Hi, I recently switched over to FSRS and I have been getting intervals that are in weird hour increments. I have recently had cards that I press “Again” on and my next interval is 7.5 hours or I pressed “Good” and the time was 10.2 hours. Is this normal or is there a way to fix this. Waiting all day to do some cards is not very helpful and incredibly distracting. I would really like my increments to be somewhere like 10 minutes to 30 minutes and then days. I don’t want any intervals in the hours time-table. Any help would be very appreciated.
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I’ll help you understand what’s happening with your FSRS intervals. Let me search for some related information first.
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Let me look for more specific information about FSRS and hour intervals:
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FSRS and Your Weird Hourly Intervals
What you’re experiencing with FSRS is actually normal behavior. The Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler (FSRS) uses more precise timing intervals than the traditional SM2 scheduler in Anki, which can result in those decimal-hour increments you’re seeing (like 7.5 or 10.2 hours).
Why This Happens
FSRS works differently from the traditional scheduler:
- It uses a more sophisticated algorithm to determine optimal review times
- It applies a small amount of “fuzz” to intervals to prevent cards from clumping together
- It’s designed to match your actual memory patterns more precisely
How to Adjust Your Learning Steps
If you prefer shorter intervals followed by day-based intervals (without the hourly increments), you should modify your learning steps:
- Go to Deck Options
- Find your Learning Steps setting
- Use shorter steps that stay under a day (e.g., “10m 30m”)
Important FSRS Considerations
When using FSRS, it’s recommended to:
- Keep learning steps under 1 day (no 1d+ steps)
- Use fewer learning steps overall (evidence suggests multiple same-day repetitions aren’t significantly more effective)
- Avoid longer learning steps, as FSRS calculates optimal intervals that may not align with manually set long learning steps
Additional Tip
If you’re finding the hourly intervals disruptive to your study flow, you might consider reviewing the card when it becomes due rather than waiting for the exact time. Anki will show learning cards again even if their delay hasn’t fully elapsed if there are no other cards to show.
Would you like more specific help with adjusting your learning steps to minimize these hourly intervals?
Hello,
I would be happy to help. 
It’s not necessarily abnormal for FSRS to give intervals that include hour increments, so there may not be much that needs to, or can, be ‘fixed’ there, at least in the broad sense. But, we can take a look just to make sure:
Is this behavior only happening with cards on which you hit ‘again’ or is it happening more globally than that? Can you share an image of a card that is displaying this behavior?
Ideally, if you can share an image of a card that is displaying this behavior, and share both the answer options and their intervals at the bottom as well as the review information for that card by including ‘card info’ as below, that should help give me a better sense of what, exactly, we’re looking at.
