Confirm deletion (reviewer)

Suggestions
1

Hello,
would it be possible to make this the default way Anki behaves?
(i.e., after clicking the ‘delete note’ note shortcut in the reviewer, ask if your really want to delete the note)

In Windows the shortcut is Ctrl + Del, so deleting a note by accident is difficult enough, but mistakes do happen and recovering deleted notes is not the simplest task.

It would be really useful if the confirm deletion menu displayed the number of cards that would be deleted, e.g.: “do you really want to delete this note (5 cards)?”.
[?Maybe the number should be a clickable link to a browser search of the note id?
So as to see all the cards you would be deleting]
This would be especially useful for newer users, who often do not know the difference between notes and cards and would risk to delete many more cards than they intended.
The confirm deletion menu could display some sort of explanatory text along the lines of: “(if you do not know the difference between notes and cards check https://docs.ankiweb.net/)”

This is all. Sorry if this has already been implemented in newer Anki versions and I missed it.
Thank you,
jcznk

2 Likes
2

If you delete a card / note by mistake, the undo command will solve the problem.

I think it’s a better solution than confirmation dialogs

4 Likes
3

Yes, but that only works if you notice it right away (which might not be the case if you’re distracted enough to mistakenly click the ‘delete note’ shortcut).
Also, in my experience Ctrl + Z is kind of unreliable, it does not always work and often lets you go back only a couple actions; e.g. if I have in the meanwhile clicked my way through 2 cards it would not allow me to go back and undelete a note, or undo the third-to-last review etc. Maybe this has been fixed in newer versions.

It also does not help in informing new users on how deleting notes/cards works.

However, I can see how confirmation dialogs could be a bit bothersome to some. Maybe you should be able to decide how you want your Anki to behave in the preferences?

2 Likes
4

I think using Ctrl+Z is extremely common for “undo”, so it’s not really necessary to add a prompt. Also, you cannot really design a program by assuming a user has no clue of what they’re doing. Most of the time, it’s true, but it’s on the user to RTFM (the interface is already quite clear).

Also, I have noticed that the keybinding has been moved (or maybe has always been, IDK) to Ctrl+Alt+Z. This might be confusing IMO (because Ctrl+Z is kind of standard), but nonetheless I personally felt that the “undo” action was reliable.

2 Likes
5

Re undo being cleared, please see The 2021 scheduler - Frequently Asked Questions

I’m not very keen on adding a confirmation step to an undoable action, but if the existing popup is being overlooked, maybe we could look at making it more prominent somehow.

6

I will upvote this, and propose a middle ground, to accommodate those who dislike confirmation dialogs:

I would like to have Anki asking for confirmation if I try to delete, in the reviewer, a note that has multiple cards.

If it’s just one card in the note, it can be deleted straight away, because I am actually looking at the card that is being deleted.

7

There is already a simple proposal, to have a recycling bin similar to Google Drive.