Can't delete unused media files (name with leading _)

Syncing & AnkiWeb
1

Hi, I noticed that there are bogus 25 media files (all start with at least one underscore) in my Anki collection, so I synced with AnkiWeb, deleted them locally, check media (didn’t report any issues) and then forced upload to AnkiWeb. However, they keep getting downloaded by AnkiDroid for some reason, even if I remove all of the Anki data from the phone and force a full collection download.

As AnkiDroid is able to download them, I guess it isn’t an AnkiDroid problem as they are apparently still available for download, i.e. still exist in AnkiWeb, right?

I read about files having a leading underscore being ‘special’ and not subject to automatic removal, but does it mean there is no way to really get rid of them, and they will live on forever? Or is there something I can do about it?

2

Deleting them and then syncing to other devices will send the deletions across, provided your media was already fully in sync before you deleted them.

3

Hi Damien, since I have you here, let me first thank you very much for your work on the Anki suite, I use it (literally) every day.

Back to my question - I’m pretty sure that the media was in sync because I do it often, but somehow the _ files are still there. Is there anything that I can do now (can you provide steps?), or is it at this point broken beyond repair and I will never be able to get rid of them?

4

Ok so I cleaned my collection with this procedure:

  1. clean it up locally
  2. export it (with media)
  3. remove my anki profile locally
  4. remove my anki account on anki web
  5. create an account with the same username
  6. create a new profile locally for the same account
  7. import the collection
  8. sync with anki web (uploaded the whole collection)
  9. remove the anki folder on my phone
  10. force download on my phone

All in all media size went down by about 30 mb, I guess it was worth it. I wonder if there is any easier way, though…

5

You shouldn’t need to do that, and had you waited we could have debugged it further, but glad you’ve been able to resolve the issue in any case :slight_smile: