Gizmo

What is Gizmo?

Gizmo is an AI-powered learning app that turns whatever you are studying into flashcards and gamified quizzes, then schedules them with spaced repetition and active recall so the material actually sticks. Instead of asking you to type out cards by hand, it takes the raw material you already have — a lecture PDF, a YouTube explainer, a photographed page of handwriting, a slide deck from class — and produces a deck you can start drilling within seconds. The product was originally called Save All, and that former name still surfaces in the app bundle identifier and in the company records behind the listing.

The service is operated by Save All Ltd, a UK company registered under company number 13489213 with a registered address at Longcroft House, 2-8 Victoria Avenue, London EC2M 4NS. The company was founded in 2021 by three University of Cambridge alumni: Petros Christodoulou as CEO, Paul Evangelou as CPO and Robin Jack as CTO. That academic origin shows in the product's posture — the official blog is written by co-founder Petros Christodoulou and argues the memory science directly, with two posts having reached the front page of Hacker News at number one and number three.

Positioned against the wider study-app market, Gizmo sits between two familiar categories. Traditional flashcard tools such as Anki give you a powerful scheduler but leave you to author every card yourself. General-purpose chatbots will happily summarise a PDF but have no memory model, no deck to return to and no reason for you to come back tomorrow. Gizmo's bet is that the generation step and the retention loop belong in the same app, wrapped in the engagement mechanics that consumer apps already perfected.

Core Features

• AI flashcard generation from existing material: The import pipeline accepts YouTube videos, PDFs, typed notes and PowerPoint decks, and a separate AI Tutor explains topics, works through homework problems and coaches you on how to answer exam questions. This is the feature that removes the single biggest barrier to using flashcards at all — the hours of manual transcription that most students never get around to.
• A dedicated AI Tutor module: Beyond generating cards, the tutor answers questions about any topic on demand, which matters when a card reveals that you do not merely mis-remember a fact but never understood the underlying concept. The App Store listing now leads with this capability in the app's own name.
• Spaced repetition and active recall scheduling: Cards are not shown in a fixed order. The system pushes material back at you as you approach the point of forgetting, and it makes you retrieve the answer rather than merely re-read it — the two techniques with the strongest evidence base in the memory literature.
• Gamified progression built on hearts, coins, XP and leagues: The help centre maps the product into distinct modules: AI Tutor, Memorise for self-testing, Gizmo Live for real-time quiz duels with friends, Practice Tests for exam rehearsal, My Decks for organising cards, and a Rewards and Progress layer built on hearts, coins, XP and leagues.
• Migration from other flashcard tools and topic-only generation: You can migrate existing material from Quizlet and Anki, or hand the AI nothing but a topic and let it build a deck from scratch, then share it through a private link or publish it to the public deck marketplace.
• Social and competitive study: Gizmo Live turns revision into a head-to-head quiz against friends, and leaderboards rank you against the people you actually study alongside rather than an anonymous global pool.
• Practice tests for exam rehearsal: A separate mode assembles longer test-style runs rather than short drills, which is the closer simulation of sitting an actual paper.

Use Cases

1. Revising for high-stakes school exams: Students preparing for GCSEs, A-levels or AP papers typically face a large, fixed syllabus and a hard deadline. The workflow is to import each topic's notes or textbook chapter as it is taught, let the deck accumulate through the term, and rely on the scheduler to resurface older topics automatically rather than trying to re-read everything in the final fortnight. The measurable benefit is that revision becomes continuous and distributed instead of compressed into a panic week.
2. University coursework with heavy reading loads: Degree-level study buries the examinable facts inside long PDFs and recorded lectures. Importing a reading directly and letting the AI extract the testable propositions converts passive reading time into retrievable knowledge, and the deck becomes a durable artefact you can revisit before finals rather than a set of notes you never open again.
3. Language and vocabulary acquisition: Vocabulary is the canonical spaced-repetition use case because the unit of knowledge is small, numerous and purely about retention. Photographing a vocabulary page and generating dozens of cards at once removes the transcription tax that makes most learners abandon vocabulary decks in the first week.
4. Professional certification and upskilling: Working adults revising for professional qualifications have the opposite constraint to students — very little contiguous study time. Short gamified drills fit into commutes and breaks, and the streak mechanic supplies the external accountability that a self-directed adult learner otherwise has to manufacture.
5. Group revision and shared decks: Because decks can be shared through a private link or published publicly, a study group can divide a syllabus, each build the cards for their section, and pool the result. Teachers can use the same mechanism to hand a prepared deck to a class.
6. Turning video content into study material: Much of the explanatory content students actually use lives on YouTube, which is excellent for understanding and useless for retention. Converting a video into a deck bridges that gap, letting you keep the clarity of the explainer while adding a mechanism that forces recall.

