Anki’s search functionality does not currently support ignoring accents or formatting outside the sort field due to technical reasons, but it is something I’d like to address in the future.
I found this old topic and wonder if the time for this has come 
The ignore accent addon doesnt work very well and nc: is incompatible with w: on top of having to type it on every search
Would it be possible to add a toggle somewhere? pretty please?
Wow, thank you so much
This is pure gold!!
I think I suggested the ‘ignore accents’ about ten years ago in the old forum. Without success. Only the nc: syntax (no combining) had been introduced meanwhile which ist not very comfortable when you have to search for words with or w/o accents. I never thought this option would ever been implemented… 
But anyway, thank you for making this happen in 2025! 
BTW My second improvement proposal long time ago was to introduce a donation possibility for Anki… Has this been realized, too?
This was posted in 2022. The feature was added in 2.1.50.
As far as donations – How can I donate? - Anki FAQs .
This has been posted by me in 2020. Ok, not 10 years ago. (I requested this feature in the AnkiDroid forum, first. Then I asked Damien directly.)
To make for example searching for a also find á à â etc.:
Screens:
Examples of what this should help with:
e finds e, e, é, è, ê, ë
a finds a, a, á, à, â, ä, ã, å
c finds c, ç
n finds n, ñ
i finds i, í, ì, î, ï
o finds o, ó, ò, ô, ö, õ
u finds u, ú, ù, û, ü
y finds y, ý, ÿ
This is useful for searching notes/cards containing French (é, è, ê, ë), Spanish (á, é, í, ó, ú, ñ), Portuguese (á, à, â, ã, ç), German (ä, ö, ü), Turkish (ç, ğ, ı, İ, ö, ş, ü), Czech (á, č, ď, é, ě, í, ň, ó, ř, š, ť, ú, ů, ý, ž), Polish (ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż), Vietnamese, Arabic diacritics, Hebrew niqqud, and other accented or diacritic-marked characters.
Arabic examples:
كتب finds كَتَبَ
سلام finds سَلَام
قرآن finds قُرْآن
Hebrew examples:
שלום finds שָׁלוֹם
מלך finds מֶלֶךְ
תורה finds תּוֹרָה
Vietnamese examples:
ma finds má, mà, mả, mã, mạ
ban finds bán, bàn, bản, bãn, bạn
co finds có, cò, cỏ, cõ, cọ
Possible search terms of people with problems which this thread might help with: Anki ignore accents search, Anki browser search diacritics, Anki search accented characters, Anki search Unicode characters, Anki search without accents, Anki search Arabic with diacritics, Anki search Hebrew niqqud, Anki browser search umlauts, Anki search special chars, accent search browser anki, anki browser diacritic search.
Leaving this here because the old locked thread ranks top in search.
Old locked thread: Ignore accent and case while searching
There’s no need to document existing features in the Forums. This is documented in the manual – Preferences - Anki Manual .
They also ask to ignore tags inside a word, since they highlight some symbol in bold 
2026-01-25 added to the addon:
The “$:text” search type is now supported. This will find all words, even if each character is followed by an diacritic (a mark that changes the sound) or if there are tags between letters (bold, etc.) – it will find everything.
The search is not case-sensitive.
To perform this search within a regular expression ("re:"), you must write it as a call to the $(text) function.
How it works: instead of $:abc, the search will be "re:a[\u0300-\u036F]*(<[^>]*>)*"b[\u0300-\u036F]*(<[^>]*>)*c"
That sounds like “There is no need for StackExchange because manpages exist.”
When only “anki find a á à” comes to mind but not the word “accent,” Google won’t serve that page.
This thread is not documenting features, it’s explaining in screenshot tutorials how to achieve something.
The top tutorial here is outdated but still occupies top search results, leading to frustration for users.
The manual has no screenshot and is not structured in a helpful way for getting from P to Q, it is structured for someone willing to learn the entire software from A to Z [and this is OK. the community can fill the gaps.]
Your tutorial won’t help someone who wants to search for “anki find e é ê” or “how to search for Arabic words with diacritics without having to type them” or the infinitely many other possible questions.
What are you talking about? That is exactly the search this would help with. Have you tried searching for that on Google and seen the top result? You might not have seen the thread. It used the same title as the top result plus “(2026)”
Just like with the above, now that you mentioned it here, it will. Before indexing it will keep directing to a useless extension where the crucial info is hidden quite late [oh, wait, the info is at the top as well, but so easy to ignore as a title block], a reddit thread which doesn’t have the answer and an unhelpful locked forum thread making it seem there is no solution.
