AceHow to turn a PDF into flashcards: open Ace, tap New study set, upload your PDF (up to 100 MB), choose the chapter you need, and Ace generates four-option questions from it in about a minute. Each question is checked against the PDF, and you can study the set alone or in a duel with a friend.
Step by step
- Get the PDF onto your phone. Save it to Files, iCloud Drive, or open it from email, your course portal or Google Drive.
- Start a new study set in Ace and tap the upload area ("Drop a file or tap to browse").
- Pick the chapter. Ace reads the PDF's outline and headings and asks which part you're studying. Choose the chapters on your exam.
- Let Ace build the cards. It breaks the chapter into separate concepts, writes a question for each, and drops any question your PDF doesn't support.
- Study. Flip through solo, or tap Invite to play the set against a friend.
What kind of PDFs work best?
| PDF type | Works? | Tip |
|---|---|---|
| Lecture handouts & notes | Great | Add the matching textbook chapter for richer questions. |
| Textbooks (exported or publisher PDFs) | Great | Pick one or two chapters, not the whole book. |
| Slides saved as PDF | Good | Uploading the original .pptx keeps the slide structure. |
| Revision guides & summaries | Good | Dense summaries produce lots of questions per page. |
| Scanned pages / phone photos | Not yet | Ace needs selectable text. Run the file through a text-recognition (OCR) tool first. |
| Password-protected PDFs | No | Remove the password before uploading. |
Quick check: if you can select and copy a sentence from the PDF, Ace can read it.
Why not just make flashcards by hand?
Writing your own cards is genuinely useful — the act of summarising helps you learn. But it takes hours, and hand-made cards have two blind spots:
- You only test what you already noticed. The facts you skimmed past never make it onto a card.
- There are no wrong answers to choose between. A front/back card checks if you can recall something; it can't check whether you'd confuse it with the thing next to it on the exam.
Ace covers the whole chapter, and its wrong options come from real misconceptions and confusable concepts — the exact traps a good exam question sets.
Why not paste the PDF into a chatbot?
You can, and you'll get questions. But general chatbots don't check their questions against your source, often make the correct option obvious (it's the longest, or the only one that sounds right), and can quietly include facts that aren't in your material at all. Ace tests every question with and without the source and throws out any that don't hold up.
Beyond PDF
The same process works for PowerPoint (.pptx), Word (.docx), ePub, plain text and Markdown files — and for lectures on YouTube. See YouTube to flashcards.
Common questions
How big a PDF can I upload?
Up to 100 MB per file. For a long textbook, choose the one or two chapters you're studying — narrower scope gives better questions.
How many flashcards does Ace make from a PDF?
It depends on how much distinct material is in the chapters you choose. Ace writes questions per concept rather than per page, and drops any that fail its checks, so a dense chapter gives more cards than a short handout.
Can I make flashcards from a scanned PDF?
Not yet. Ace needs a PDF with selectable text. Use a text-recognition (OCR) tool to add a text layer first, then upload it.
Is my PDF kept private?
Your uploads are stored in your account and only used to build your study sets. Deleting your account from inside the app removes your files too. See our privacy policy.