Anki handles Swedish reasonably well compared to more phonologically complex languages, because the Roman alphabet means no new script to learn. The main friction is the en/ett gender system. Most Anki decks either omit gender entirely or tag it in a way that does not stick through repeated reviews.
The standard approach of putting a Swedish word on the front and an English translation on the back does nothing to burn in the gender. Learners who rely on this format end up knowing what words mean but defaulting to en for everything when they speak, which is accurate about 75 percent of the time but wrong often enough to matter.
The most effective Anki strategy for Swedish gender is to include the definite article form as the primary answer field, not the English translation. Instead of a card that shows "hund" and asks for "dog," show "hund" and ask for "hunden" (the dog). To produce the correct definite form, you have to know the gender. Over thousands of reviews, the gender becomes encoded in the word memory rather than sitting in a separate mental bucket that you have to consult separately. Alternatively, use color-coding in your card templates: en-words in one color, ett-words in another. Anki supports CSS styling in card templates, so this is achievable without add-ons. The visual cue adds another encoding layer.
Anki's audio field support makes it technically possible to build pitch accent drilling cards. The practical challenge is finding high-quality recordings of Swedish minimal pairs where the same word form has two different meanings depending on pitch. Words like "anden" (the duck, accent 1) versus "anden" (the spirit, accent 2) are the classic examples. If you can source recordings of these pairs from native speakers, building a small deck of fifty to one hundred minimal pairs gives you focused ear training. The larger vocabulary decks rarely include this, so it is a gap you have to fill yourself. ForvoAPI or Common Voice recordings are reasonable sources if you filter for Swedish native speakers.
Anki is a solid choice for Swedish if you engineer your cards to force gender recall at review time and supplement with focused audio cards for pitch accent. Generic Swedish Anki decks without gender-encoding strategies will leave you with passive vocabulary that does not transfer to production. Gridually's spatial encoding is based on memory research from the University of Chicago, University of Bonn, and Macquarie University.
Swedish has two grammatical genders, common (en) and neuter (ett), and there is no reliable rule for most words. You have to learn the gender together with the word. Grouping words by gender in your flashcard practice is the most effective approach.
Swedish uses two distinct pitch patterns, called accent 1 and accent 2, that can change a word's meaning. Native speakers notice the difference. Learners who ignore it are generally understood but sound noticeably foreign. Audio-based flashcard practice is the best way to develop an ear for it.
Roughly 2,000 to 3,000 word families covers the B1 range. Swedish has many compound words built from familiar roots, so expanding vocabulary from a solid base of 1,000 high-frequency words goes faster than in many other languages.