What's New at I♥️ Cards

New batch action to auto-number all cards sequentially based on category and card order. Numbers follow your deck structure, with a warning if existing numbers will be overwritten.

Full control over how your Detailed Content field looks. Style headings and body text separately with custom fonts, colors, and weights. Create eye-catching lists with custom bullet shapes, colored markers, and distinctive numbering. Perfect for instructional cards, checklists, and rich formatted content.

Design cards that stand out with new decorative tools. Add flowing waves, sharp zigzags, or smooth curves to section borders. Layer subtle patterns over backgrounds for texture and depth. Small touches that make your designs feel more intentional and polished.

Everything you need to create stunning image-based card decks: coaching cards with photos, conversation starters, mood cards. New templates designed for photo decks, a Background Opacity control for readable text over any image, and proper Unsplash attribution so photographers get the credit they deserve.

Small things that make a big difference. Visual guides appear as you drag elements - everything snaps into perfect alignment. Preview your cards with real content to see how they'll actually look. Importing a spreadsheet? Categories now get colors automatically, and you can flip between front and back instantly.

I prioritized this feature because data portability is simply the right thing to do. Export any deck as a CSV file with all your cards, categories, and metadata. A dedicated Backups page in Settings gives you access to all your decks - even if your trial expires. Your work is yours, always.

No more back-and-forth with the sidebar. Select any element and a floating toolbar appears right there with all the tools you need. Change colors, fonts, sizes, borders - everything happens in context. Plus full keyboard shortcuts for the power users.

Categories can now have their own illustration, just like decks. Upload an image, generate one with AI, or pick from Unsplash. Use it in your card templates as a dynamic image field, or display it in category info views.

Test your card deck before printing or run interactive online sessions with clients. Export to Tabletop Simulator - a virtual 3D tabletop game platform - and experience your deck in a realistic environment. Shuffle, deal, flip cards, and interact with your designs before committing to print.

New experimental feature: enable Auto-Fit on any text element with fixed dimensions, and the font automatically shrinks to fit longer content. Perfect for cards with variable-length titles or descriptions - 'Focus' and 'Strategic Planning Workshop' both fit beautifully in the same box.

The template designer now offers better precision when positioning and sizing elements, plus a new Separator element for creating visual dividers between content areas. Also requested by Natalie!

Based on feedback from alpha tester Natalie, the table editor view now makes it much easier to work with your cards. Sort columns, show/hide fields, reorder columns, and copy everything to Excel with one click.

The home printing system now works beautifully with any card size, from tiny micro cards to large jumbo cards. It automatically figures out the best layout for your cards on A4 or Letter paper, and gives you full control over how they're arranged.

I've completely rebuilt the professional printing settings to work with any print shop's requirements. Whether you need standard poker size or a custom dimension your local printer uses, you now have full control over every detail of your print files.

I'm excited to add CNVS icons as our third free icon set. These hand-drawn style icons from Lucie Agolini bring a unique, colorful personality to your cards. They're perfect when you want something that feels more artistic and less corporate. Expect more official announcements about what CNVS and I Love Cards are building together.

New writing mode control for text elements enables vertical text layouts without rotating the element's bounding box, allowing text of various sizes to be reliably anchored to card edges.

All AI features now use GPT-5.1, delivering improved quality for card generation, deck creation, icon suggestions, and all other AI-powered features.

When generating images for all your cards at once, you can now choose the style and adjust how they look before hitting generate. Each card still gets its own unique image based on its content.

Two major updates to help you share and promote your decks: add beautiful illustrations to make your deck stand out visually, and new behind-the-scenes improvements that make your deck pages show up beautifully when you share them on social media, search engines, or anywhere else.

Categories can now be reordered using intuitive up/down buttons. Powered by the same LexoRank positioning system that made card reordering reliable, you can now organize your deck structure exactly how you want it. Requested by one of our alpha testers (thanks Tolu!).

Duplicate any deck instantly with the new duplicate button. Creates a copy with all content, categories, and cards while setting it to draft status and adding '(Copy)' to the title. Asked by one of our alpha testers (thanks for the feedback Tolu!).

Complete overhaul of the Template Designer interface and interaction model. The preview is now fully interactive with Figma-style controls, the toolbar has been redesigned for better workflow, settings are organized with tabs, and the entire interface is now mobile-responsive. This brings the Template Designer to the same quality level as the Deck Builder.

Alpha testers wanted to share experimental decks with each other without committing to a public release. The new Unlisted status solves this perfectly - your deck landing page is accessible via direct link but won't appear in the public directory. Plus, a completely redesigned publishing experience makes managing deck visibility simple and clear.

Two simple improvements that make working with cards much more comfortable. Adjust card preview size on the fly with a floating zoom slider, and enjoy a subtle dot grid background that helps cards stand out against any background color.

Organize your deck exactly how you want it with intuitive drag and drop card reordering powered by LexoRank. Combined with improved previews, adjustable layouts, and better visual feedback, the Deck Builder now feels polished, responsive, and genuinely ready for daily use. This milestone marks the transition to Beta1-level quality.

Template management is now faster and more intuitive than ever. Duplicate templates with smart naming, edit them instantly, and assign them to cards—all without leaving the deck builder.

Edit templates without leaving the deck builder! The new quick-edit toolbar and inline template editor modal let you make design changes instantly while staying in your creative flow.

