Anki 26.05: No Way to Change Input Method [Linux]

[Toni]

I have recently installed Anki 26.05 on my Debian 13 system (amd64), on which I am running just awesomewm + fcitx5, using pipx, as some very nice guy suggested. I used to run Anki 24.11 before, so there’s a database already, and I have a number of add-ons installed: Chinese Support 3, Review Heatmap, Search and Replace Tags, Progress Graphs and Stats for Learned and Matured Cards, Change Font Size, AnkiConnect and AnkiWebView Inspector. All add-ons are updated to the max, the database has been upgraded as well, and there’s no newer version of Anki available, except for a beta. I also have X, some wayland libs and an fcitx5 infrastructure. Everything works fine for apps that are not Anki. In Anki, however, I can’t switch an input method. Reproduce by

1. Start Anki, eg.: env QT_IM_MODULE=fcitx5 QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS=1 anki --safemode
2. Open the card browser.
3. Try to switch to eg. a Chinese input method in the search box.

I am using the pipx method of installation after trying to install from the tar archive failed, due to a problem with six.moves, which I could not solve (I did install it into the virtualenv that came with Anki).

I tried several options for environment variables, eg. QT_IM_MODULE=fcitx, or just unsetting this variable, to no avail.

What is the way forward here, please?

[Danika_Dakika]

Have you gone through this thread thoroughly?

New Fcitx5 problems on Linux; Two Japanese IME questions for Anki 25.07.2 (3adcf05c) and later

Hello. These are my questions, which also serve as the tl;dr: Do you have a Japanese input method that’s working reliably for Anki 25.07.2 (3adcf05c) or later from GitHub (not AUR or package managers) on any Linux distro? If so, what IME and distro? Did you have to fix anything? If so, what did you fix? I didn’t structure the text below the best that I could, and that’s mostly because I only care about what I asked above. Think of my text below as an explanation for why I’m even asking. My…

See also:

IBus Korean input not working

IBUS should work out of the box, and while I haven’t tested with Korean input, I did previously confirm it was working with Japanese. Fcitx won’t work, but there is a workaround: Install & Upgrade - Anki Manual

[Anon_0000]

It might also be related to some fcitx5 issues. There have been some fixes in the beta, so maybe try if your issue is fixed with those as well:

Release 26.08b2 · ankitects/anki

[Toni]

I’ve read the Fcitx5 + Japanese problem thread thoroughly, but couldn’t glean a solution from it, except for trying to compile completely from source. Ibus is completely out of the question as it doesn’t support all the input methods I need. Also, it used to work flawlessly for years with 24.11 across Debian 12 and 13 (I upgraded in Oct. 25), so there’s a regression somewhere. But thank you for the effort, anyway.

[Toni]

Thank you, I’ll have a look.

[abdo]

Note that the fix in 26.09b2 only applies to the tarball build. If you install from PyPI, you’ll have to either copy the plugin manually to the Qt directory as done in the tarball build, or install a copy of Qt provided by your distro (assuming it supports fcitx5 out of the box).