Anki suddenly no longer starts on laptop

Anki Help
1

After gracefully shutting down Anki (which had been working fine) and then the laptop itself earlier today, on restarting the laptop I find that Anki now refuses to start. Closing and/or restarting the laptop a number of times makes no difference. When I click on the Anki icon in the launchpad thing at bottom left, the said icon appears for a few minutes at the bottom of the screen while it is trying to initialise (with the usual dynamic looping symbol) before disappearing completely. This happened repeatedly.

I searched the forums but could not find an appropriate question and answer. I then consulted the Troubleshooting part of the Anki Manual which suggested starting Anki while holding down the Shift Key, saying that if the problem went away then it must be an add-on which is causing the issue.

In fact the problem did go away. But I do not have any add-ons. At least I have never added one: I am very confident of this because I wouldn’t even know how to begin doing so.

So I now (apparently) have Anki running in what the Troubleshooting section tells me is ‘Safe mode’. I don’t know what this means. Something is clearly not right, and I am nervous to continue in case what has happened is a sign that a more comprehensive fix is needed. Meanwhile, should I expect to always have to start Anki with the Shift key depressed in the future? What does ‘Safe mode’ actually mean?

My Anki was installed on my laptop about 6 months ago and is Version 24.06.2.

2

Safe mode starts Anki without starting any add-ons and without doing an automatic sync. It’s fine to keep using it that way, but let’s try some things to fix it so you don’t need to.

  1. If it’s not add-ons – is it auto-sync? After you opened in safe mode, have you synced with AnkiWeb? Try that.

  2. Run Tools > Check Database.

  3. Go to Help/Anki > About – click Copy Debug Info – paste that entire result here when you respond.

  4. Run Anki in a terminal window, so we can see any errors from the crash. I can give you directions for that, but it depends on what OS you’re using.

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3

Thank-you for the very quick response.

  1. Yes once it opened in Safe mode the first thing I did was to sync with AnkiWeb. That worked fine.
  2. I did a database check too and that was OK.
  3. Copy Debug Info is as follows:

Anki 24.06.2 (33a92379)
Python 3.9.18 Qt 6.6.2 PyQt 6.6.1
Platform: Linux-6.6.56-05934-gf790fe104dba-x86_64-with-glibc2.31

  1. My OS is Chrome.

FWIW I just rebooted my machine again and Anki started fine without pressing Shift. Can going into Safe mode just once have fixed what was wrong?

4

I don’t know if safe mode could have “fixed” it, but a sync or Check Database could have!

If it wasn’t just a passing glitch and it starts happening again, running anki from a Linux terminal/xterm command line will give you some additional output that may be useful.

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5

Thanks. I’ll bear that in mind.

6

Following a hard reboot anki has once again started refusing to initialise, and this time holding the shift key down makes no difference. You suggested running it from a Linux terminal/xterm command line, but I have no idea what this means or how to do it. Can you (or anyone) explain further or else point me to explanation/instructions? Thanks.

7

It should be just as simple as that – Console Output - Writing Anki Add-ons .

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8

Thanks. I apologise for bothering you unnecessarily. After writing the last post I thought to update my Linux installation, and this seems to have been the root of the problem. All good now, but I appreciate your very prompt responses and will look at your links if anything like this happens again. Meanwhile I will ensure I keep my Linux up-to-date.

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