The Deck Builder interface has been redesigned from the ground up to make editing more intuitive and less overwhelming. The new approach is simple: click on what you want to edit. Click a card to edit a card, click a category to edit a category.

Color and template pickers now use a simple switch so it's obvious whether a card follows the deck/category defaults or a custom choice.

New table view for the Deck Builder makes it easy to edit text across all cards in your deck. A highly requested feature from alpha testers.

You can have the best deck in the world - if you cannot promote it, nobody will see it. I Love Cards isn't just a deck builder, it's also about helping you promote and share your work. You don't have to finish your deck to start promoting it. Each time you add a new card, it's an opportunity to promote it. Social Banners create beautiful packaging for your cards with multiple background options, perfect for sharing on LinkedIn, Instagram, and other social networks.

Replaced autosave with reliable manual save system and added Facebook field to user profiles.

The Download Center has been refactored with a focus on user experience. The core features remain the same, but the interface is now more user-friendly with a bigger preview window, more prominent presets, and a smoother workflow for exporting your decks.

The Marketplace now has sharing links that creators give to people who buy or get access to decks, allowing them to download decks directly. If they create an account, they get access to advanced features like saving decks and using the playground.

The Playground now has a feature to browse through decks with next and previous card controls.

Complete redesign of the color picker interface in the template builder to make color selection simpler and more intuitive. The new modal-based design provides better organization and clearer explanations for all color options.

Multiple refinements to the color palette system based on Thalia's alpha testing feedback. Better visibility, improved workflows, and a new direct edit feature make working with color palettes much smoother. Also includes template builder improvements and various other bug fixes.

Two days of progress, both based on Rachel’s first onboarding feedback. First, a bug fix: background illustrations now display correctly, and you can control their alignment (top, center, bottom). Second, borders! You can now add borders not just to icons, but also to images, text, and shapes — everywhere. And finally, the sharing menu has been fixed to properly display the full description and help text.

The Template Builder just became incredibly powerful! Upload any image (bitmap or SVG) directly into your templates, add shape components for sophisticated layouts, and use redesigned controls that give you pixel-perfect precision. It's like having Canva, but specialized entirely for card creation.

I usually advise against making card-ocuments (i.e. cards with a lot of content), but I'm a realist - there are some use cases where yes, you need cards with a lot of details. So I've added markdown support with typography controls, plus improved responsive scaling so everything scales perfectly with card size.

The Template Builder has been completely transformed! What used to require Tailwind CSS knowledge is now fully visual. Design your card templates using intuitive mouse controls - adjust layouts, styles, spacing, and everything else without writing a single line of code.

No changes this week. I took a one-week break. See you next week for the latest changes before opening to the first alpha users.

AI suggests icons for individual cards or your entire deck at once. It can choose between thousands of Lucide icons or emojis, and watch your deck come to life.

Import just got smarter! Now handles all card fields and can merge into existing decks with intelligent category matching. Perfect for adding cards from multiple sources without the hassle of file preparation.

Sometimes you need to slow down and solidify. This last few days was all about fixing the small friction points, polishing rough edges, and ensuring existing features work reliably. No flashy new features - just the essential work that makes the platform feel solid and professional.

With the new Early Preview system, creators can now share unfinished decks publicly. This fundamentally changes how card decks are built and shared - no more waiting until everything is perfect to get feedback and user can start playing with the deck immediately!

Apart from the landing page links, no flashy features this week, just the essential groundwork for alpha testing. Built invitation management, fixed critical bugs, and polished the rough edges that make or break user experience. Sometimes the most important work is the least visible.

The printing workflow is now complete! Generate professional-quality PDFs for both home printing and print shops with a single click. No more complex settings, no more design tool frustrations - just click and print.

Major code refactoring of the Visual Template Builder and Export Center. While not flashy new features, this foundational work prepares the codebase for upcoming capabilities like PDF export and an even better template builder.

Icons are an easy way to add meaningful visual information to your cards, especially when you're not a designer. Now you have access to thousands of icons and emojis with a simple icon picker that makes finding the perfect icon super easy.

You can now build card templates visually instead of coding them. The first version of the Visual Template Builder lets you create templates with a simple interface. Take any existing template and remix it by changing the layout, content organization, and design.

Import content and create decks in I♥️Cards with ease. Copy your data from Excel or Google Sheets, paste it into our importer, preview, and import. AI automatically maps your columns to the right fields with 99% accuracy.

The color system has been completely revamped! Now you can style your entire deck in under 2 minutes with intelligent color schemes that automatically calculate perfect text contrast ratios. Just pick a color scheme and paint your deck - the system handles all the complex color calculations in the background.

The template system has been totally refactored! The AI template generator has been improved and it also paves the way to a drag and drop UI for your to create your own templates. Second big update, the images of your cards and decks are now optimized based on the use case: faster to load for the web, better quality for the export.

You can now share your deck to the world! Public decks are now visible from /explore. Each public deck has its own landing page with your bio.

You can now define a back template for your cards, for either the full deck, a category or just one card - just like you do for the front.

First iteration of the "playground", with already a lot of love. Pick a card randomly,reverse a card! You can even stream your screen thanks to the green screen background. Select a deck, and start playing by clicking on the play button in the top right corner.

The first version of the Magic Onboarding, create your first deck in 30 seconds.

A proof of concept that you can export your cards as PNG and SVG with great fidelity.

This is the initial pre-alpha release of the app.