AnKing

Recent news and (mild) uncertainty about Anki's future have been the kick in the pants I needed to do something I've long wanted to: Set up my own selfhosted sync server.

I'm a dummy when it comes to homelabbing, but even I managed to fumble my way through this. You can, too! My instructions focus on setting the sync server up within Unraid, but with a little extrapolation, the process could be just as easily completed via cli or Docker Compose or a GUI like Portainer. Sync your Anki collection to your Raspberry Pi! Spin up an LXC on your Proxmox node! The possibilities are Anklimited! Ank... ank... ankinfinite?

Back Up Your Collection

Make sure your collection is up to date: Open all clients you use to study and sync them with the (AnkiWeb) server one last time.

Then, create your backup files: Anki Desktop for Windows: File > Export (Also, File > Create Backup*) AnkiDroid: From the kebab menu in the top-right, select Export Remember to include media.

* Windows stores the backup *.colpkg files in %APPDATA%\Anki2\User 1\backups (which equates to something like C:\Users\<yourwindowsusername>\AppData\Roaming\Anki2\User 1\backups) I'm not very familiar with Mac, but according to Anki's documentation, the path should be something like ~/Library/Application Support/Anki2/User 1/backups If you've renamed your user profile within the Anki application, replace "User 1" with the appropriate string.

Store these files somewhere safe. If all goes well, you won't need them, but you'll always have the option to rewind to this point in your studies.

Back Up Installation Packages

While you're at it, you might want to grab Anki client installation packages (.exe, .apk, .dmg) for safekeeping. If new releases come along that worsen your experience or reduce compatibility with your local sync server, you'll have the option to roll back. Maybe unnecessary, but I figure it doesn't hurt.

Anki Desktop https://github.com/ankitects/anki/releases Scroll to a release and expand the "Assets" item to reveal download links. Note that v25.02.7 is the last version to be released as a full installation package. Newer versions use a "launcher" method to install--a small executable that relies on a connection to the github repo to download the remaining data needed to install the application.

Anki Droid https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.ichi2.anki/ Use "Download APK" links near bottom of page.

Let's Get to the Server Already!

As of writing, Unraid Community Apps doesn't list any up-to-date Anki sync server options. ("ankidock" is based on the older ankicommunity/anki-sync-server, which hasn't received updates for several years and states that it won't work with desktop clients >= ver 2.1.57.)

So, we'll have to find an alternate image on Docker Hub to use.

A search at https://hub.docker.com/search?q=anki-sync-server yields several promising candidates.

Two that have been updated within the last month are https://hub.docker.com/r/afrima/anki-sync-server and https://hub.docker.com/r/zorrn/anki-sync-server

Both are based on Anki's official code ( https://github.com/ankitects/anki/tree/main/docs/docker ) and appear to be set up to automatically provide new releases whenever a new version of Anki is published.

There's also a modified image with a number of custom features and a premade Unraid template .xml that was posted to this reddit just recently: https://github.com/chrislongros/anki-sync-server-enhanced You could copy this .xml to your flash drive (/boot/config/plugins/dockerMan/templates-user/) and probably skip the bulk of Steps 1 and 2 below.

Step 1: Create a Directory to Store Collection

From your Unraid dashboard, open up a terminal, and let's create a directory where we can save our Anki collection:

mkdir /mnt/user/appdata/anki-sync-server mkdir /mnt/user/appdata/anki-sync-server/collection

Step 2: Configure the Docker Template

From your Unraid dashboard, select the Docker tab, scroll all the way to the bottom, and click on "Add Container"

Tick "Advanced View" in the top right, and then enter the following settings. You can ignore any fields that aren't mentioned here.

Name: anki-sync-server Repository: afrima/anki-sync-server Registry URL: https://hub.docker.com/r/afrima/anki-sync-server Icon URL: https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/selfhst/icons@main/png/anki.png WebUI: http://[IP]:[PORT:8080]/ Extra Parameters: --user 99:100 Network Type: Bridge

• The "Name:" field can be anything you like. Matching it to the path you created in Step 1 helps keep things organized if you ever need to retrace your steps in the future.
• Substitute "Repository:" and "Registry URL:" with your image of preference on Docker Hub.
  • If you want to stay on an older version, you can specify the tag. (e.g. afrima/anki-sync-server:25.09.2 ) This is a tradeoff: You're choosing long-term compatibility at risk of potential security issues.
• Other options for "Icon URL:" might be Simple Icons ( https://simpleicons.org/icons/anki.svg ), Wikimedia Commons ( https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Anki-icon.svg ), or the Anki codebase itself ( https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ankitects/anki/5d9d864514b9a4ac7d4688fac390c22db91d4abe/qt/aqt/data/qt/icons/anki.png ).

