Anki crashing when using custom study by state or tag

Anki Help
22

My Anki keeps freezing when I custom study the Anking Step 1 v12 deck on Mac. I’ve tried all the steps in troubleshooting including restarting Anki and my computer, launching in safe mode, switching the profile, updating to the latest version of Anki ( [25.02.7] ), checking the database, switching the video driver. I’ve also logged in and out of ankihub and ankiweb.

When I look at activity monitor on my Mac the memory usage goes up to 15-45 Gb and the app freezes and I have to force quit it. This happens even without add ons in safe mode. I’ve tried creating a new deck and it works fine in another deck; however, other people I know are able to custom study using this deck.

I have consulted this help thread " [Anki crashing when using custom study by state or tag])" to no avail.

Any tips or workarounds for this?

26

I merged your post in here. It sounds like you’ve tried a lot of the suggestions already, but will you also respond to all of the questions I’ve asked above? I’m thinking specifically about these – Anki crashing when using custom study by state or tag - #18 by Danika_Dakika .

And we’ll also need your full version information – go to Anki > About – click "Copy Debug Info – and paste the result of that in your response.

27

I am not able to reproduce the problem on a Mac here. I suggest you also try:

1 Like
28

Thank you so much for replying! I appreciate your help. See below for the specific questions:

  1. Does that include running Check Database
    ----yes
  2. Since it happens with only one deck – and the same deck for both of you – you have to think that the deck might be the problem. Have you talked to the AnKing folks about this?
    —looks like other people are able to do this without issue
  3. Run Tools > Empty Cards. Do you have a lot of empty cards? Are they ones you can safely delete? If so, do that.
    ---- I Tried that as well
  4. Do you sync multiple devices? Are your devices completely in sync now? Try running a Check Database on the other device/app, and then forcing a one-way sync from there (upload to AnkiWeb) and receiving it on your computer (download from AnkiWeb).
    ----i tried this as well
  5. This happens when you try to start a Custom Study – does it also happen when you create a Filtered deck manually?
    – no, only with custom study. i guess I can use filtered decks instead but still curious why this issue is occurring
  6. Has this just started happening and it worked fine before? What has changed between then and now?
    – I’ve never been able to get a custom study session working
  7. Go to your [Anki app folder] find console.bat and run that from a Terminal window. That will start Anki and stay open. When the crash happens, is anything output into that window?
    — I don’t see console.bat in the Anki folder.

See debug info below. Thank you again for your help! --DB

Anki 25.02.7 (1b882285) (ao)
Python 3.9.18 Qt 6.6.2 PyQt 6.6.1
Platform: macOS-15.3.2-arm64-arm-64bit

===Add-ons (active)===
(add-on provided name [Add-on folder, installed at, version, is config changed])
Advanced Browser [‘874215009’, 2024-10-27T10:20, ‘None’, ‘’]
AnKing Note Types Easy Customization [‘952691989’, 2025-05-13T20:08, ‘None’, mod]
Anki Leaderboard - Compete with friends to boost motivation Custom by Shige [‘175794613’, 2025-05-14T18:23, ‘None’, mod]
AnkiHub [‘1322529746’, 2025-06-06T11:38, ‘None’, ‘’]
BetterSearch [‘1052724801’, 2025-04-06T17:13, ‘None’, ‘’]
Button Colours Good Again [‘2494384865’, 2022-09-27T06:18, ‘None’, ‘’]
Clickable Tags v20 [‘1739176371’, 2022-01-30T17:58, ‘None’, ‘’]
Color Confirmation [‘1084228676’, 2024-01-06T04:55, ‘None’, ‘’]
Colorful Tags Hierarchical Tags [‘594329229’, 2022-09-15T11:06, ‘None’, ‘’]
Contanki - Controller Support for Anki beta [‘1898790263’, 2024-02-29T20:22, ‘v1.0.2’, ‘’]
Custom Background Image and Gear Icon [‘1210908941’, 2025-06-22T09:27, ‘None’, mod]
Edit Field During Review Cloze [‘385888438’, 2025-04-20T09:34, ‘6.22’, mod]
FSRS Helper Postpone Advance Load Balance Easy Days Disperse Siblings [‘759844606’, 2025-06-14T23:58, ‘None’, ‘’]
High Yield Tags [‘1918380616’, 2023-01-10T14:14, ‘None’, ‘’]
Image Occlusion Enhanced [‘1374772155’, 2022-04-09T03:15, ‘None’, ‘’]
Remaining time for Anki 21 [‘1508357010’, 2024-04-15T22:15, ‘24.4.16i24’, ‘’]
Review Heatmap [‘1771074083’, 2022-06-29T21:43, ‘None’, ‘’]
Special Fields [‘1102281552’, 2025-02-25T08:07, ‘None’, ‘’]
True Retention [‘613684242’, 2017-11-19T15:43, ‘None’, ‘’]

===IDs of active AnkiWeb add-ons===
1052724801 1084228676 1102281552 1210908941 1322529746 1374772155 1508357010 1739176371 175794613 1771074083 1898790263 1918380616 2494384865 385888438 594329229 613684242 759844606 874215009 952691989

===Add-ons (inactive)===
(add-on provided name [Add-on folder, installed at, version, is config changed])

29

Thank you for your advice. I’ve tried resetting the window size and I’m on the latest version of macOS already. I did just install 25.06b7 and am still having the same issue :frowning:

Any other ideas?

30

Ok so I played around and exported the collection and imported it into a new profile. When i delete the big #AK_Step1_v12 and #AK_Step2_v12, custom study works. But I want to custom study based on these tags so this isn’t a good solution. Any other ideas on what I can do?

31

The 3 users who have reported this issue are all using AnKing Step deck, and all on Macs – so hopefully that is getting us closer to an answer.

Custom Study is just one way to create a Filtered deck – from a list of options – instead of building it yourself. So you’re getting the same thing either way.

I assume you’re able to search for those tags in Browse? When you do that by clicking the tag in the sidebar, it adds e.g., tag:#AK\_Step1\_v12 to your search (note the backslashes before the underscores).

The only idea I have right now is that Custom Study is reacting poorly to those specific tags – perhaps because of the #, or because of the _ that needs to be escaped. But it might only be an issue on macOS, because I haven’t been able to trigger a crash manipulating a tag with that name in a Windows install. @dae thoughts?

Thread where folks have discussed this with AnkiHub support – Custom study option crashing only on AnKing Step Deck V12 - 🙋 Support - AnkiHub Community

1 Like
32

Yeah I think it’s just because there are too many tags, when I delete some of the subtags in the test profile it seems to work. It’s weird that only a few people have issues with this. I’ve been using the filtered decks and its been working fine. Thanks for your help! I appreciate all the suggestions.

1 Like
33

Did you try the various video drivers in the preferences, followed by a restart each time? I suspect it might only occur on one of them, and only on certain devices.

1 Like
34

Hey there, coming back to this because I’d like to just keep all my cards under the AK deck instead needing to create subdecks so the custom study session will work. I know filtered decks are a thing, but just wanted to see if there has been a fix yet for the issues mentioned above?

35

It’s likely a bug in the cross-platform toolkit Anki is built on. We’ll be able to avoid it when we port the custom study screen to Svelte.

36

Awesome, would that automatically get implemented with an update and/or any idea when that would happen? Thanks for the help!

37

I’m afraid it’s likely to be months or next year.

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