[BUG] Learning cards bury other cards even when their steps are not over yet + some visual issues

Anki Help
1

Visual-only issues

In AnkiDroid’s deck overview, cards that will be buried are shown as “+x buried”, but it should be just “+x”, with a tooltip on tap/long press that explains the number like in Anki Desktop.

Outdated

Steps to reproduce

  1. Make a new deck “zz” with subdecks “zz1” and “zz2”.
  2. Assign them a preset with 9999 new/review limits and all burying options enabled. Make sure the first learning step is shorter than the learn ahead limit and the time left until the “start of next day”.
  3. Make 3 basic and reversed notes.
  4. Move the cards of type 1 to zz1, and the cards of type 2 to zz2.
  5. Set the due date of the cards in zz2 to 0. This is just to make them review cards and due today.

Case 1

Answer a (review) card in zz2. This does bury the sibling card in zz1 as expected, but:

Actual behavior

The deck overview of zz1 does not have a “+1 buried”, and the deck overview of zz says there are 0 new cards +2 buried.

Expected behavior

The deck overview of zz1 has a “+1 buried”, and the deck overview of zz says there are 0 new cards +3 buried.

Case 2

Answer all 3 cards in zz1 with “Again”, then one more card (which is a learning card now). The sibling of the learning card will be buried as expected, but:

Actual behavior

  • zz2’s deck overview only shows 2 review cards.
  • The deck overview of zz shows 0 review cards +2 buried.

Expected behavior

  • zz2’s deck overview shows 2 review cards +1 buried.
  • The deck overview of zz shows 0 review cards +3 buried (because of the learning card we answered and the 2 remaining learning cards).

Learning card burying other cards even when its step is not over

Steps to reproduce

  1. Make a new deck “zz” with subdecks “zz1” and “zz2”.
  2. Assign them a preset with 9999 new/review limits and all burying options enabled. Also, make sure the first learning step is greater than the learn ahead limit, but less than the time left for the “start of next day”.
  3. Make 3 basic and reversed notes.
  4. Move the cards of type 1 to zz1, and the cards of type 2 to zz2.
  5. Set the due date of the cards in zz2 to 0. This is just to make them review cards and due today.
  6. Answer a card in zz1 with “Again”.

Actual behavior

zz’s deck overview will say that there are 2 review cards +1 buried, despite the learning card not being available yet (and new cards do not bury review cards, so no card is buried).

Expected behavior

zz’s deck overview will say that there are 3 review cards.

Extra

Tested on Anki 25.09.2 and AnkiDroid 2.24.0alpha5.

Debug info - Anki Desktop 
Anki 25.09.2 (3890e12c) (ao)
Python 3.13.5 Qt 6.9.1 PyQt 6.9.1
Platform: Windows-10-10.0.19045-SP0

===Add-ons (active)===
(add-on provided name [Add-on folder, installed at, version, is config changed])
Advanced Copy Fields ['1898445115', 2024-01-08T20:01, 'v0.4.01', '']
AnkiConnect ['2055492159', 2025-11-09T22:40, 'None', mod]
AnkiWebView Inspector ['31746032', 2023-06-27T22:26, 'None', '']
Disconnected Review-Log Cleaner ['1067771610', 2025-06-10T16:28, 'None', '']
Local Audio Server for Yomichan ['1045800357', 2023-06-19T06:57, 'None', '']
The KING of Button Add-ons ['374005964', 2025-01-28T01:26, 'None', mod]

===IDs of active AnkiWeb add-ons===
1045800357 1067771610 1898445115 2055492159 31746032 374005964

===Add-ons (inactive)===
(add-on provided name [Add-on folder, installed at, version, is config changed])
No Distractions Full Screen Fixed by Shige ['1370336700', 2024-08-26T08:08, 'None', mod]
Debug info - AnkiDroid 
AnkiDroid Version = 2.24.0alpha5 (8d757055ff49d27a3d24935bb1478975bce8ba92)  
Backend Version = 0.1.63-anki25.09.2 (25.09.2 3890e12c9e48c028c3f12aa58cb64bd9f8895e30)  
Android Version = 13 (SDK 33)  
ProductFlavor = full  
Device Info = Xiaomi | POCO | mondrian | mondrian_global | 23013PC75G | qcom  
WebView Info = [com.google.android.webview | 755913203]: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 13; 23013PC75G Build/TKQ1.220905.001; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/144.0.7559.132 Mobile Safari/537.36  
ACRA UUID = 4afc3b3f-e93f-4a66-bc71-2b9476ef9eb0  
FSRS = 5.1.0 (Enabled: true)  
Crash Reports Enabled = true

Originally posted on Reddit: Reddit - The heart of the internet.

2

[This addresses “Visual-only issues” Case 1 and Case 2.]

After the card has already been buried, it shouldn’t be included on the gray + number anymore. That is a counter of cards that are currently available, but won’t be offered today because they will be buried. As those cards become buried, the counter decreases – that behavior is correct.

In desktop Anki, it doesn’t say “+1 buried” – it just says “+1.” So this seems like it is a mislabeling issue in AnkiDroid.

I can reproduce this, and I agree that it doesn’t look quite right.

What stands out to me is that the Review card isn’t actually buried. It doesn’t show as buried in Browse, and it’s still available if you click to study the subdeck directly. But you can’t study it through the parent deck at all.

[This happens the same regardless of the Learn Ahead Limit. Adjusting your step longer than that here just ensures you don’t accidentally study the Learn card before checking the results, because that does correctly bury the Review card.]

But is this a logic issue in the parent-deck study queue or is it correct? It’s excluding that Review card from the study queue because it will be buried today – predicting that the just-introduced card will be studied in Learn. And then it’s leaving it out of the study queue even when you run out of cards without it getting buried yet. Interestingly – if you bury that just-introduced card that is waiting on its step delay, the Review card pops right back up as available.

1 Like
3

That’s how sibling burying works from my testing. No actual burying happens until you answer a card.

I don’t think of it as “the review card will be buried”, but rather that Anki prioritizes intraday > interday > review > new, forcing it to be buried no matter which actually comes first. For me, this prioritization often fails to take place due to me studying from subdecks directly.

[It would be interesting to see some benchmarks/simulations comparing the current prioritization with a more flexible “whatever comes first buries the others”. But that’s a topic for another day.]

4

You reported that the card was buried, so I was clarifying it wasn’t – at least in my testing.

Ordinarily, I’d expect that until the card is buried, it should be available to be studied. I suppose it isn’t allowed to jump back from the “gray” while another card is on a step delay because that would be alarming/unpredictable to see as a user.