I’m an M1 Mac user, and when I upgrade Anki from 25.02.7 to 25.09.2, the images on the answer side show up with about a 0.5-second delay. On iPhone, there’s no delay, but on Android, both images and audio are delayed.
What do you think would be the best way to fix this image delay?
Also, how is it on Windows? I’m wondering whether I should switch to a Surface with Snapdragon or an Intel Surface.
What happens when you create a simple new card with an image on the backside, is it delayed as well? Does this happen with all cards or just cards from some pre-made deck? How do these card templates look like? Have you tried to disable add-ons?
Certainly no reason to switch to likely less-performant platforms …
The word “never” makes it easier to understand, and yes, it looks like that kind of issue. Saying there is a 0.5-second delay was probably an exaggeration. Android is even worse, though. It happens with all decks, including simple cards, and it still happens even with all add-ons disabled.
The reason I’m considering switching from Mac to Windows is that my future workplace will probably use Windows.
I do not see this behavior on my M1 Mac Mini, macOS Tahoe 26.4.1, Anki 25.09.2 with my cards. For me, answer-side images appear instantly when answers are revealed, with no delay.
Regarding the image file for your “never” card, what format is the image, what are its pixel dimensions, and what is its file size? (It’s hard to tell from the video, but the image looks somewhat large. Does the issue occur if a smaller image is used?)
From looking at your video, there is no delay with the “agree” card. Is this correct, that you do not see any delay issues with that card? If so, do you see the behavior on just some cards but not others? (I notice that the “agree” and “never” cards seem to be different. The “never” card has some sort of box or button at the bottom, while “agree” has just text.)
I had the same issue and turns out images are better to be compressed. The bigger an image, the bigger the delay.
2560 × 1496 webp 143 KB
I also tried JPG/PNG, compression, and resizing. Making the images smaller helps a little, but there is still a delay no matter how small I make them.
For reference, there is no delay on iPhone or on Anki 25.02. But on Android and the latest version MAC OS, there is a delay.
It also happens even without any template changes, so the template may not be related. I think “agree” was just a mistake in the recording. I tested it again just now, and the delay happens normally.
Please help. My anki life!!
the resolution is kind of big, but the size is not. what happens if you add this:
img {
width:auto;
height: 250px !important;
}
to the styling section of your note: Cards → Styling
There wasn’t any noticeable change. I wonder why.
I thought it Anki would render a big image as a small one, it could help, but there was a slim chance of that.
I am still unable to reproduce the behavior on Mac desktop Anki. I found and downloaded a 2560x1440 JPEG file, converted it to both lossless and lossy WebP formats, and created notes/cards that showed the images 4x times on the answer side (to try to make it slower). However, I tested the cards and saw no noticeable delay displaying the images.
In general, I suggest using smaller images (800x350 is the default size that I use for my decks) and using JPEG or PNG formats. If you do most of your review on a mobile phone with a small screen, smaller images should look just fine.
I also suggest this testing on the Mac desktop Anki: create and switch to a new Profile, add some Basic note type cards (some text on Front, single image on Back), and see if the delay behavior is still reproducible under those circumstances.
(In case anyone else wants to reproduce my testing, I used this photo for my testing, and I converted it to webp using this website. For the notes/cards, I cloned the Basic card and added 3 more fields to the back side. Though, I now realize that I could have simply added 3 more copies of {{Back}} to the template instead of adding the additional fields.)
Have you also tried other things on the Troubleshooting Checklist – like #4 check database, #6 video drivers, and #7 reset window sizes?
I don’t now if it will help with this issue (but it certainly won’t hurt) for you to run Tools > Check Media > Delete Unused. It sounds like you work with larger files, and Anki holds onto those in your collection, even when you stop using them in notes, until you explicitly say to delete them. You currently have over 1 GB of media in your account.]
Even when I created a new profile and made the image smaller, it didn’t help.
When I use a template like {{Front}} {{Back}} (with the image here) {{Meaning}}, the image still loads with a delay at the same time as {{Meaning}}.
Even after trying the other items on the Troubleshooting Checklist, it still doesn’t work. I’ve been going back and forth with GPT about this the whole time, haha.
By the way, does having over 1 GB of media actually cause problems? I want to restart my English vocabulary study, so the total amount of media will probably become quite large in the end.
Also, even on Android (Nothing 3a Lite), there is still a delay even when I use very small media files. So now I’m wondering if this is just expected behavior.
On my Mac, there is no delay unless I update Anki to the latest version… but I want to use the latest version because I need the newest FSRS features.
I tested on AnkiDroid v2.24.0alpha13 and found that a 4928x3280px jpg image takes 0.3 seconds to load, but resizing the image (with an outside tool, not CSS) to 1232x820px makes it load with no noticable delay.
How about other devices or other media formats? For example, PNG files. Large PNG images seem much more likely to cause delay.（ Of course, there’s no delay on my Mac with 25.02 or on iOS, when PNG files）
I converted the same 4928x3280px image to png lossless which increased the file size from about 6MB to 24MB, yet the loading time is pretty much the same (I recorded the screen and both took 9 frames at 30fps).
I have not tested other devices.
Different file systems handle gigantic folders of media in different ways, but it seems like the answer must be “yes,” right? If your devices are spending more time and energy managing your files, they have less time and energy for everything else. Not to mention how serious things can get when your storage space starts to fill up.
Cleaning up your unused media is extremely low risk (because it’s a 2-step process to actually delete the files), so it ends up being pretty much all reward.
May be related to: Revisit async image decoding/preloading · Issue #4373 · ankitects/anki · GitHub.
A potential fix was merged, but is yet to be released.
I used to have around 20 GB of PNG files, and it still worked normally, so I thought that wasn’t the issue. LOL
I’m not very familiar with the technical side, but has this at least been raised as an issue? If so, it feels like there’s probably not much I can do on my end. For now, I might just keep using the older version.
Personally, if this gets fixed, I’d like to switch from iOS to Android. Has the same issue also been reported on Android? Do you think it’s likely to be resolved?