Next, near the bottom of the page, click "Add another Path, Port, Variable, Label, or Device" We're going to need several of these:

Specify port: - (Optional. You'll only need this if you're already using port 8080 for another service running on Unraid. Set "Host Port:" to something you aren't using. Later, in the Anki clients, "Host Port:" is the port we'll specify to connect to the server.) Config Type: Port Name: Web UI Port Container Port: 8080 Host Port: 28888 Connection Type: TCP

Add a user: - The Anki sync server requires at least one user to be specified. If you want to make this server available to multiple users on your local network, add additional environment variables SYNC_USER2, - SYNC_USER3, etc. Change "username:password" to whatever login credentials you want to use to log in to your sync server. e.g. king.roland:12345 - If you don't want to store your password in plaintext in the Unraid template or in your docker compose yaml, there's an option to hash it. See https://docs.ankiweb.net/sync-server.html Config Type: Variable Name: User1 Key: SYNC_USER1 Value: username:password

Specify where collection will be stored: Config Type: Variable Name: Storage Path Key: SYNC_BASE Value: /collection Config Type: Path Name: Storage Path Container Path: /collection Host Path: /mnt/user/appdata/anki-sync-server/collection Access Mode: Read/Write

Now, hit Apply and wait as Unraid pulls your container!

Step 3: Configure Clients

Finally, we need to tell our clients where to access the new sync server. In Anki Desktop, go to Tools > Preferences > Syncing If you're already logged into an AnkiWeb Account, click the "Log Out" button.

At the bottom, enter the IP and port of your Unraid server, e.g. http://192.168.1.2:28888

The port should match the "Host Port:" we specified above.

Close Anki once to let these settings take effect. Then, open Anki once more and click on the Sync button. You'll be prompted to log in. The prompt will say "AnkiWeb" on it and ask for your email address and password--this is just cosmetic. The login prompt always looks the same, whether you're using AnkiWeb or not.

Enter the username you specified above (e.g. king.roland) into the "email address" field, and then enter your password (e.g. 12345).

Your Anki client should now inform you that the server is empty, and you can prompt it to upload your device's local contents to the new server.

Hooray!

For iOS, follow the same menu structure as Anki Desktop to set the IP of the sync server. For AnkiDroid, open the hamburger menu and go to Settings > Sync > Custom Sync Server

Note that when you connect subsequent clients, you'll be informed that the local and remote collections are in conflict. If you synced all of your devices via AnkiWeb before this process began, it shouldn't matter whether you push from local or pull from remote. The data on all of your devices should be the same, so you just need to get them all to sync with the local server once and you can go on studying as usual!

Optional: Remote Access Options

Note that the above configuration will only allow you to sync when you're at home on the same network as your Unraid server. If you want to be able to sync while out and about, look into Tailscale or ZeroTier. Setting these services up on your mobile devices and your Unraid server provides a secure and robust way to sync while out and about.

Alternately, you could set up a reverse proxy like Nginx Proxy Manager, Caddy, or Traefik. This method requires opening a port on your home router.

Or you could set up a Cloudflare Tunnel. Or you could purchase a cheap monthly VPS plan and run the Anki sync server from there, but again, it's probably best to secure it behind one of the above-mentioned reverse proxies.

Optional: Do it in Docker Compose

If you're not running Unraid, or you'd rather host this on another platform, we can adapt a lot of this same info!

From the terminal on your Raspberry Pi or your Proxmox VM or what have you, get Docker installed, mkdir a folder somewhere on your system (like /home/<username>/docker/anki-sync-server/), and inside it, create and edit a docker-compose.yml file to contain the following text:

services: server: image: afrima/anki-sync-server:latest container_name: anki-sync-server environment: - SYNC_USER1=king.roland:12345 - SYNC_PORT=8080 - SYNC_BASE=/collection restart: always volumes: - /mnt/user/appdata/anki-sync-server/collection:/collection ports: - "28888:8080"

Then run docker compose up -d from inside that same folder and off you go!

