Anki hangs on launch on Mac — bounces once, then sits in dock

Anki Help
1

Hi, I’m having an issue launching Anki on macOS. Here’s what’s happening:

  • I click the Anki icon → it bounces once in the dock, then stays there, but no window opens.

  • Holding Shift on launch (safe mode) does not fix it.

  • I’ve tried:

    • Renaming the addons21 folder (disabling add-ons)

    • Deleting webview and qt6 folders (didn’t exist from what i saw)

    • Checking folder permissions (~/Library/Application Support/Anki2/)

    • Reinstalling the latest Anki from the official site

  • I also called Apple Support, and they confirmed it’s not a macOS issue, but something with Anki itself.

System Info:

  • Mac model & year MacBook Air, M4, 2025

  • macOS version Sequoia 15.5

Question:
Has anyone encountered this behavior before? Could it be a corrupted profile or something else causing Anki to freeze before the UI loads? Any guidance on how to fix it would be appreciated.

2

Can you try running Anki from Terminal.app to see what is happening when Anki doesn’t start? Console Output - Writing Anki Add-ons

3

This is what it says:

/Applications/Anki.app/Contents/MacOS/anki

zsh: no such file or directory:

which makes no sense because i then asked terminal to list all applications and it listed Anki.app as an application

I checked this morning and now anki won’t even show up on my dock. It says Bad CPU type in executable (os error 86)” but I’m confused because I downloaded the latest anki for macOS

4

That’s weird.

Try uninstalling Anki completely and remove the folder at ~Library/Application Support/AnkiProgramFiles then install again.

5

The documentation is out-of-date. That was the old command. The new command you should run is:

/Applications/Anki.app/Contents/MacOS/launcher
6

Left a comment to be fixed in this related PR maybe:

7

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