How to use Gizmo

1. Create an account on the web at gizmo.ai or install the mobile app, then complete the onboarding questions about your education level and exam type — this information is used to shape what the app surfaces to you.
2. Create your first deck by importing source material. Point the importer at a PDF, a YouTube URL, a set of typed notes or a PowerPoint file, or photograph handwritten pages to have them scanned. Alternatively, give the AI only a topic name and let it generate a starter deck.
3. Review the generated cards before you start drilling. This step is worth the two minutes it costs: generated cards occasionally include material you did not intend to study or omit a point you did, and correcting them at the outset prevents you from memorising the wrong thing.
4. Start a Memorise session. Answer the multiple-choice and written questions as they come, and let the scheduler decide what returns and when rather than manually choosing which cards to review.
5. Use the AI Tutor whenever a card exposes a genuine gap in understanding rather than a lapse in memory, and switch to Practice Tests as your exam approaches for a longer, test-shaped run.
6. Track progress through the streak, XP and league displays, and use Gizmo Live against a friend when solo drilling starts to feel stale.

Tips & Best Practices

• Import in topic-sized chunks rather than whole textbooks. A deck that maps to one lecture or one syllabus point is easier to schedule, easier to audit for errors and far easier to diagnose when your recall on a subject is weak.
• Always audit the first generation of any new source type. The failure mode reported by users is not gibberish but plausible drift: extra material the AI decided was relevant, or a point that quietly went missing. A quick pass catches both.
• Do not fight the scheduler. The temptation is to re-drill the cards you already know because it feels productive. The value of spaced repetition comes precisely from spending your time on the cards you are about to forget, which is not the same set.
• Treat the tutor and the cards as different tools. Cards test retrieval; the tutor builds understanding. If you keep failing a card, the answer is usually a tutor conversation about the concept, not more repetitions of the same card.
• Use the streak as a floor, not a target. Answering the minimum number of questions to preserve a streak is a good habit-formation device and a poor revision plan on its own. Set a session length that matches your actual syllabus load.
• Build decks during term, not before exams. The scheduling advantage only materialises if the cards exist early enough to be spaced. A deck created three days before a paper is just a quiz.
• Combine with a note-taking system you already trust. Gizmo is a retention layer, not a knowledge base. Keeping your primary notes elsewhere and importing from them preserves a source of truth you can correct.

Who is Gizmo for?

• Secondary school students facing national exams: The product's centre of gravity, with the homepage testimonials and the company's own user descriptions dominated by GCSE and A-level revision.
• University students: In April 2026 the company announced a 22 million dollar Series A led by Shine Capital with Ada Ventures, Seek Investments, GSV and earlier seed lead NFX participating, alongside a self-reported base of more than 13 million learners across over 120 countries, with the stated intent to expand further into the US college market.
• Professionals upskilling for certifications: Learners fitting revision around a job, for whom short drill sessions and habit mechanics matter more than deep customisation.
• Language learners: Anyone whose bottleneck is vocabulary retention rather than grammar comprehension.
• Study groups and classmates: Groups who want to split the authoring effort and share decks rather than each rebuilding the same material.
• Teachers preparing material for a class: Educators who want to hand students a ready-made deck via a shareable link.
• Anki and Quizlet users frustrated by manual card creation: Existing spaced-repetition believers whose actual obstacle is the authoring time rather than the method.

Platforms

• Web: The full product is available through the browser at gizmo.ai, which is also where account creation and subscription management live.
• iOS: On the App Store the iOS build is published by SAVE ALL LTD, carries a 4+ age rating, requires at least iOS 16.4, and holds a 4.76 average from 13,216 ratings, with the first release dating back to February 2022.
• Android: The Android listing shows a 4.8 average across roughly 121,000 reviews and more than one million downloads, and its Data Safety section states that no data is shared with third parties, that data is encrypted in transit and that deletion can be requested, while still declaring collection of location, personal info and seven further data types. The listing also confirms support for phones, Chromebooks and tablets.
• No offline mode: A two-week hands-on review by Techpoint Africa flagged two concrete gaps: the experience is primarily text-based, without audio narration or broad multilingual support, and there is no offline mode, so an internet connection is mandatory.

Pricing & Plans

Gizmo is free to download and free to start using, and both app stores list it as a free app with in-app purchases rather than a paid download. The free tier is functional but deliberately rationed. The retention loop borrows openly from Duolingo: daily streaks that require a minimum number of answered questions, friend leaderboards, and a pool of fifteen hearts per day that drains one heart for every wrong answer. Once the hearts run out you either wait roughly ten minutes for them to regenerate or subscribe for unlimited hearts, and the free tier caps AI quiz generation at ten per day while paid plans lift that limit.

The paid tier is a subscription that removes those caps. Gizmo does not publish a standalone pricing page on its website, so the exact tiers, regional prices and any student discounts should be confirmed at the point of purchase inside the app or during checkout rather than taken from third-party summaries, which vary widely and are frequently out of date. Treat any specific figure you find outside the official purchase flow as unverified. (To be verified.)

