Hello! I am asking for help because my Anki app is not opening on my MacBook. I just received a new Macbook before starting school, and I downloaded Anki on it and it was working great. I then transferred my information from my old MacBook (which had Anki on it at the time) to my new Macbook. After this happened, the Anki App will not open for me on my new MacBook. Everytime I click or double click on the icon, it just bounces up once and nothing pops up, not even an error message or anything like that. I have tried deleting and re-downloading the app and restarting my computer, but nothing seems to be working. If anyone has any tips on how to fix this, it would be much appreciated! Thank you so much!
Try the steps from here: Troubleshooting - Anki Manual.
Hello! Thank you for responding. I did try that, and unfortunately, it still did not work. I canât even get into the Anki system to do a lot of the steps on the troubleshooting guide. It continues to just bounce once when I click on it and nothing happens. I tried updating my Mac to the most recent version and restarting it to see if that would help, but it was ineffective as well. Do you have any other suggestions? Thank you, again!
Never mind! I got it to work!
For the benefit of the next user to have this issue â how did you get it to work?
Would you be so kind as to share what you did to solve this as I am experiencing the same problem.
None of the above works to solve this issue. Any other suggestions? Sad Anki support staff wonât directly comment on this issue.
After being prompted by Anki app for MacOS to update to the latest version, 25.07.5, the app no longer works. Previously I never had any issues with it. Cannot even open the app. Safe mode also fails to launch app. Have trialed every single remedy listed in the user guide and on this forum without success. I am running MacOS sequoia 15.6, although Anki 25.07.5 also failed to work with MacOS 15.5. I have also attempted to downgrade older version of Anki without success. This needs immediate fix by Anki staff.
Hello! So sorry for just now responding. For Anki to get working on my Mac, I opened my applications folder in Finder, and then right clicked on Anki. From there, I selected âGet Infoâ and then checked off âOpen using Rosettaâ. After Rosetta was installed, it worked for me!
Hello! Thank you for responding. I did attempt opening the app using Rosetta and re-downloaded anki again after installing Rosetta, and even restarted my mac to see if it would help, but the app just bounces once when I attempt to open it and nothing else happens. Any suggestions as to what may help?
Perhaps try running Anki from the command line in a Terminal window, to see if there are any error messages printed? For standard installations, the command would be: /Applications/Anki.app/Contents/MacOS/launcher
.
This is what I see when I run Anki from the command line, and it starts and runs normally:
% /Applications/Anki.app/Contents/MacOS/launcher
Starting Anki 25.07.5...
2025-08-02 07:19:46,389:INFO:aqt.mediasrv: Serving on http://127.0.0.1:60943
Starting main loop...
Thank you for your suggestion. I tried running it from the Terminal window and got an error message. This is what I got:
Error: Failed to execute: /Users/Library/Application Support/AnkiProgramFiles/.venv/bin/python -c import aqt, sys; sys.argv[0] = âAnkiâ; aqt.run(): No such file or directory (os error 2)
Worthy of mention that I had the Anki app installed right before I attempted to run it using the Terminal window. Iâm honestly clueless on what I should do now. Would appreciate any help.
The error message contained the exact string â/Users/Library/âŚâ, and not â/Users/<your_username>/Library/âŚâ? If so, that would explain the problem because the path should be â/Users/<your_username>/Library/âŚâ. The next step would be to figure out why the Anki launcher is using the incorrect path.
But, if instead the error message did contain your username in the path (and you merely omitted it in your post for privacy), the next step would be to track down whether that âpythonâ file exists or if it is missing and from where. For example:
% cd "/Users/myusername/Library/Application Support/AnkiProgramFiles/.venv/bin"
% ls -l python
lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 myusername staff 119 Jul 23 07:12 python -> /Users/myusername/Library/Application Support/AnkiProgramFiles/python/cpython-3.13.5-macos-aarch64-none/bin/python3.13
% cd "/Users/myusername/Library/Application Support/AnkiProgramFiles/python/cpython-3.13.5-macos-aarch64-none/bin"
% ls -l python3.13
-rwxr-xr-x 1 myusername staff 49968 Jul 23 07:12 python3.13
I had deleted my directory that contained the python3 that helped run Anki and transferred to a new directory. A âpseudo-linkâ was created but the actual python located on the old directory had been deleted so the application was unable to run. Thank you for your time and help I was able to rebuild it. Thank you to everyone else who cooperated, your help is very much appreciated.
Anki has a fully native version for Apple Silicon Macs. Having to use Rosetta to run it indicates there is another underlying issue that hasnât been fully resolved in your setup. (Of course, as long as it works fine for you and you donât mind the small performance hit you get by using Rosetta then youâre free to just use it like that.)
For example on my Apple Silicon machine I do not have Rosetta installed at all, and Anki 25.07.5 works just fine (tested on both on macOS 15.5 and 15.6). This is also the case for almost every other user with an Apple Silicon Mac, otherwise there would be tons of more complaints here.
However apparently some hiccups in certain setups might exist, so itâd probably help a ton if people experiencing these like @ankinotworking could try to post more specifics about their system in case they know about anything, or at least some of the basic troubleshooting things like terminal output when trying to start Anki etc. (As you can see @ME6 did so and was able to find the problem with their setup and quickly remedy it. Helps a lot more than just complainingâŚ)
I had previously downloaded Anki and I was able to use it before. A few days ago I tried to open it and it prompted me to get the updated version so I did. I was able to download it but when I try and click on it to open it bounces on the dock but does not open. I have tried restarting my computer, deleting the application and redownloading it, and holding the shift key while opening it. When I try to open it through terminal it says that the application doesnât exist even though I see it in my applications folder. If anyone know how to fix this please help!
I merged your post here because it seems similar. Check the suggestions in this thread.
What exactly happens when you run this in Terminal?
/Applications/Anki.app/Contents/MacOS/launcher
If youâve downloaded Anki from the webpage and moved it into /Applications then this file has to exist.
Unlike some other users, I am not using an Apple Silicon Mac, I am using a 2020 iMac with an Intel processor. With the above suggestions, I am still unable to load the program on my iMac. I also do not have Rosetta installed, nor have I ever been required to use Rosetta to run Anki previously.
For now, you can revert to 25.02.7 â with a fresh install to avoid any launcher issues.