The Core Loop: Reviewing Items in the Queue

This is where you'll spend most of your time with the plugin. During a study session, Incremental Everything presents your Incremental Rems one by one (intermingled with your flashcards). To interact with them, you'll use the Answer Buttons bar at the bottom of the screen.

Each button is designed for a specific action to manage your learning flow efficiently.

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The Answer Buttons

Here is a breakdown of each button and its function, from left to right.

• Next: This is your primary action. Clicking "Next" marks the item as reviewed, calculates the next time you should see it based on the scheduling algorithm, and advances to the next card in your queue. The subtitle (e.g., "in 3 days") shows you the new interval that was just calculated.

• Reschedule: This button opens a popup that gives you manual control over the item's schedule and priority. You can set a custom interval in days and adjust the priority value at the same time.

• Done: When you have finished processing an item and no longer wish to see it in your queue, click "Done." This permanently finishes the item by removing its Incremental power-up.

• Change Priority: This opens the advanced priority popup. The label on the button itself provides rich, at-a-glance information:

  • The Number: The Rem's absolute priority value (0-100, lower is more important).
  • The Percentiles: The Rem's rank within your entire Knowledge Base (% of KB) and within the current document (% of Doc).
  • The Color: The background color shifts from red (high priority) to blue (low priority) for an instant visual cue of its importance.

• Review & Open: This is a powerful workflow tool. It performs two actions at once:

  1. It first reviews the item, just like the "Next" button.
  2. It then immediately opens the Rem in the main RemNote editor, exiting the queue. This is perfect for when an item inspires you to do more detailed work, like extensive note-taking or using other features like the AI assistant.

• Scroll to Highlight: This button appears only for PDF or web highlights. If you've scrolled away from a highlight while reading the document, clicking this will instantly snap your view back to the highlight's position.

• Press 'P' to Edit: This is a non-clickable hint that appears only for certain card types (like regular Rem or PDFs). It reminds you that you can press the "P" key to open the Rem in the pop-up "previewer" for quick edits. This is the recommended way to edit, as typing directly in the queue can sometimes cause keyboard shortcut conflicts.

• Open Editor in New Tab: Clicking this button instantly opens the full source document in a new browser tab, right at the location of your highlight/PDF document/Rem. Use it to take notes of what you are reading in a PDF section, to paste highlighted extracts right there (tagging it "incremental" in the editor note rather than in the PDF highlight itself, for easier manipulation and future flashcard creation), to have access to all of RemNote's formatting tools, and to link to other ideas.

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A Strategic Guide to the Answer Buttons

Understanding the specific function of each button is key to a fluid and efficient incremental learning workflow. This guide covers the primary use cases for each option on the answer bar.

Next

This is your most-used button. You click it after you have engaged with an item and are ready to schedule its next review.

The Scheduling Algorithm

The "Next" button uses a simple but effective exponential scheduling algorithm. The interval for the next repetition is calculated with the formula: newInterval = multiplier ** numberOfReviews

In simple terms: each time you review an item, the plugin looks at how many times you've seen it before and raises a multiplier (a value you can set in the plugin settings, defaulting to 1.5) to that power. This causes the review intervals to grow exponentially (e.g., 2 days, 3 days, 5 days, 7 days, 11 days, and so on), ensuring you see familiar material less frequently over time.

The "One Memory, One Action" Principle

The single most important rule in incremental learning is to always take meaningful action on an item before clicking "Next". Simply viewing an item and immediately dismissing it is a "futile review" that wastes time.

The "One memory, one action" principle, first enunciated by Piotr Wozniak, author of SuperMemo, demands that every review should leave a trace in your memory. Before clicking "Next," you should always perform at least one small, productive step, such as:

• Rephrasing a difficult sentence to make it clearer.
• Creating a highlight on a key passage.
• Extracting a "golden nugget" of information into its own Rem (that is, tagging a new incremental rem).
• Importing to your knowledge base an article or page that will bring foundational knowledge that you will need to fully grasp the current incremental rem (and tagging this new article "Incremental", using Alt+X or Alt+Shift+X, to bring it into your learning flow).
• Creating a cloze deletion or standard flashcard from a sentence.

Conversely, avoid "item perfectionism"—doing too much work on a single item in one session. It is highly inefficient to spend a long time formatting, adding images, and perfecting a single piece of information. Spread these actions over time. The goal is one meaningful interaction per review.

