Images on AnkiWeb

[epov345]

I’m having an identical problem. When I make cards using image occlusion or batch editing, those images show up as broken on anki web (coming up as a question mark). These images do not show up as “missing” when I do a “check media” check on my mac 26.6.2 anki version Version ⁨26.08.1. I’ve tried logging out and logging in to force media checks and also trying forcing one-way syncs, neither of which work.

[Danika_Dakika]

I appreciate you trying to economize on threads, but issues two users are having with their own AnkiWeb accounts and collections are almost never identical. I’ve split you off to your own thread.

1. Is the problem only on AnkiWeb, and these cards/images appear fine on both Anki desktop on and AnkiMobile?

2. What device are you using AnkiWeb on, and in what browser? Have you tried other devices/browsers?

3. Have you run Check Media on both devices? Are they reporting identical results?

4. You currently have almost 15 GB of media in your account. Does your media check show a lot of “Unused” files? [Don’t delete them right now, while you have media that isn’t working, but at the end of this process, you should clean that up.]

5. Give me an example as text of a media filename that isn’t working, so I can check your account for that file and see how it is used on your notes.

[epov345]

Hi Danika, thank you so much for your help!

1. I’m experiencing this problem on anki web and ankimobile.
2. I am using a mac 26.6.2 and primarily use chrome. This problem is the same both on chrome and safari ankiweb.
3. I’ve run check media so many time :,( each time it pings as media sync completed and no problems flagged. I just tried adding and deleting files from the collection.media to try and force a deeper media check/sync if that was at all possible and after syncing it did not solve the problem either.
4. My media check does show a huge amount “unused” files. I haven’t touched it during this troubleshooting because I wasn’t sure what it was and didn’t want to accidentally worsen things.
5. “screenshot 2026-08-29 at 11.47.51 pm.png” is an example of an image that isn’t working. It doesn’t work both as a batch edited image added to the “extra” section of existing cards as well as not working as it’s own image occlusion card.

thank you again!

[Danika_Dakika]

@epov345

3. I’ve run check media so many time :,( each time it pings as media sync completed and no problems flagged.

Take another look at the question I asked. Every media file you add to your collection on your computer needs to sync from your computer to AnkiWeb before it will start showing there. And then it needs to sync from AnkiWeb to AnkiMobile before it will start showing there. Checking the media on both devices and comparing the results – and then syncing each device again and comparing again – is the best way to see if the files have synced successfully or if sync is still making progress.

But there’s no “media sync completed and no problems flagged” response in a media check. Make sure you’re running the built-in Tools > Check Media on desktop and ⚙️ Preferences > Check Media in AnkiMobile. For now, just focus on the totals at the top.

@epov345

5. screenshot 2026-08-29 at 11.47.51 pm.png

That file is present in your AnkiWeb account, named –

screenshot 2026-08-29 at 11.47.51 pm.png

But when I look at your collection, I see that file is used in 18 notes as

Screenshot%202026-08-29%20at%2011.47.51 PM.png

Look past the %20’s that are swapped in for spaces, because those are usually handled just fine. I think your problem is a case-sensitivity issue. See –

Anki no longer sync media after update to 26.05

You are using the Anki desktop app on a Mac. The macOS filesystem is case insensitive by default. So, when the Anki app looks for a filename with a specific spelling of upper and lowercase characters, the operating system ignores case when finding a matching filename. You can see an example of this behavior in Terminal: % touch FILE.txt % ls -l file.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 myusername wheel 0 Aug 2 08:29 file.txt % ls -l file.TXT -rw-r--r-- 1 myusername wheel 0 Aug 2 08:29 file.TXT % ls -l to…

When you take a closer look at the Check Media results, look for this specific file and see if it’s listed as “Missing” with one name and “Unused” with the other name.

[epov345]

5. Bingo!! It was the case sensitivity issue like you described! When I went into collections.media and fixed the capitalization of the problem images it solved the problem for some of the images but not for others? Is there a way to prevent this problem in the future aside from altering the names of my images prior to inserting them into anki? Like an add on or systems setting change?

6. Apologies for my imprecise language, I ran the built ins built-in Tools > Check Media on desktop and ⚙️ Preferences > Check Media in AnkiMobile. This is what it yielded respectively: (note: this is after I did as described above in #5 so it’s different than when I was experiencing the issue prior)

I’m still not understanding why they have different numbers?

[BenJamesBen]

@epov345

5. Is there a way to prevent this problem in the future aside from altering the names of my images prior to inserting them into anki? Like an add on or systems setting change?

If you are adding images and notes manually via the Anki app, this problem doesn’t occur. Anki automatically converts the filenames to lowercase when adding them to the media collection folder, and then it uses the lowercased names in the note fields.

If you are using some other method to add images and notes, I suspect that the easiest way to prevent the issue would be to change the filenames and/or the contents of the note fields before adding them.

But, if you don’t want to prevent the problem, I found some Add-ons that might help fix the problem after it occurs:

• Capitalize (uppercase/lowercase/titlecase) (bulk-capitalize or uncapitalize text in note fields)
• Text Field Transformer (Apply transformations to selected notes or all notes, Built-in types: lower, upper, capitalize)

[aleks_ya]

It doesn’t address the file-naming issue, but if you want to examine the collection size in detail, you can try the Note Size addon: