Everything MugUp does
One app for the things you’re trying to learn and the habits you’re trying to keep — built around a few minutes a day.
A simulated first month, Bronze to Legend, bad week included — every number computed by the same formula your real card uses. Play it, or scrub it day by day.
Your Life Has a Card Now
Six real-life stats — Learning, Reading, Writing, Speaking, Physical, Spiritual — rated like a footballer's card, from Bronze up to Legend.
You already know this loop. Whole evenings have gone into grinding a GTA character's stats or dragging a FIFA rating up two points — and it felt good, because watching a number climb because of something you did is genuinely satisfying. Same loop here, one difference: the character you're levelling up is you.
Ratings measure your form, not your trophies: they weigh the last 28 days, so skipping a week visibly drops the number, and showing up brings it climbing back. It's the most honest progress bar we could build.
Becoming the best version of yourself isn't a feeling — it's your form across six disciplines, earned by showing up, day by day.
A few small reps, every day
Consistency beats intensity — and studying doesn't happen in a silo. The hour before decides the hour: come off twenty minutes of short videos and a page of notes never stood a chance. So the Today row isn't a list of subjects, it's the shape of the evening around them — eight tiny commitments, some two minutes long, none longer than the time you choose.
The daily Review
Every question due today, across every subject, in one session — your memory workout. A Pro feature.
Daily puzzles from your material
A Wordle and a Connections generated from what you are actually studying.
Reading and writing sessions
Commit to ten minutes, then read from your shelf or journal against the clock. Minutes decide completion — words are counted, never demanded.
Speaking, body, and spirit
Impromptu speaking drills with AI prompts, plus one-tap logs for exercise and for prayer or meditation.
When one stalls, move sideways
Sick of the drills isn't the same as done for the night. The rest of the row is waiting — write something, read a chapter, answer a speaking prompt, move, sit still — so the way out of a session that stopped landing is another tile, not the thing you'd otherwise reach for.
The learning games
Describe a topic — or point the AI at your own material — and it builds four kinds of game: multiple choice, fill in the blanks, self-graded flashcards, and pair match. Every one makes you produce the answer before you see it, because recognising a highlighted line only feels like knowing it.
Spaced repetition, without the setup
Answer well and the gap before a question returns grows; slip and it comes back sooner. Nothing to configure — it is just how every question behaves. On Pro, the daily Review pulls everything due across your whole library into one session.
Mixed, not blocked
One run deals you multiple choice, blanks, flashcards and pairs, and the Review mixes subjects too. Switching is harder than drilling one thing — that difficulty is the point. What you got wrong or skipped leads the next session.
A typo won’t cost you the answer
Typed answers forgive accents, capitals and a small spelling slip, scaled to how long the answer is — and when a misspelling is let through, it says so and names the right spelling. Numbers and very short answers stay exact.
A wrong answer can be taken back
Before you move on, every game type offers a “Try again”. The corrected answer counts in full — score, XP and the schedule — because nothing is banked until you continue. Wrong answers only; giving up on a question is still giving up.
An answer to “why”
Get one wrong and ask why that’s the answer — the AI explains it on the spot, while the mistake is still fresh enough to fix. Ten a day on the free plan, unlimited on Pro.
More when you want more
Want more practice? Add more questions to any game with one click — same topic, same style, ready to play. And a deck cloned from the library behaves exactly like one you built.
Want to try a round before signing up? The landing page has a playable one, and the deck library is open to browse.
Your Lecture, Your Questions
An AI that has read the internet can quiz you on the subject. It cannot quiz you on the slides your professor actually used, the handout the exam is written from, or the three exceptions they spent half an hour on. So every topic in MugUp holds your own material — typed or uploaded — and the generator can be told to use nothing else.
Take notes during the lecture — Pro
Every topic has a Notes tab with a real editor in it — headings, lists, bold, the usual. It saves as you type and keeps a copy in the browser too, so a dead laptop or a closed tab costs you nothing.
Then press Save & index: a minute later the note is material the generator builds questions out of, rather than something you would reread. Twenty per topic, text only — pictures go on flashcards, below.