What is this? Do you have a problem with people asking questions? On a forum? That is a sign of needing a break from (backseat) moderating.
I think you misunderstand the point of both the Anki Forums and StackExchange. These are places for folks to ask questions and get help – not to post “screenshot tutorials” for basic features.
We don’t include many screenshots in the manual and FAQ for simple reasons – they won’t match the interface across all platforms/versions, they can quickly become outdated, and there’s no easy way for non-English-speaking users to translate them (like they can with text).
If you feel you have something to contribute to documenting Anki, I encourage you to do so. But the documentation is the main place for that – not these Forums. And before you start proposing things, you should make sure you have a really good understanding of the features, so that the information you’re offering is correct and helpful.
First of all, sorry to both of you for my crappy attitude. I repeatedly sense faintly toxic RTFM-vibes on these forums that are out of line with how people actually learn using software but me being a dick is not helping.
We don’t include many screenshots in the manual and FAQ
I should have been more clear: I am not complaining about that fact. It make perfect sense to keep the manual lean and localizable.
point of […] StackExchange
Can I answer my own questions, even if I knew the answer before asking? - Meta Stack Exchange - Answer: “Yes! […] It’s even been encouraged since the very beginning of time.”
point of […] Anki Forums […] for folks to ask questions and get help – not to post “screenshot tutorials” for basic features.
I’ll assume you do not oppose people helping others by tutorializing their answers.
I’m assuming the benefit of screenshots is not under discussion. Just in case, here’s a screenshot of a context menu with the target menu item highlighted:
A resource with the text “Right click and select Find Duplicates” requires much more attention than having a screenshot along the text which instantly shows you how the context menu should look (so if it’s different you know you probably clicked in the wrong place) and it shows you where the menu item is located so you don’t have to read one after the other until you find the right one, in particular helpful to people under pressure, with low attention spans, or with dyslexia.
A reminder: I wrote my post as a new thread because this thread was locked. Even if it wasn’t the post marked “SOLVED” is incorrect by now. A new thread would be more helpful, unless moderators can change what is marked solved. Otherwise visitors entering this page are directed to a wrong answer at the top of the page.
Next time the UI changes again, a new thread with “(2031)” at the end would likely be a good solution.
So, are you saying what I did is worse than doing nothing? I couldn’t reply to the old locked thread, and it contributes to the pollution of Google with incorrect answers. Do you disagree that my action is a valid attempt to improve the path to a solution for people who use Google in a similar way as me? Or is there an actual way for users like me to improve the situation?
Or should we let the forums rot with outdated and unanswered threads and use Reddit (adding screenshots sucks on Reddit) and ‘anki’ Questions on Super User (extremely low use so far) instead?
contribute to documenting Anki […]. the documentation is the main place for that – not these Forums
You established that the documentation limits screenshot use. For a good reason. I established that screenshots are incredibly useful. Clearly contributing specific user story screenshot tutorials to the documentation is out of the question.
I also assume that the documentation aims to be concise and not cover every single use case. So covering the same functionality by describing the many perspectives from which users might need help is probably also not an option for the documentation.
You must be painfully aware of the fact that people do search and ask about their specific use cases, not being aware of circumstances (see my other recent thread), using specific letters rather than overarching terms, not knowing/thinking of what a ° is called, especially when encountering these symbols for the first time while learning a language using Anki.
Perhaps you hope to fix that? Google AI Overview states “Approximately 2.5 million first-time, first-year college students enroll in U.S. higher education each year.” Anki is likely to increasingly prioritize growth since the restructure. Ignoring the fact that the forums fill holes in the documentation and are one of the primary places Google points to doesn’t seem helpful. I’m assuming people mainly use Google and ChatGPT to learn about Anki.
before you start proposing things, you should make sure you have a really good understanding of the features
To know that I would have to know Anki. I only (barely) know what I think I need to reach my learning goals within Anki. I’m trying to learn a language, not to become an Anki expert. When I see blatant mistakes marked as solutions on the forums in locked threads, it seems trivially easy to make a thread with the same title and updated solution. Apparently Cunningham’s Law, the edit button and me re-visiting the forum can take care of mistakes which I introduce.
