Large Amount of Unused Media Effectively Unremovable?

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If you’re getting the same result whether you sign out or not though, why introduce that as an additional variable against dae’s advice?

Are you sure you have ~30K other files? Your screenshots have captured “Checked” at certain moments as 85K+ and 202K+. (Or am I mistaken and that is related to filesize, not count?)

Ideas

[Idea 0: Are you using the new backend on AnkiDroid (Settings > Advanced)? Despite the warning message, it’s very stable on 2.16.5. Don’t know if that will help, but it will eliminate another variable. (Enabling the v3 scheduler there will also ensure your scheduler matches between platforms, and eliminate another variable, but seems less likely to help.)]

Idea 1: Have you tried using Check Media on AnkiDroid to delete the files – either instead of or in addition to a Check on AnkiDesktop? Admittedly, there’s some overhead to deleting 27K files if the non-success case is they have to be re-downloaded again :sweat_smile: – but just trying to think of creative ways to get you out of this loop.

Idea 2: Have you tried doing everything that’s been suggested, all in one go (for instance, you seemed to have your add-ons enabled in the video)? Tracking it step-by-step is also more likely to point to exactly where the problem is.

  1. Stay signed-in and internet-connected on both devices
  2. Turn off auto-sync on both devices – to keep everything under your control
  3. Restart Desktop without add-ons
  4. Check Database on both devices
  5. Get all three collections in sync (which takes 3 syncs to be certain – Desktop/Droid/Desktop, or vice versa)
  6. Look at the collection.media sizes on all three collections to see that they match (Managing Files - Anki Manual - FAQ · ankidroid/Anki-Android Wiki · GitHub - https://ankiweb.net/account/media) – now you have a baseline to start your test
  7. Check Media and delete unused on device1 [you choose which device to start with, then try the other, then maybe try both?]
  8. Look at the collection.media sizes on all three collections to see that they don’t match
  9. Sync device1 to AnkiWeb
  10. Look at the collection.media sizes to see what changed
  11. Sync device2 to AnkiWeb
  12. Look at the collection.media sizes again
  13. Sync device1 to AnkiWeb again
  14. Look at the collection.media sizes again

It should be clear to you at some point in that process exactly where it went wrong … or else it could just work!

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