Reschedule

This button is your tool for strategic postponement.

When to use it: Use "Reschedule" when you encounter a complex topic that you're not mentally prepared for yet. For example, you might be reviewing an advanced physics paper but realize you need to brush up on a foundational concept first.

Instead of struggling or just clicking "Next" (a futile review), you can use "Reschedule" to punt the advanced topic a month into the future. This gives you time to encounter and process first the more basic foundational material you have already imported to your knowledge base, so you'll be ready when the complex topic reappears.

A caveat: Using "Reschedule" is a one-time override. The custom interval you set applies only to the next review. After that, the "Next" button will resume its normal scheduling based on your total number of reviews, not the custom interval you previously set. If an interval feels off again in the future, simply use "Reschedule" again.

Done

This button signifies the end of a passive item's life cycle in your incremental reading queue.

When to use it: The primary goal of incremental reading is to process source materials (like articles, book chapters or paragraphs) and extract the most valuable, "golden nugget" pieces of information. You do this by turning them into active recall prompts (flashcards and clozes).

Once you have reviewed the entire source and are confident you've extracted all the key knowledge into flashcards, the original passive material has served its purpose. Click "Done" to remove the source text from your queue, leaving only the efficient, active-recall cards you created from it.

Change Priority

Prioritization is essential for managing a large volume of learning material.

When to use it: As your collection grows, you'll naturally have items of varying importance. Use the "Change Priority" button to open the priority popup and adjust an item's importance on the fly, directly from the queue. This ensures you see your most critical material more often than less important topics.

For a deep dive into how the priority system works, please see the Prioritization & Sorting page.

Review & Open

This button provides a seamless bridge between the focused queue environment and the full-power RemNote editor.

It performs two actions at once: it first registers your review (rescheduling the item for the future, just like the "Next" button) and then instantly navigates you to the editor for that Rem, exiting the queue.

When to use it

Use "Review & Open" whenever the queue interface feels too limited for the task at hand. This workflow is ideal for situations where you need to:

• See the broader context of a Rem within your outliner.
• Perform heavy editing or restructuring.
• Use other features not fully available in the queue, like "Ask AI" or AI Create Flashcards.

Why use this instead of the native "Go to Rem" (Shortcut: G)?

If you use RemNote's native "Go to Rem" command while in the queue, you will be taken to the editor, but your review of the card will not be logged. This means the same card will likely reappear later in your session, which is inefficient.

The "Review & Open" button solves this problem. By clicking it, you ensure the repetition is registered before you leave the queue, so the card is properly scheduled and won't reappear until it's due again.

After finishing your work in the editor, you will need to manually restart your queue session to continue.

Open Editor in New Tab

This button is a direct response to a recent RemNote UI change and serves as an essential workaround to restore a seamless PDF review workflow.

The Problem It Solves

RemNote recently removed the ability to open an editor pane on the left side of the screen when reviewing a PDF highlight in the queue (PDFWebViewer). This made it impossible to take notes and paste extracts without exiting the queue entirely, breaking the review flow (not always the Previewer - pressing "P" - is sufficient to this flow, nor does it allow having the PDF and editor side by side).

How It Works & When to Use It

This new button instantly opens the full source document in a new browser tab, right at the location of your highlight/PDF document/Rem.

• Use Case: In-Depth Note-Taking During Review A highlight sparks a complex new idea that requires more space than a simple comment. Or you want to take notes of what you are reading in a PDF section, and paste highlighted extracts right there (tagging it "incremental" in the editor note rather than in the PDF highlight itself, for easier manipulation and future flashcard creation). Use the button to open the full editor, where you have access to all of RemNote's formatting tools, can link to other ideas, and can write extensive notes alongside the original PDF. This allows you to capture detailed thoughts without being constrained by the queue's limited interface.

⚙️ Related Setting: Preferred RemNote Environment

For users who primarily work on the beta version of RemNote, a new "Preferred RemNote Environment" setting has been added. This dropdown menu in the plugin settings allows you to choose whether the "Open Editor in New Tab" button directs you to the stable (www.remnote.com) or beta (beta.remnote.com) environment. This ensures a seamless workflow by keeping you in your preferred version of RemNote.