Anki 25.08 Beta 3+

[vaibhav]

Regarding cache:

@vaibhav

uv cache is enabled by default, but I can’t see any benefit of doing so, especially if we anyway clear the cache when uninstalling Anki. During updates, the packages aren’t redownloaded if they were unchanged even if the cache was cleared.

Edit: Having packages cached helps when reverting to a previous version, but is that so common that the cache should be enabled for all users by default?

@dae

It makes for a nicer out-of-the-box experience when switching between versions, and given how many users depend on add-ons, it’s not so uncommon for them to downgrade when they find an add-on is not working. I can appreciate the argument for making it default to off, and that may happen in the future, but I think defaulting to on might make more sense at the moment, especially given how skeptical people are to change, and how they may play around with this at first.

@BrayanDSO

was the app that big before? 578mb is a lot)

The previous version (25.02) was 507 MB.

25.08 takes 686 MB on my Windows computer (AnkiProgramFiles = 634 MB and launcher + uv = 52 MB). So, there is definitely a significant increase in the app size.

Speaking of the app size, quite a large fraction of the total size is occupied by the qt-webengine. So, the following suggestion will help:

@vaibhav

Would it be rational/possible for Anki to use the system webview rather than bundling its own webview?

This will ensure that the user can always use the latest version of webview, irrespective of the Anki version or the Qt version. In addition, it will also reduce the size of the app.

[Sometimes, I am just astonished as to how AnkiDroid is able to pack most of Anki’s functionality in such a small app. AnkiDroid’s installer (APK) is just 38 MB.]