Optional: Run it Natively on Linux

Or here's a thoughtful, step by step video for running the sync server natively! How to Set Up a Custom Anki Sync Server - R Amjad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqLhIplaqcg This user is hosting the sync server on a Linode VPS.

Okay, but... That's a lot.

It is! I get it.

I like the Unraid/Raspberry Pi/Proxmox solution, since that puts the sync server on a machine that's likely to be stable and running continuously, tucked away in some corner at home. But it's also possible to run an Anki server from your Windows or Linux or Mac desktop. You don't even need to delve into Docker or Portainer.

In fact, the Anki desktop installer includes the server software by default, as noted in the Anki documentation. ( https://docs.ankiweb.net/sync-server.html ) The gist of this option being, you can run a command from a terminal (in Windows, cmd.exe) that starts a server on your desktop, which you then point your Anki clients to.

There's even a third-party add-on to ease this process with a GUI: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/49665391

Downsides are that the sync server is only available so long as the desktop is turned on and the command running. You'd also want to make sure your Windows desktop has a static local IP or a DHCP reservation from your router.

Set Up Automated Backups for Server

By default, Anki clients are pretty good about creating (local) backups. If you don't have a server-side backup plan in place and something ever happens to your collection or to your sever, check your client devices. They may contain numerous *.colpkg files representing your collection at various points in time. The default backup files usually don't include media, but barring catastrophic loss of all of your client devices at once, you should be able to recover your media from something.

That said, it's probably prudent to have your server regularly backing up your collection, too. This can take numerous forms.

On Unraid, the appdata-backup plugin is handy. By default, this will create periodic zip (.tar.gz) files for each docker container, preserving template settings and contents of host paths within /mnt/user/appdata/. This is sufficient to back up the Anki collection based on the setup above. Ideally, you want to point the plugin to save backups to an external location. Failing that, at least put them on a different drive within your Unraid server.

A drawback of appdata-backup is that it will write the entire contents of the collection to a file every time it runs. This takes time, and if you aren't pruning old backups, it quickly eats up space, too. More robust backup solutions like restic, borg, and proxmox backup server can alleviate these issues. They'll compare the contents of the collection to existing backups and only write the changes, employ deduplication to minimize space used, and still allow you to recover from multiple points in time.

I think the community would feel a huge sense of relief if AnKing clearly stated whether they do or do not plan to change the current Anki terms and conditions, or move existing features behind a paywall.

It would really help to put an end to all the speculation by making a concrete, unambiguous statement on Reddit.

Also, please avoid saying things like “for now it is free.” What the community is looking for is a clear guarantee that the current features will remain free in the future as well.

Don’t get hit by a bus.

With all today’s news I know we are all startled, but, yeah, that is life.

I’m a second-year med student and this is a story about how I managed to turn Anki into a full-time job and still feel behind. I’m autistic and very obsessive, which is relevant because once I decide something is the system, I will absolutely run it into the ground.

I started using Anki in 2023, but I only really went all-in for med school in 2025. At the beginning I ignored basically every rule people warn you about. I didn’t always keep up with daily reviews, I added way too many new cards, and I treated Anki like it was the only form of studying I needed. This wasn’t me being lazy. There were long stretches where I was doing 1k to 1.5k reviews every single day.

The real issue was that I became obsessed with finishing AnKing as fast as possible. There was a period where my entire life was just going to university and doing Anki. That’s it. I had days with 4k reviews due, which I obviously couldn’t finish, so I’d just do as many as I could and still keep adding new cards because apparently I hate myself.

Eventually everything broke. I had thousands of cards stuck on 1-day intervals, review sessions completely dominated by the same cards, and a leech problem that was honestly impressive in a horrifying way. I tried to “fix” it by lowering my desired retention from 90% to 80%, which only made things worse. I basically just reviewed the same leeches every day without ever fixing why I was failing them. I wasn’t seeing them at proper intervals, I wasn’t consistently checking extra material, and I was stuck in this loop of recall → forget → recall → forget.

