# Your first reading session

> A ten-minute walkthrough from a blank app to your first review.

Source: https://cognipage.io/docs/first-session

This is the shortest path from a freshly installed app to a flashcard you can review. It takes about ten minutes, most of which is spent reading something you wanted to read anyway.

## Before you start

- CogniPage is installed and open — see
  [Installing CogniPage](https://cognipage.io/docs/install)
  .
- Accessibility (and ideally Screen Recording) is granted — see
  [Granting permissions](https://cognipage.io/docs/permissions)
  .
- Pick something worth remembering: an article, a chapter, a paper. Ten minutes of real reading is plenty.

## The walkthrough

1. **Sign in, if you want AI**
   Open **Account** and create an account or sign in. Capture and review work without one, but generating flashcards, assessments and reflections needs [AI credits](https://cognipage.io/docs/account), and credits need an account. You can do this later.
2. **Open what you are going to read**
   Anything: a browser tab, a PDF in Preview or Acrobat, a Word document. Leave CogniPage running in the background — closing its window only tucks it into the tray.
3. **Say yes when CogniPage asks**
   A small card appears over the page asking whether to track it, naming exactly what it will cover. Choose **Allow**. If you turned the card off, the same request is waiting in the tray menu and under *Settings → Tracking*.
4. **Read normally**
   Do not do anything differently. CogniPage keeps the paragraphs you linger on and ignores the ones you scroll past, menus, sidebars and comments. Nothing pops up while you read unless you have asked it to.
5. **Look at your material**
   Back in CogniPage, open **Materials**. What you just read is there, with the passages that were captured. This is the raw material everything else is built from.
6. **Say yes to the "Finished Session?" prompt**
   When you close the tab or switch away, CogniPage asks whether you want to check that you remember what you just read. Choose **Yes, create flashcards** and it writes them from your own passages — five per session by default, adjustable in [Settings](https://cognipage.io/docs/settings).
   Missed the prompt? Nothing is lost: the reading joins the **Waiting for you** list on Home, and *Recall this* there does exactly the same thing.
7. **Review them**
   Press **Start review session**. Read the prompt, answer it in your head, press `Space` to flip, then rate how it went with **Again**, **Hard**, **Good** or **Easy**. That rating is what sets when the card comes back.
8. **Come back tomorrow**
   That is the whole habit. Cards become due, the badge on *Flashcards* tells you how many, and a [reminder](https://cognipage.io/docs/notifications) nudges you if you would like one.

## Once that is working

**Test yourself properly**

Build a mixed-format quiz from the same material — see [Assessments](https://cognipage.io/docs/assessments).

**Save a passage on purpose**

Select any text anywhere and press `⌘` `⇧` `H` — see [Highlights](https://cognipage.io/docs/highlights).

**Learn from video**

Play a lecture in a tracked window and CogniPage captures what is said — see [Watch along](https://cognipage.io/docs/watch-along).

**See it add up**

After a week, [Analytics](https://cognipage.io/docs/analytics) and [Reflection](https://cognipage.io/docs/reflection) start to have something to say.

> **Nothing captured after ten minutes?**
>
> Almost always one of three things: the source was never approved, the app is in *Track nothing* mode, or the window publishes no readable text. Each is covered in [Troubleshooting](https://cognipage.io/docs/troubleshooting).