When I googled my issue (anki find a á à), this thread was one of the top results. I created a new thread with the same title + indication of how recent it is, linked to the old answer, stated it is wrong, added my specific use case (make searching for a also find á à â etc). The hope is that this will make Google update its results. Not overnight. After days, weeks.
“screenshot tutorials” for basic features
I don’t get the point. Are you hinting at my particular instructions or screenshots being bad? If so, fair, but please be more blunt and I might be able to improve it. Or are you complaining about people wanting/needing screenshots in general? Or implying that Anki noobs and people not willing to read the manual do not deserve to be helped on their terms (by “their terms” i mean “based on how they word their problem”)?
The reality of needing help with basic features for Anki is that learners are interrupting their studying session while in the zone, frustrated, under time pressure, Google offers many pages, many without a solution or wrong/outdated.
My experience of Google results for Anki help is that it seem to consist mainly of a tag team of three: Anki Forums, Reddit and Anki Extensions. The documentation doesn’t seem to rank high. (again: just my experience)
I searched for “anki find e é ê” and this topic did not show up.
I didn’t pay attention and didn’t notice you changed a to e. So your original complaint was that my post does not cover many use cases?
I searched for “anki find a á à”. Google pointed me to this forum. Google was apparently smart enough to conclude that my question should be answered here. It used to be correct, but it didn’t consider that the software changed since.
I concluded:
Anyways, I edited and added some stuff ChatGPT suggested to try to help with your complaint about the guide not being all-encompassing by adding lots of examples. [EDIT: I tested them, they work]
No it won’t.
Not yet. Search engine updates can take days, weeks, months.
Your post just adds to the bloat on the internet
Perhaps you wish for a world where people do not start searches for their specific problems while being in the zone trying to cram, but instead first become aware of the big picture of what they are doing/trying to achieve and perhaps also RTFM first to know Ankis exact terminology? I do not intend to be sarcastic this time - this would be nice but it’s probably out of touch with reality. I know it is for me.
I guess all I can do is to encourage you to consider the perspective of learning impaired / dyslexic / stressed / first year learners out there. And the reality of the forums ranking high in Anki help searches with all of the outdated or unanswered threads.
EDIT: One reason why I’m coming in hot is that I attribute Anki to saving my current efforts of learning a foreign language. I was on the brink of cancelling lessons but finally managed to force myself to learn vocabulary with Anki, enabling me to stop falling behind class. It breaks my heart to see the Anki experience potentially degrading because of the de facto documentation on the forums not catching up with the efforts of the devs at improving the software. Over the years I have seen so many software forums decay with toxic RTFM mentality that It’s hard to resist matching the vibes when perceiving them.
Do you know if there is a feature request for this feature? I couldn’t find any. I’d like to have this option, but I’d prefer if I didn’t have to use an addon.
Sorry, but I don’t know. The user requested it, so I quickly added it. Of course, the search speed is reduced because it’s complex.
I’m not an Anki developer; I’m literally a beginner at this, so for now I’m making add-ons, and in them I can only change Anki’s Python code. The Rust code can’t be changed that way; I’d essentially have to compile the entire Anki code, which is like a different version, which I certainly won’t support.
So you could ask them to do it yourself, pointing to the add-on that currently does it. Maybe someone will be in favor. I rarely highlight characters, but I think it’s very useful. I think it would be nice if Anki supported Markdown natively.
Thanks a lot for your effort!
I opened another thread for this: Feature Request: Ignore tags while searching
It’s generally unnecessary. We’d rather have things that actually need to be documented added to the actual docs, not just posted in the Forums. But the primary objection to your posts is that they are incorrect (and accuse correct answers of being incorrect) – which doesn’t help anyone.
That’s not true. A minor change to the UI doesn’t make the other post incorrect. But continuing to claim that – based on the screenshot – drives home pretty clearly the points I made before: screenshots can become outdated quickly. Yours will too. It’s not any more possible to translate screenshots here in the Forum than it is in the manual and FAQ.
An individual question and answer live in the time-period that they were posted. No one should expect a 4+ year old post to have current accurate information. The place where feature documentation should be updated is the manual.
We don’t discourage folks from asking questions, but we encourage personal responsibility, and respect for the time and energy of others. Not every question merits a custom response.
When the answer is already clearly and carefully written in the manual or FAQ, and it’s obvious that the user hasn’t looked at it yet, giving them a link to the relevant page/section of the manual is the best answer – for them, and for others who find the page later. Writing a bespoke answer for them here just creates another outpost of information that will not be maintained and will become outdated.
