Hello. I’ve been using Anki for a while. Thank you for the update on the software. It’s much more snappy in Linux.
Can you please bring the old menu and look while studying back? The thing I liked about it was that it was so bland and unintrusive. The new ones are more bold, larger, and they pop out more. Even the shadowing is more visible. While it looks “good”, it’s more “in the way” than the old one was, and that makes a difference.
I agree that some elements of the new UI are rather off-putting. In the past Anki allowed the user to apply their GTK theme (or Plasma theme), but in the latest version this feature doesn’t work anymore.
Can you please provide a screenshot that illustrates this on one of the previous versions? I still don’t know what exactly you mean by that.
The only customization I’d like to be able to do is to go back to the previous “theme”. There’s a lot to be said for functional, plain buttons and menus that are the opposite of attention-getting and dynamic. The recent design trends for all these blurred backgrounds, other elements that expand and shrink, etc, don’t take into account that some people become distracted by these useless extras. The changes to Anki are on the extreme mild end of this, but still.
I’m used to seeing exactly what was there on the study screen regarding menus and buttons, and all of that was so plain and simple that it wasn’t any distraction at all from the cards.
And what is the current appearance, for comparison?
One of the advantages of shipping a custom theme by default is that we can be reasonably sure it looks correct across the different platforms - those +/- buttons on those custom themes in .54 are looking pretty broken in comparison!
One more thing that bothers me is that rows in QListWidgets are now significantly shorter. And there used to be more space between widgets.
| Anki 2.1.55 | Adapta on 2.1.54 | Arc on 2.1.54 |
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And of course the biggest thing that really frustrated me was this:
This reduction in margins is likely the culprit behind the elements becoming unreadable.
That’s fine as long as there’s an option in Preferences to enforce your own GTK theme or Plasma theme. This is especially important now after we’ve seen that the default Anki’s theme can break the UI.
I don’t mean the custom themes that the other user is talking about, I mean the one Anki uses by default.
The new menus seem to stand out or “pop” more now. I’m talking about what’s visible on the screen while I’m studying,
“Decks Add Browse …”. That part used to be smaller and more plain looking. That’s pretty much all I’m asking for to have return to how it was. It was visually less “in the way” is all. If someone can provide a comparable screenshot from 2.1.54 I can clarify. There’s that menu, and I think the line that divides the front of the card from the back used to be lower. The current version doesn’t doesn’t let the eyes as easily focus on just the info in the cards.
Also, Mr. Elmes, thank you for making this program available.
Slight annoyance, but the save button in the options screen in Japanese language is kind of messed up. Where it should be a single line for 保存 it seems like it’s too big so it ends up taking 2 lines and making the button larger and out of place with the rest of the UI.
Anki 2.1.55 Qt6 Windows 10
I felt the same. it’s snappy everywhere if i’m honest.
that’s partly what I meant by “clunky” in my post: Home UI is fixed in position
I got accustomed to the old UI.
old UI was minimal 
(in terms of colors, effects, and button sizes [visual stuff])
I guess these new visuals could potentially appeal to the newer generations of anki users as well as the UI enthusiasts (?).
but dont listen to me. i never cared about how something looks. im just here to do my reps (speaking of which, I need to go now!)
I agree that the new UI is visually way too distracting for studying. I much prefer the minimal colors of the previous theme. The shadows add to the distraction even more, and also look completely out of place on my OS.
The hover effects on controls are also particularly jarring.
Please provide a way to apply a custom theme in the settings/preferences if this is going to be the new default UI. It would also be helpful if the previous UI were shipped as an option.
Thanks for all your work on the app.
My two cents:
I don’t see anything wrong, disfunctional or distracting in the “new” GUI, as far I know only aesthetical changes were introduced, that do not affect the functionality of the program at all. I think all this discussion boils down to a mere matter of taste (and, for my taste, the program looks cleaner, more modern and better in 2.1.55 than in 2.1.54) as well as getting used to a number of aesthetic changes. Humans are creatures of habit, that’s all.
Yes, at the begining I also found some GUI elements a little bit too large for what I was used to, but simply adjusting the user interface size via preferences, and tweaking some card templates solved the “problem” for me. Now everything looks just perfectly fine.
Not saying that some improvements and tweaks can’t still be done, of course, just trying to relativize things.
Thanks for your feedback. It’s good if you or anyone else likes the new theme.
I don’t see anyone asking for the new UI theme to be completely removed, just asking for an option to use the old one or apply a different theme again.
Just because UI preferences might sometimes be based on opinions doesn’t make those preferences less valid than someone else’s.
There’s a proposed change that would make it more compact.
That’s exactly what I mean, is that the old UI had minimal “visual stuff”. I don’t care about how the buttons look either. I don’t want to notice them at all, I want to notice the info on the cards as I’m trying to rapidly cycle through them. If you reply, please link to any other threads where this discussion is being had.
Thank you, this is exactly what I mean.
Thank you all for chiming in. I’d say there has been enough negative feedback to justify an option to force the old Fusion theme. I already wrote the main code for that, but need to finalize some things.
@dae I hope to get #2262 and #2289 done in the evening. Got to work during the day, unfortunately.
Thank you for making this code. Does this mean a return to the 2.1.54 theme, at least as a setting option? I’m sorry, but I don’t know enough about the development of this program or development in general to understand what you mean.