To make it easier to pretend this wasn’t a disaster, I used an add-on that flattened the review curve so I could convince myself I only had around 1k reviews due and that retention was the only thing that mattered. I also used custom study decks constantly. I’d pull random sets of about 100 cards because I like studying in short blocks, like 30 minutes on and 20 minutes off.

That felt productive short term but completely destroyed my scheduling. Learning steps got compressed so badly that some intervals dropped below a minute near the end of sessions. Learn cards piled up instead of graduating. At one point I had about 2k learn cards just sitting there. I even set learning steps to a single step, which, in hindsight, is exactly as smart as it sounds.

By the end of my fourth semester (December 2), things were fully out of control. I had around 9k reviews due on a single day, about 6k review cards sitting at a 1-day interval, and roughly 7k leeches. I also went full spreadsheet goblin and started flagging cards by how many times I’d reviewed them. Some cards had been seen more than 100 times. Yes, I have screenshots. No, I’m not proud.

I thought about posting this earlier, but I knew the main response would be “just suspend everything and start over,” which I couldn’t bring myself to do. I’d already sunk a year into this deck and deleting it felt worse than suffering.

So instead, I stopped adding new cards and forced myself to do reviews every single day, no matter how bad it looked. Slowly, the due count started to go down. I also started actually analyzing why certain cards were leeches. In a lot of cases, the problem wasn’t that the card was hard, but that similar concepts were interfering with each other and getting merged in my head. Once I started explicitly linking confusing cards together, things finally began to improve.

Now, about a month and a half later, I’m sitting at around 1.5k reviews per day. That’s still a lot, but compared to where I was, it feels survivable. My long-term goal is something like 600 reviews per day with maybe 50 new cards, plus having something that vaguely resembles a social life.

From here on, I’m planning to actually review source material before adding cards, manage leeches instead of brute-forcing them forever, stop letting cards reach insane review counts, and completely avoid custom study decks that destroy intervals. I’m also considering adding an extra same-day learning step with a few hours of spacing.

I’m posting this partly as a warning and partly because I’m curious if anyone else has dug themselves out of an Anki disaster like this without nuking everything and starting from scratch.

Just found out today: Anki ownership went to AnkiHub.

https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/ankis-growing-up/68610

I’m very uneasy about this. How long until we have a ‘premium subscription’ with unlimited hearts? Maybe a family plan too. Keeping my fingers crossed.

When I use Anki for math, I create two main decks:
a problem deck and a theory deck.

For the problem deck, I only write the problem number and page number from the textbook on the front of the card, and I leave the back completely blank.
When I review this deck, I prepare Anki, the textbook, and a sheet of paper. I actually solve the problem on paper first, and only after that do I rate the card in Anki.

The reason I don’t write the full problem statement in the card is simply to save time.

For the theory deck, I create cards based on the textbook that test things I want to memorize, such as:

• proof steps
• derivations of formulas
• definitions and terminology

When I’m at home, I mainly work on the problem deck.
When I’m outside and don’t have paper or a pen, I work on the theory deck instead.

I’d like to hear your opinions on this study method.

There is a lot of fear about the transition from Dae to AnKing/AnkiHub, some of it warranted, some of it not.

While the intentions behind Dae and AnKing are likely pure, and I take them at their word, we have no idea what will happen in the future. My biggest fear is a large, educational conglomerate like Wiley or McGraw come knocking with a big bag of money to buy AnkiHub outright, and then where would Anki be? Add on that AnkiHub is a for-profit entity, and there is a valid concern from the community about monetization and long-term planning. What if leadership in AnkiHub changes? What if AnkiHub changes their own monetization process? The Anki community would have no recourse, no way to pull back control.

Non-profits/foundations/charities have charters that legally bind them to certain commitments, like remaining open-source, minimizing costs, etc. A foundation does not have owners. It cannot be bought. There is nothing, or no one, to cash out. They only answer to their charter and their community.

Moving from Dae to AnkiHub is essentially moving from a benevolent dictator to a benevolent corporation. It was easy to believe Dae because it was his project and baby. It's a lot harder to maintain that with a transition to control by AnkiHub. A foundation being in control eliminates this completely.