Or upload what you already have — Pro
PDFs, text files and markdown — up to twenty per topic — indexed the same way a note is, so by the time you generate, a handout and something you typed are the same kind of thing.
Starting from nothing at all? Drop in the syllabus and MugUp drafts the whole project from it, topic by topic, as a proposal you edit before anything is created.
“Only my material” means only your material
One dial above the generate button, set to the strictest position by default — and it works through the material rather than circling the first page, naming the section it is going to next. Try it:
Every question comes from your files and notes. Nothing invented.
Next up: §7, Enzyme kinetics — 12 of 25 sections covered.
From your lecture note
Your Lecture 7 note gives Km as the substrate concentration at half Vmax. In the inhibited curve you sketched, Km rose and Vmax did not — which kind of inhibitor is that?
The picker is the real one. The three sources and the question are stand-ins — change the setting and watch what it is allowed to ask.
Paste the diagram, not a description of it — Pro
Some things are a picture. Paste screenshots straight into either side of a flashcard — several at once, in among what you are typing — or drag them in.
What does Km measure, and where does it sit on the curve?
The figure was pasted onto the back between two lines of the answer, and that is where it stayed. You paste it; nothing here draws one for you.
A picture supplements the text and never replaces it, so both sides still need words, and flashcards are the only type that takes them — multiple choice, blanks and pair match stay text. Pro comes with 100 MB of image storage.
Then let it draw the map
Once a project has a couple of topics, the Roadmap tab works out which ones want doing first. Arrows point from what to learn before what — and most topics have none, because an arrow between two things that do not actually depend on each other is just noise.
A suggested order, not a schedule: no dates on it, nothing falls behind. On both plans. Every ready-made deck ships with one, and cloning it into your account keeps it.
Nothing points at Lab techniques — that is the chart saying “whenever you like”.
Already made the deck? Bring it.
Export an .apkg from Anki and drop it in. Subdecks become topics, your notes become flashcards, and the whole deck is playable the moment the import finishes. The file is read right in your browser — it never gets uploaded, only the cards do. Free brings up to 200 cards at a time; Pro takes 10,000, as many times as you like.
Tick Bring the pictures across — a Pro option, off by default because it turns a five-second import into a minute or two — and every image lands where the note put it. It counts against the same 100 MB, and the screen tells you whether the deck fits before you wait rather than after. Audio never comes across.
Your review history comes too, if the export had “Include scheduling information” ticked — a card due in three weeks stays due in three weeks. Decks downloaded from AnkiWeb never have it, so those arrive new, and MugUp says which happened before you commit. Scheduling only, though: streaks, XP and coins are earned here.
Say It Out Loud, in Your Own Words
Richard Feynman's test: explain it in plain language, out loud — wherever you reach for jargon or trail off is exactly what you don't know yet. Speak hands you a prompt from whatever you're studying, a short clock to think, a longer one to talk, then hands back what you said. And on the days you don't want a test, the same page is a video journal — no prompt, no clock, just you and the camera.
Try a sample round — no account neededTwo ways to be put on the spot
Full prompt hands you a question to answer; Topic only hands you a few words, so finding the angle is the exercise. Both, on both plans.
Your subject, or none at all
Speak on a project you already have, type anything, or hit Surprise me — it remembers what it has asked you and moves on.
Your browser writes down what you said
Speech-to-text runs on your own device as you talk — free, in Chrome, Edge and Safari. Firefox can't, and the drill still runs there.
The recording never leaves the tab
Audio — and video, if you turn the camera on — exists only in the page. Play it back, keep the file or let it go; what gets saved is the text.
Try being put on the spot
Why do we forget most of what we read — and what actually makes something stick?
One shape to hang the answer on — PREP: Point → Reason → Example → Point
15s to think, 30s to talk — out loud, really. Nothing here records you.
Harder means less thinking and more talking
Three impromptu presets, plus a deep-research round with fifteen minutes to read up first. Every clock is a slider.
- Easy1:30 · 1:00
- Medium1:00 · 1:30
- Hard0:30 · 2:00
- Deep research15:00 · 2:00
A coach that read what you said — Pro
The AI reads the transcript: which shape your answer took, what you covered, where an outsider would get lost, the filler you leaned on, and one thing to change next round.
