scheduling condition it was in before.

What Suspend Actually Does

Suspending a card removes it from the review queue indefinitely. The card stays in the collection. It turns yellow in the browser. But it will never appear in a study session until someone manually unsuspends it. There is no timer. There is no automatic return. The card sits suspended until a human brings it back.

The reliable shortcut for toggling suspend is Ctrl+J on Windows and Linux, Cmd+J on macOS, used from the card browser. During review on desktop Anki, there is no default single-key suspend shortcut. The More menu offers "Suspend Card" and "Suspend Note" as options. AnkiDroid and AnkiMobile have their own shortcut mappings, which differ from the desktop version.

Suspend also serves an automatic function. When a card reaches the leech threshold (eight lapses by default), Anki tags it as a leech and suspends it. This prevents a persistently failing card from consuming review time every day. Both the threshold number and the automatic action (suspend or tag-only) are configurable in Deck Options under the Lapses tab.

Like burying, suspending does not reset learning steps, ease factor, interval, or FSRS memory state. When the card is eventually unsuspended, it resumes with its original scheduling data intact. The only thing that changes is the elapsed time since the last review, which FSRS factors into its retrievability calculation.

Here is a rule the Anki manual states explicitly: a card cannot be both buried and suspended at the same time. Suspending a buried card unburies it. Suspended cards cannot be buried. The two states are mutually exclusive.

The Memory Science Behind Spacing Sibling Cards

Anki's auto-bury feature is not a convenience toggle. It implements three well-established findings in memory research.

The first is interference. When two similar items are studied back-to-back, they compete for the same retrieval cues. Retroactive interference means the newer item disrupts recall of the older one. Proactive interference means the older item makes learning the newer one harder. Anderson, Bjork, and Bjork (1994) demonstrated that retrieving one memory can actively suppress related memories, a phenomenon they called retrieval-induced forgetting. Two cards from the same note share most of their content. Reviewing them in the same session creates exactly the conditions where interference is strongest.

The second finding is the spacing effect. Distributing practice across time produces better retention than massing it together. A major meta-analysis by Cepeda et al. (2006) covering 839 assessments confirmed this across ages, materials, and retention intervals. When Anki buries a sibling until the next day, it forces at least a 24-hour gap. That gap turns what would have been a trivially easy recognition into a genuine retrieval attempt.

The third concept is desirable difficulties, a framework introduced by Robert Bjork. Conditions that make learning feel harder during practice often produce stronger long-term retention. Spacing is a desirable difficulty. So is interleaving. Burying a sibling card does both: it spaces the related content and interleaves other material between the two siblings.

This connects to a broader point. Roediger and Butler (2011) showed in Trends in Cognitive Sciences that actively retrieving information from memory strengthens the trace far more than passive re-exposure. When a sibling card appears right after its partner, the answer is still in working memory. That is recognition, not recall. Burying the sibling forces genuine retrieval the next day.

So the auto-bury checkbox is Anki implementing decades of cognitive science into a single setting. Kang (2016) confirmed in Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences that spacing produces substantially better long-term learning than massed practice, even when massed practice feels more productive in the moment.

Common Myths About Bury vs Suspend

Several guides currently ranking in search results contain factual errors worth correcting.

The most damaging myth: that suspended cards return automatically after a "grace period." At least two AI-generated articles ranking for this keyword claim that Anki puts suspended cards on a timed pause, after which they re-enter the review schedule on their own. This is false. The Anki manual is explicit: suspended cards remain hidden until manually unsuspended. There is no timer. There is no grace period. If a card is suspended and forgotten, it stays invisible indefinitely. These articles have the definitions of bury and suspend reversed, which is exactly the kind of error that leads students to lose cards without realizing it.

The second error involves keyboard shortcuts. A popular tutorial states that pressing "b" during review suspends a card. It does not. The minus key (-) buries the current card during review. Desktop Anki has no default single-key shortcut to suspend during review. Suspend is toggled from the browser (Ctrl+J or Cmd+J) or through the More menu. AnkiDroid and AnkiMobile have their own mappings, so platform-specific documentation is worth checking.

A third misconception: that burying or suspending resets a card's progress. Under the V3 scheduler (the only scheduler in Anki since version 23.10), neither action resets learning steps, ease factor, interval, or FSRS memory state. When the card returns, it picks up where it left off. Modern spaced repetition tools, including apps like Mindomax that use proprietary scheduling, generally preserve card state through any pause action. The principle is the same: hiding a card should not destroy the scheduling data the algorithm has already learned about that card.

When to Use Bury vs Suspend: A Decision Framework

The choice depends on one question: do you need this card back soon, or not?

Bury when the card is fine but the timing is wrong. A sibling just appeared and made this one too easy. The topic is hard and you want to try again tomorrow with fresh eyes. Or you simply do not feel like reviewing it right now but still want it in rotation. Bury is temporary by design. Gone today, back tomorrow, no action required.

Suspend when the card needs to leave rotation for an extended period or permanently. The content is wrong and needs editing before you review it again. The material is outside your current exam scope. You already know it cold and reviewing wastes time. Or Anki auto-suspended it as a leech because you failed it too many times. Suspend is indefinite. It stays hidden until you search "is:suspended" in the browser and unsuspend it manually.

A practical habit that helps: schedule a monthly audit. Search "is:suspended" in the browser, sort by the date column, and review whether any suspended cards deserve to come back. Cards suspended months ago for exam-scope reasons may become relevant again. Leech cards may be worth rewriting rather than leaving frozen.

CONCLUSION

The difference between bury and suspend is time. Bury is a 24-hour pause: the card disappears today and comes back tomorrow without any action. Suspend is an indefinite removal: the card stays hidden until someone manually brings it back. Both preserve scheduling data. Neither resets progress. The auto-bury feature for siblings exists because memory research going back to Ebbinghaus consistently shows that spacing related material across sessions produces stronger retrieval than massing it together. Several popular guides get the definitions backwards or claim suspended cards auto-return. They do not. Knowing which button does what removes a surprising amount of confusion from daily Anki sessions.