Year in Review Card
Year in review card: how to sum up your year in a few lines
The Year in Review Card turns a handful of short answers into one picture that sums up your year: a single word, the moment you would replay, the song you could not stop playing and the goal you are carrying into the next year. This guide explains how the tool works, how to pick a word that really fits, which questions help when you are stuck, where the habit of looking back at the end of the year comes from, and how to share your card with the people who were part of it.
How to make your card
Start with the theme. There are six: a purple aurora, a warm sunset, a fresh mint, a calm midnight blue, a paper notebook and a bright neon one. The preview redraws every time you tap, so try a few before you decide. Then add your name if you want it on the card, and your word of the year, which is the only line you must fill in.
Below that come six optional lines: your best moment, your song, your food, your place, someone you want to thank and a goal for next year. Empty lines simply disappear from the card, so a card with three answers looks just as finished as one with six. The year on the card is worked out from your device’s date, and in January it still shows the year that just ended.
- Pick one of the six themes.
- Write your word of the year, or tap one of the suggestions.
- Fill in only the lines you feel like answering.
- Check the preview, then tap Finish my card.
- Save the image, copy the text or share the link.
Choosing your word of the year
A good word of the year is honest rather than impressive. If the year was mostly about getting through, “Survive” or “Patience” can be more meaningful than “Success”. If something changed for you, a word like “Move”, “Begin” or “Grow” captures it. Try saying a few candidates out loud and keep the one that makes you nod.
The suggestion chips are there to get you started, not to decide for you. Tap one, look at it on the card, and change it if it feels borrowed. A word can also be a short phrase or a single emoji if that says it better; the card makes it big either way.
Prompts for every line
For the best moment, think small and specific: a dinner, a walk, a message that made you smile. Specific moments are more fun to read than big summaries. For the song, pick the one you played on repeat, even if it is a little embarrassing. For food and place, choose the ones you went back to again and again, like a café on the way to work or a dish you finally learned to cook.
The thank-you line is a quiet gift. Naming a parent, a friend or a whole team on a card they might see means more than you would expect. For the goal, keep it concrete and kind to yourself. “Run a 10K” or “Call grandma every Sunday” is easier to remember next December than “Be better”.
Where the year-end review comes from
Looking back before the calendar turns is an old habit. Newspapers have long ended the year with review pages, and many families write year-end letters or keep a diary page for the last night of the year. Dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster and Oxford now pick a word of the year, and in Japan a single kanji chosen by public vote is written with a huge brush at Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto every December.
More recently, music and photo apps started sending people personal summaries of their year, and sharing them became a small December ritual. A year in review card brings the same idea to everything else: not what an algorithm counted, but what you remember.
Sharing your card and keeping it private
Save image creates a 1080 by 1350 picture that fits stories and chats. On a phone it opens the share sheet, and on a computer it downloads. Copy text gives you the same answers as plain text with a link, and the share buttons send a link that opens your card for the person who taps it, in their own language, with a button to make their own.
What you type is never sent to our server. It stays in your browser while you edit and inside the link when you share, so anyone with the link can read the card. For a fun evening, ask friends or family to make theirs at the same time and compare words; it is a gentle way to talk about the year together.