Folders and study time

With five subjects and fifteen lectures each, a list sorted by date stops being any use for finding lecture 4 of Software Architecture. The sidebar on the left has your folders, to keep things in order; and at the bottom, Your time tells you how much you studied.

Folders

Each folder is a subject, almost always. They live in the sidebar on the left, expand right there with their arrow and show their lectures and loose notes. You create them with the plus, they come in ten colours so you can tell them apart, and a right-click renames them or changes their colour.

A document goes in one folder only. You put it there by dragging it in, with Add to a folder from its page, or when you upload it, from the file's card. A lecture that comes in without a number at the front takes the next one in that folder ("4. Patterns"), so they stay in order without renaming them. Anything not in a folder yet shows up under No folder.

Opened recently, on the home screen, lists the last five you opened, whatever folder they are in, loose notes included. Deleting a folder does not delete its lectures, which are left without a folder, and for a few seconds you can undo it.

The study plan

Tapping a folder's name opens its screen: the study plan for that subject. You tell it when your exam is, what kind it is (written, oral, multiple choice or exercises), which lectures it covers, how you stand with each one and how much time you have per day, and Filmina lays out each day's steps based on what you have already studied: listening to a lecture, reading its summary, recalling its concepts, going back to what you got wrong, practising, explaining it out loud.

If what is left does not fit in the minutes you chose, it tells you, with numbers. Add to calendar puts the exam day in your calendar as an all-day event. And when the date comes, it asks whether you have taken it.

Search

Above Folders there is Search, which you can also open with ⌘K (Ctrl+K on Windows) from anywhere in the app. It is a bar in the middle of the screen, and it searches as you type through everything there is: the names of your documents and folders, what each slide says and what Mina explained about it, your notes, the chats and the summaries. Before you type anything it shows the last ones you opened.

Results come out grouped, always in the same order: Documents, Folders, In your presentations, Notes, Chats and Summaries. Each one says which document it belongs to, with the match highlighted, and opens exactly that: the slide, the note, the chat or the summary topic, not just the document. Accents and capitals do not matter, and "archi" already finds "architecture".

Deleting documents

The trash next to the plus, in Folders, opens Delete documents: you pick one or several, grouped by folder, and delete them. They go whole, with everything that was generated, their notes and their practice sessions, and you have a few seconds to undo it from the notice. Each document shows how many notes it has, and if you pick one with notes you can keep them: they stay as loose notes in the same folder.

Your study time

At the bottom of the sidebar, Your time shows the week as seven little bars and your total so far. Tapping it opens Your study time, full screen.

At the top is the week, Monday to Sunday, with one plant per day that grows with the time you studied: a sprout, a leafy plant from one hour and, from two hours up, a flower. A day with no study stays as bare soil.

Below it, your streak: how many days in a row you have studied, with a little fire that grows, and your best ever. A day counts from ten minutes of study. The streak is forgiving: every full week studied stores a log of firewood, up to two, and on a day you do not study one burns and the fire keeps going. If it goes out, there is no penalty: your best stays, and the next day it lights up again.

Then come a calendar of the last six months, with one square per day, stronger the more you studied; how much you studied this week, the daily average, how many days and the total; the last twelve weeks, one bar per week; what you studied, document by document; and your badges, like your first finished lecture, a week in a row or your first exam taken. Hovering over a day in the calendar shows how long you studied and what.

It only counts real study time: the time you spend inside a document, listening, practising, reviewing, in a note or in the lecture's chat, with the window in front and touched recently, or with the explanation or the summary playing. Transcribing a class counts too, as long as someone can be heard speaking. Having the home screen open does not count.

Notifications

If you turn on notifications in Settings, Filmina lets you know the night before an exam, on the days when questions come back for review and when today's streak is a few minutes short of counting. On iPhone and iPad they arrive once Filmina has been added to your home screen.