If you read Arabic on a Kindle, you are already building a vocabulary list without realizing it. Every time you press and hold a word to see its meaning, the Kindle quietly records it in a file called vocab.db. Those are the words you found hard enough to stop for — the perfect raw material for flashcards.

AbjadPro now reads that file directly. Upload it once and every Arabic lookup becomes a spaced-repetition card, complete with a plain-language gloss, full vocalization, and pronunciation audio. Here is how it works.

1. Turn on Vocabulary Builder

On your Kindle, open Settings → Reading Options → Vocabulary Builder and make sure it is switched On. On older Kindles the setting lives under Settings → Device Options. Once it is on, every word you look up while reading is added automatically — there is nothing else to manage.

2. Read, and look words up as you go

Just read normally. Press and hold any Arabic word to see its definition, and the Kindle files it away for you. Over a few books this list grows into a personal record of the vocabulary that matters to what you actually read.

3. Copy vocab.db off your Kindle

Amazon does not sync this file anywhere, so you need to copy it off the device once. The quickest route is straight from your phone: plug the Kindle in with a USB cable, unlock it and tap Allow, then open your phone's Files app and browse to system → vocabulary. Copy vocab.db somewhere handy like your Downloads folder.

Prefer a computer? Older Kindles mount as a plain USB drive — open system/vocabulary/vocab.db and copy it to your desktop. Newer Kindles connect over MTP; our step-by-step import guide walks through Windows, Mac, and OpenMTP in detail.

4. Upload it to AbjadPro

Go to Flashcards → Kindle Vocabulary and open the upload page. You can drag your entire Kindle onto the drop area — or its vocabulary folder, or just vocab.db — and AbjadPro will find the right file for you. On a phone, use “Choose vocab.db” and pick the file you copied earlier.

5. Review what came in, then confirm

AbjadPro pulls out the Arabic words you looked up and skips everything else — words from books in other languages never clutter your deck. For each word it generates a short explanation in your chosen language (English by default; you can switch to Spanish, French, German, and several others in settings). You get a checklist of every new word so you can drop any you do not want before adding the rest to your deck.

Re-uploading later is always safe. AbjadPro skips words that are already in your deck and only shows you what is new, so you can drop in a fresh vocab.db after every book.

How the flashcards are scheduled

Each card climbs a fixed ladder of intervals — ten minutes, an hour, eight hours, a day, and on out to several weeks. Answer correctly and the card moves up a rung; miss it and the card slips back one rung and returns in ten minutes. Clear the final interval and the card retires from your deck. In practice a new word is shown to you at least six times in its first two weeks, which is enough for most words to stick.

Start with the book you just finished

You do not need a big backlog to make this worthwhile. Copy vocab.db off your Kindle today, upload it, and turn the last book you read into a review deck built entirely from words you have already met in context.

Go to Kindle Flashcards →