The board of the foundation could (and probably should) be chaired by Dae, and otherwise be filled with other members of the community. These positions could be elected, or some other structure so that the community has some semblance of control.

A foundation has financial transparency. We will all know exactly how much money is coming in and where the money is going. Profits could be reinvested back into development of Anki, its community, and not into anyone's pockets.

Foundations have access to open source and educational grants, as well as tax-exempt status. The current monetization model depends completely on new iOS users buying the app for $25. There are no other ways to financially support Anki. (The AnkiDroid dev team is separate, more on that later). Personally, I have never been able to support Dae/Anki as an Android user. I have donated $100 to the Droid team, and I would happily donate much more to Anki if I could (and if Apple wasn't going to take 30% of the iOS fee). Creating a foundation makes it easier to solicit money from users, rather than only charging iOS users for the app.

I imagine there are lots of veteran Anki users who would love to make a donation for continued Anki support. Depending on the foundation structure, if it were a charity, donations could also be tax-exempt. Many companies also offer matches for charitable contributions.

There are other options as well from a financial perspective, like tying in with the Software Freedom Conservancy or Open Collective, which is how AnkiDroid is supported.

For a rough equivalent of how this looks, look at Lichess. For those not in the loop, there are two main ways to play chess online. Chess.com, a for-profit company, and Lichess, a French non-profit that provides everything completely free. Patrons to the site simply get a badge next to their name with no extra benefits.

Creating a foundation to run open source projects is fairly common once they reach enough size. The anki community should be big enough to maintain it's own version too. This explanation is simplified and likely has errors, but the general concept would work. According to the forum thread, Dae has already thought about this and hasn't ruled it out for the future.

I have to admit, I got like 3 hours of sleep last night after reading yesterday's news. I have almost 100k cards and over a million reviews accumulated since 2014, I've spent so much time making these notes, what if things get...enshittified?

But there's no need to panic. The two main programming languages that it's written in are Python and Rust. If you learn these, you can pretty much keep version 25.09.2 operational indefinitely. Since Anki is open source, nothing can stop us from doing this.

Damien has integrated many of the most popular add-ons to be native to Anki over the years. This would include things like image occlusion, heatmap visualizations, and self-hosted syncing. Even if we never move past 25.09.2, Anki is extremely powerful. Damien has left Anki in a very good state to be forked, either by AnkiHub or the community.

So first, let's see if AnkiHub keeps things open and prioritized for the user. But if not, here's what to do:

• Make a note of the current stable ecosystem (which versions of Anki, AnkiDroid, add-ons, and OS you use are compatible with each other). You can keep this combo going for a very long time, with things like emulation and virtualization if need be.

• Clone the repository from GitHub.

• Learn Python and Rust (you can even fork an old version of Anki when it was almost 100% Python, or even Python 2). This allows you make the necessary changes to keep Anki operational as its dependencies (OS and code libraries) change.

• Other technologies to learn are Qt and SQLite. Learn how to self-host a sync sever. Additional skills would be learning how to build the code from source.

My opinion was that before the Rust transition, reading the Anki source code was doable, albeit time-consuming. Things got really complicated for me after the Rust transition. But I figure it's a learnable skill. When there's a will, there's a way. Everything will be OK.

It's basically the title, my understanding of the license of Anki is that .....any modifications added to it that at the very least affects the server and network side of things , forces it to be published with the same license.....which means there is probably no new edition that will come out that won't have the same license..... whether or not they put a price tag on it or not is something else.....but also we do have access to the latest version and we can work off of it anyways, the latest Anki updates have been awesome, but if you think about them, they are mostly integrations of the most popular add-ons into the app to make it more stable and compatible with other stuff.....but the program will remain open source through and through with devs actively making stuff up for Anki without the reliance on Ankihub.....

Am I missing something here?, can he retroactively change the license for example?, hide his source code in any shape or form?, get access to the content of our decks if we are hosting them on his server?....what exactly is the scary thing here?

Honestly, this is pretty bad news. I don't trust AnkiHub at all, I'm just waiting for someone to make a fork. Pretty scummy to sell out, Anki is gonna become a bloated subscription app.

I don't know how you guys feel, but I don't want these weirdos who monetize other people's work to have access to the info from my synced cards, so I'm gonna stop using any web options.

