Hoist

About Hoist

Learn every flag of the world, and where each country is.

What it is

Hoist shows you a flag; you type the country. A glass globe then flies there and marks the capital and the largest city, so each flag gets a place on the map, not only a name. There is no account and nothing to install: your progress stays in this browser, and you can export it to a file.

How it helps you remember

Typing the name makes you recall it, which sticks far better than recognising it among choices. Flags come back just before you would forget them, with longer gaps each time you know them (spaced repetition, using FSRS). New flags come five at a time, shown first, then asked straight away. Flags that are easy to mix up are practised side by side so you learn the difference. When you miss one, you see the right answer, and what you named instead, at once.

Which countries

The 197 countries are the 193 member states of the United Nations, the two observer states (Vatican City and Palestine), Kosovo and Taiwan. Names follow what each country calls itself in English, and other common names are accepted.

An optional set of 19 territories with their own flags can be turned on in Practice: American Samoa, Aruba, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Curaçao, Faroe Islands, French Polynesia, Gibraltar, Greenland, Guam, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Isle of Man, Jersey, Macau, Puerto Rico, United States Virgin Islands.

Keys

Enter
Check the answer, then go to the next flag
Tab
Reveal the next letter (counts as a hint)
Esc
Give up and see the answer
1 – 4
Pick a choice ("Which one?", easy mode)
← → ↑ ↓
Turn the globe when it has focus
+ −
Zoom the globe
?
Show the keys

Credits

Data

The country data in Hoist is a derived database of mledoze/countries, available under the ODbL 1.0. Corrections, each with its source, are listed in the project’s data/overrides.json.

Fonts and software

No tracking, no cookies, no ads. The site makes no requests to other services.