Changes made to Profile name didn't sync, had to manually change on every device

Anki Syncing & AnkiWeb
1

Hello,

I’ve been using Anki on macOS and AnkiMobile on iOS for a month using the default User 1 Profile. Today I decided to change the name to a personal user name on my MacBook, but the changes weren’t synced to my mobile devices after I pressed the Sync button on macOS and then iOS. I then did Full Syncs on all devices, forcing an upload on macOS and download on iOS, but the changes still weren’t synced. Finally I had to make new profiles on both my iOS devices, rename User 1 to my new user name and delete the temporary new profiles.

My question is: is this an intended behavior or a minor bug? If intended, please consider including Profile name changes in the syncing process to avoid causing confusion.

My hardware and software environments:

  • MacBook 2018 13" running macOS Big Sur version 11.0 Beta (20A5374g)
  • iPhone X running iOS 14.0
  • iPad 6th gen (2018) running iOS 14.0

Anki versions:

  • Anki for macOS, Version 2.1.33 (3f403040)
  • Anki for iOS (TestFlight beta), Version 2.0.66 (20066.8)

Thank you for developing and maintaining this marvelous piece of software, looking forward to using it for many years to come and hopefully contributing to the community! :smiley:

2

This is intended behaviour.

Profile names aren’t synchronised because the profile name is kind of like a “session” – it’s a local thing that only matters on Anki Desktop (or iOS I guess) where you can be logged into multiple AnkiWeb accounts at the same time. AnkiWeb doesn’t know anything about profiles because only one logical “profile” can be linked to an AnkiWeb account (if you link two profiles to the same AnkiWeb account you’ll just end up with two copies of the same collection).

If you’d renamed both profiles on your iOS devices it would’ve solved your issue – you didn’t need to create new profiles or anything like that.

1 Like
3

Thanks for explaining tha rationale behind Profiles, the intentional lack of syncing makes much more sense to me now.

I did attempt to rename the Profile, but unlike its desktop counterpart, AnkiMobile for iOS doesn’t allow renaming the Profile that’s currently in use. So I guess it would be nice if we could easily rename profiles without creating a new profile first on iOS just like we do on desktop.

4

This is a bit tricky at the moment, as currently AnkiMobile always has a profile open, but I agree it would be nice if switching profiles first were not required.

5

Thanks for noting the request. I imagine most if not all users don’t change Profile names regularly, so the request is in no way urgent.