Alternatives

• Anki: The reference implementation of spaced repetition, free and enormously configurable, with a large ecosystem of shared decks. It demands that you author or source cards yourself and has a famously steep interface, making it the right choice for learners who value control over convenience.
• Quizlet: The largest incumbent in student flashcards, with a vast library of existing sets and broad school adoption. Google Play surfaces Quizlet, Turbo AI Notetaker and Knowunity as the nearest neighbours in the same study-app shelf.
• Knowunity: A study platform built around a community sharing notes and homework help, weighted more toward peer-contributed material than toward an individual retention engine.
• Turbo AI: Positioned primarily as an AI note-taker that converts lectures and documents into structured notes, overlapping with Gizmo on ingestion but not on the gamified drilling loop.
• General-purpose AI assistants: Any mainstream chatbot can summarise a document or generate practice questions on request. What they do not provide is a persistent deck, a forgetting-curve scheduler or any mechanism that brings you back tomorrow.

Limitations & Considerations

• Generated cards need checking: Another Play Store reviewer reports that scanning notes or study guides can make the AI add extra information or quietly drop points the student actually wanted to revise. For high-stakes revision, an unreviewed deck risks embedding an error through repetition, which is the one thing spaced repetition does extremely efficiently.
• The free tier is tightly rationed and imports are throttled: The single most-upvoted critical review on Google Play, marked helpful by 750 people, complains that imports are both slow and rationed behind the paywall to roughly three per day for free users. Users cramming close to a deadline are the most likely to hit these walls at the worst moment.
• Subscription cancellation has drawn repeated complaints: Gizmo's Trustpilot profile is unclaimed and holds only six reviews at a 3.1 average, far too small a sample for a quality verdict, but two one-star entries independently describe being unable to find any way to cancel a premium subscription from either the web or the app. If you subscribe through an app store, cancelling via the platform's own subscription settings is the more reliable route. Note that this contrasts with the Play Store, where the developer does publicly reply to critical reviews.
• Text-first, connectivity-dependent design: There is no offline study mode and no audio narration, and multilingual support is limited, so learners studying on unreliable connections or those who rely on listening rather than reading are poorly served.
• Age restrictions and data handling: The privacy notice bars anyone under 13, or under the local age of consent, from accessing or using the service at all. Everything you upload counts as Educational Data under the privacy notice, covering text inputs, messages, study materials, photos and videos, and it is used both to generate your quizzes and to analyse how you use the service. Avoid uploading material containing third-party personal data or anything covered by an institutional confidentiality rule.
• Engagement mechanics cut both ways: Hearts, streaks and leagues are effective at building a daily habit, but the same mechanics can push you toward whatever preserves the streak rather than whatever your syllabus most needs, and losing a long streak can be demotivating in a way unrelated to your actual progress.

FAQ

Q1. Is Gizmo free to use?

Yes, the app is free to download and use with a rationed free tier: a daily allowance of hearts that depletes on wrong answers and a cap on how many AI quizzes you can generate each day. A paid subscription removes those caps.

Q2. What file types and sources can it turn into flashcards?

It imports YouTube videos, PDFs, typed notes and PowerPoint decks, and can scan photographed handwritten pages. You can also migrate decks from Quizlet and Anki, or ask the AI to build a deck from a topic name alone.

Q3. Is Gizmo the same thing as Save All?

Yes. Gizmo was formerly called Save All, and the company behind it is still registered as Save All Ltd in the UK. The old name persists in the Android package identifier and in the app store developer records.

Q4. Does it work offline?

No. An internet connection is required, which independent hands-on reviews have flagged as a real constraint for studying while commuting or in areas with poor connectivity.

Q5. How accurate are the AI-generated cards?

Good enough to save substantial time, but not reliable enough to skip review. Users report that generated cards sometimes add information beyond the source or omit points the student wanted included, so auditing a new deck before drilling it is strongly advised.

Q6. What happens to the notes and documents I upload?

The privacy notice classifies them as Educational Data and states they are used to provide the service — generating your quizzes and study content — and to analyse how you use the platform. The Android Data Safety declaration states that no data is shared with third parties and that deletion can be requested.

Q7. Is there a minimum age requirement?

Yes. The privacy notice prohibits users under 13, or under the applicable age of consent in your country, from accessing or using the service. The iOS listing carries a 4+ content rating, but the contractual age floor is the one that governs.

Q8. How do I cancel a subscription?

Cancellation is managed through your account or the app store you subscribed through. Multiple public reviews report difficulty finding an in-app cancellation route, so if you subscribed via the App Store or Google Play, cancelling through that platform's own subscription settings is the more dependable path.

Q9. Which platforms is Gizmo available on?

Web, iOS and Android. The Android listing additionally confirms support for tablets and Chromebooks, and the iOS build requires iOS 16.4 or later.