Nothing here scores how you sound — no accent, pronunciation or fluency rating; the coach only ever sees text. Free gets one prompt a day; Pro removes the limit.
Or just talk to the camera
The video journal is the one place the camera starts on, because being on camera is the exercise. The clock counts up and stops itself at ten minutes — a ceiling, not a target. Watch it back, download it if you want to keep it, then press Done — discard the video.
We keep how long you talked and what you called it — nothing else. The title is yours to type or skip; there is no upload, no transcript, no coach. It still turns the Speak tile green — free, unlimited, and it never touches the daily prompt.
Make reading a habit that actually sticks
Pick a goal small enough to keep on a bad day — ten minutes is the default — and read a PDF, a text file or a pasted article inside MugUp with the clock right there beside the page. It pauses when you step away, tells you the moment you're done, and remembers the page you stopped on. Take notes beside the book as you go, and save any word you meet as a flashcard. Two books on the free plan, unlimited on Pro.
Try the reading timer — no account neededA book on your shelf stays a book
Reading material skips the AI entirely — no indexing, no questions, nothing quietly turning your novel into a quiz. If you do want questions out of a file, that's the study upload, and it's a different shelf.
Minutes decide, nothing else
Commit to five, ten or thirty minutes and the countdown is the whole target. It pays out once a day however long you stay, so there is nothing to farm and no reason to sit there resenting it.
A notebook beside the page, and a word saved is a flashcard
Take notes next to what you're reading, kept with the book, with a button that marks the page you're on — and three questions waiting when you finish it. Select a word, write what it means in the sentence you found it in (or have one suggested), and it comes back as a flashcard on the same spaced-repetition schedule as everything else.
In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present — I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world?
Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm? — But this is more pleasant. — Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion?
Dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees working together to put in order their several parts of the universe? And art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which is according to thy nature?
Book V · your place is kept
A 45-second stand-in — in the app you commit to five, ten or thirty minutes.
Writing, on the same clock
Take a prompt or open a blank page and journal privately. Minutes decide when you're done — words are counted and reported, never demanded. Forty words of honest thinking on a bad day is not a failed session, and the day the habit most needs to survive is exactly that one.
Try the writing desk — no account neededDescribe today to someone who has never met you.
13 switch sets — tap one to audition it. Your pick is the app's real setting, so it follows you into the app after you sign up.
A prompt, if you want one
Four shelves of prompts — Reflection, Gratitude, Freewrite, Study recap — or none at all: the private journal is a blank page with no topic attached.
A keyboard worth hearing
Turn on typing sounds and every keystroke lands like a real switch — try the packs in the demo. It works across the app's text fields, and it is free.
Speaking, Reading and Writing are three of the Life Card's six stats. See what's free and what's Pro.
A Pomodoro timer like none before
Not a countdown with a bell — a room you work in. Breaks that end themselves, an ambience that follows you around the app, and a full-screen mode that puts the clock over a living scene.
Intentional breaks
Name what you'll do before the break starts — move, watch something, pray, journal — and if you watch, the player closes itself the moment the break ends, keeping your place for the next one. No dismissing it, no “five more minutes”.
Full screen, drawn live
Take the timer full screen and the countdown sits at arm's length over an animated scene — rain, ocean, a thunderstorm, a dawn full of birds, a fireplace, a field of crickets, a coffee shop or a field of slow alpha-wave traces — drawn live on your device, no video files. Let the timer change it at the start of every focus session, or pick one and keep it. Ask your system for reduced motion and it holds a single still frame, with the lightning, the flicker and the sparks left out.
Breaks play from your own feed
Pick “watch something” and the player shows your YourTube feed — the links you pasted, nothing suggested — and whatever you watch in a break counts against the same daily budget.
Ambient sound
Off until you turn it onSynth is generated on your device — nothing downloads. Recorded streams a real field recording. This is the app's actual setting: the timer popover in the navbar has the same controls.
Break time
0:45“Ten more minutes of the focus talk, then straight back”
A live slice of the break flow — the clock really does take the player away at zero.
