I will try to provide as much detail as possible.
I am running Tahoe Beta 26.0 on Apple Silicon. I have observed in the forums that users on Sequoia are also having this issue, so I believe a solution targeting Sequoia will also help me. I am located in China. This is relevant, because it means I have issues accessing GitHub, and I am on a VPN, as that’s the only practical solution to so many useful tools being blocked here. I am not on Astrill.
This is a new install on the machine. I have not previously used Anki on it.
When I download and launch Anki launcher, the launcher fails to check for Anki versions. This is true whether or not my VPN is enabled. It fails after an excessively long amount of time (about five minutes or so), which makes testing various settings really unpleasant.
The following output is produced in my terminal (zsh):
Anki Launcher
Checking for updates…Unable to check for Anki versions. Please check your internet connection.
Error: Failed to run (2): /Applications/Anki.app/Contents/MacOS/uv run --no-project --no-config --managed-python --with pip-system-certs --python 3.13.5 /Applications/Anki.app/Contents/Resources/versions.py: Downloading cpython-3.13.5-macos-aarch64-none (download) (14.9MiB)
error: Failed to extract archive: cpython-3.13.5-20250612-aarch64-apple-darwin-install_only_stripped.tar.gz
Caused by: failed to unpack /Users/ray/.local/share/uv/python/.temp/.tmp86v2Q6/python/lib/python3.13/ensurepip/_bundled/pip-25.1.1-py3-none-any.whl
Caused by: failed to unpack python/lib/python3.13/ensurepip/_bundled/pip-25.1.1-py3-none-any.whl into /Users/ray/.local/share/uv/python/.temp/.tmp86v2Q6/python/lib/python3.13/ensurepip/_bundled/pip-25.1.1-py3-none-any.whl
Caused by: error decoding response body
Caused by: request or response body error
Caused by: error reading a body from connection
Caused by: stream error received: unspecific protocol error detected
Press enter to close…
I have tried exercises based on what others have suggested. In this post on the forums (internet-connection/64615/4), dae asks if the user can access pypi org pypi aqt json - and indeed, I can, with or without the VPN.
User DyingBob provided a workaround for Windows that according to some no longer works (anki-anki-launcher-uv/64485). The crux was to point uv to a mirror. I replicated the solution in MacOS in ~/Library/Application Support/AnkiProgramFiles by adding a file called uv.toml with the following lines:
python-install-mirror = “``https://registry.npmmirror.com/-/binary/python-build-standalone/”
[[index]]
url = “``https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/pypi/web/simple/”
default = true
This has no effect.
In a thread launched by wgm096350 (cant-install-the-latest-version-of-anki-on-macos/65115), dae suggests deleting the ~/Library/Application Support/AnkiProgramFiles folder entirely and trying again. About five minutes later, Anki Launcher fails again.
I also have a VPN network that I can access via my router that bypasses my need to have my VPN running as a process locally. I receive a similar failure. I also disabled the VPN from starting on launch and then attempted the Launcher on both the VPN-enabled network and the normal (Chinese internet) network. Doing this fails as well.
I have tried the latest beta version of Anki, 25.08b4. There is no difference between this and the latest stable version. The launcher never succeeds at checking for updates. I installed the version before the Launcher - 25.02.7. Happily, this works for me, but this is not a long-term fix.
I am not the best Anki user; I am not the best student. I believe in Anki deeply, though, and have used it for over a decade. I supported the project by buying a license on iOS twice. I love Anki. I really don’t love this experience with the Launcher.