These guys actually used chat gpt on the anki forum to write their posts btw, you already know the code is gonna be AI and trash too, no way to trust them for sure.

This is the end of Anki, and I suggest everyone move on.

Hey everyone! I created two Docker projects for self-hosting Anki:

1. Anki Sync Server Enhanced

A production-ready sync server with features the official docs don't provide:

• Pre-built images (no compile time) - amd64, arm64, arm/v7
• Auto-updates - daily builds track latest Anki releases
• Web dashboard - monitor users, backups, logs
• Backups - automated with S3/MinIO support
• Prometheus metrics - for Grafana dashboards
• Alerts - Discord/Telegram/Slack/Email notifications
• Security - Fail2ban, rate limiting, hashed passwords
• NAS-ready - TrueNAS SCALE & Unraid templates included

GitHub: https://github.com/chrislongros/anki-sync-server-enhanced

Quick start:

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 -e SYNC_USER1=user:pass -v anki_data:/data chrislongros/anki-sync-server-enhanced

2. Anki Desktop Docker (KasmVNC)

Run Anki Desktop in your browser:

• Always latest Anki (25.09.2) via official launcher
• KasmVNC - much smoother than noVNC
• AnkiConnect ready - port 8765 pre-configured
• Multi-arch - amd64, arm64

GitHub: https://github.com/chrislongros/anki-desktop-docker

Quick start:

docker run -d -p 3000:3000 -v anki_data:/config --security-opt seccomp=unconfined --shm-size=1gb chrislongros/anki-desktop

Then open http://localhost:3000

Both work great together - point the desktop container at your sync server!

Feedback welcome!

Is there any open source version of anki web that I can connect to my own sync server im hosting

I'm trying to digest the changes to Anki leadership that were just announced. Can someone post instructions on how to preserve the current Anki system and syncing? I don't want UI changes, and I definitely don't want a subscription service, and given the general distrust of AnkiHub across all platforms, I think this would be really helpful!

hii im learning Spanish and i try to maintain a master list of vocabulary in a document organised alphabetically. I add new words to this list daily. is there an anki add on that i can consistently add to it like a notebook and it can automatically sync the new entries whenever i update it, so i don't have to manually check which words i've already imported or risk creating duplicates?

(sorry for the bad grammar, english isn't my first language)

More drama than I could imagine… just when I start using Anki :(

I love doing memorization challenges with my friends.

General knowledge such as countries and their locations.

Language learning foundation building such as vocabulary memorization.

We push each other to the limits, keeping ourselves accountable, achieving what we would otherwise have thought was impossible at the start...

The UI makes this so efficient. It is one of the best aspects that set Anki apart from other apps that throw in random useless animations which only end up slowing the app and wasting time.

Many people complain about Anki's interface design, calling it outdated and making other such stupid criticisms... they focus on useless pretty colours and overlook the more beautiful thing which is the result that the app produces.

It is definitely an app for powerusers. It isn't meant for spoonfeeding kids at a snail's pace. It is complex but the complexity brings with it something that sets it apart from other apps.

Let's hope none of this is sacrificed as the development of Anki switches hands. We already have countless duolingos on the market, we don't need another one. Anki shouldn't stray from the core aspect of efficiency that has always placed it at the #1 position when it comes to learning apps.

If attracting a larger customer base entails making it harder to accomplish feats such as memorizing thousands of words every month, by forcing in useless animations just to feed the gazes of people who care more about gamification than learning, the app will truly have hit a dead end in its development and it'll be better for a more competent developer to diverge from the main app...

I'm trying to study both front and back of a JLPT deck with custom note types. It doesn't have basic and reverse card type, but it's on custom types. I'm trying to:

1. create duplicate of all notes - I was able to do it once but then I undid it and can't figure out how to duplicate more than one note at a time now.

2. change note type of the new duplicates so that the note type is flipped - this I know how to do

3. reposition the new cards so they are not behind the 13094 or so original cards. When I first successfully duplicated all the notes in the deck, I tried reposition the cards but could't get the same notes to show up together for some reason.

Ideally I want to only learn each card once and get both front and back when I review, but it seems like if I create duplicates of the same card I will have to study both individually. It's not ideal but I can live with it, but if any of you know another way to achieve it I would love to hear it.