YourTube — a feed you wrote, not one written for you
Paste the talks, courses and playlists you actually mean to watch, from YouTube or Vimeo, and that list is the whole feed. No recommendations, no “related”, no shorts — not hidden, absent. 20 videos or playlists on the free plan, unlimited on Pro.
Build your feedOnly what you put there
The feed is the list you built, in the order you put it. Nothing is ever suggested — no related videos, no channel to subscribe to, no trending — and the page has no way to show you a video you didn't add. YouTube videos and playlists, Vimeo videos, unlisted ones included.
The next video waits for you
When a video ends it offers the next one; it doesn't take it. Autoplay is off by default, and it's one switch in your feed's settings if you want it on.
A daily budget that's a commitment, not a lock
Optional, 5 to 240 minutes a day, off until you set it. It counts minutes with something playing, so watching at 2× spends half. When it's spent the player pauses and the page says so — you can change the number whenever you like, and there is no “five more minutes” button.
Your place follows you
Where you stopped, which video of the playlist you were on, and the speed you chose for it — saved, and there on your phone when you pick it up. Your focus-timer breaks play from this same feed and count against the same budget.
- Up next
The lecture you bookmarked in March
YouTube · Playlist · 12 videos
A talk a friend sent you
YouTube · Video · 38 min
That documentary, finally
Vimeo · Video · 1 h 12 min
An illustration of a feed — the titles are made up, the numbers are the app's.
Two kinds of technique, both borrowed on purpose
None of this is decoration. Half of it comes from what actually makes things stick — you answer instead of reread, and questions come back spaced out. The other half is lifted from the apps built to take your evening: streaks, levels, a number going up, something rare to open. Those mechanics work. We just aimed them at the thing that pays you back.
How the learning is built
- Recall, not rereading. Every game type makes you produce the answer before you see it. Recognising a highlighted line feels like knowing it; pulling it out of your head is knowing it.
- Spaced on purpose. Each question comes back around the time you'd start to lose it. Answer well and the gap grows; slip and it returns sooner.
- Mixed, not blocked. One run deals you multiple choice, blanks, flashcards and pairs, and the daily Review pulls from every subject at once. Switching is harder than drilling one thing — that difficulty is the point.
- What you missed comes first. Anything you got wrong or skipped is at the front of the next session, ahead of the questions you already have.
- An answer to “why”. Get one wrong, ask why that's the answer, and it explains on the spot — while the mistake is still fresh enough to fix.
How the coming back is built
- A streak you'd rather not break. The oldest mechanic in the app store, and it works. Ours banks freezes, so one bad day costs you a freeze instead of the month.
- A bar you can almost fill. XP on nearly everything, a level to reach, and today's row going green one tile at a time.
- Something rare to open. Companion packs, Common through Mythic. The pull is real — the difference is that coins come from showing up and can never be bought.
- People to keep up with. Follow friends and watch the leaderboard. The competition is who shows up more.
- A character worth checking on. Six stats, Bronze to Legend. It's the same reason you'd open a save file just to look at the numbers, except this save file is your month.
And the parts we left behind
No feed, no ads, nothing to scroll. There is no surface here designed to hold you past the fifteen minutes, and your attention is not being sold to anyone.
Nothing to buy your way past. No energy to refill, no gem packs. Coins are earned only, and the rarest companions can only be earned.
The number is allowed to go down. Ratings weigh your last 28 days, so a week off shows. Anything that keeps you here has to stay honest about how you are doing.
The break ends by itself. Name what the break is for before it starts, and if you watch something, the player closes itself the moment time is up — your place kept for next time.
The day has a ceiling. New questions arrive at a pace you set, reading and writing pay once a day however long you stay, and the Review ends when the due cards do. There is nothing here to farm.
With other people
Solo by default, social when you want it — none of it is a group obligation.
MugUp on Discord
The real app, embedded in your server: twelve questions a day everyone plays, timed and ranked, an end-of-day leaderboard, an all-time wins board, and 1v1 races.
Set it upLive 1v1 matches
Two players, the same questions in the same order, at their own pace. Not turn-based — a race, with a running head-to-head record.
A deck library you can clone
Browse public decks, play one to try it, and clone it to get your own editable copy with its own review schedule.
Browse decksStart with one topic
The free plan builds games every day, no card required.