“Media is being synced in the background” always showing in AnkiDroid

Hi,
I’m having an issue with AnkiDroid where the message “Media is being synced in the background” appears almost all the time and never seems to fully go away.

I’ve already searched the forum for this issue, but I haven’t found any clear solution.

What’s strange is that this happens across multiple Android devices and with different AnkiWeb accounts. I’ve even tested with completely new accounts, with no decks and no media files at all, and the behavior is exactly the same.

Here’s what I’ve already tried:

  • Clearing app data
  • Reinstalling AnkiDroid
  • Using new AnkiWeb accounts
  • Testing on different devices
  • Removing decks that had media

The result is always the same.

It doesn’t seem to affect normal usage (I can study and everything works fine), but the message keeps appearing or coming back shortly after.

My questions are:
Is this normal behavior in AnkiDroid (media sync always running in the background)?
Is there any way to check if something is actually being synced or if it’s stuck?
Is there any definitive fix, or is this something that should just be ignored?

Thanks.

No, it’s not normal for media sync to never finish. If you have a lot of media that you’re syncing for the first time, that can take time/several attempts. But otherwise, it should conclude pretty soon after the collection sync.

  1. Can you clarify where this message is being shown persistently? Is this the pop-up/toast message at the bottom of the screen? Or is this the notification outside of AnkiDroid – with the rest of your devices notifications?

I think it will be important to know the specs of those installs.

  1. For each device, go to Settings > About > Copy debug info, and paste that whole thing here.

The pop-up message at the bottom of the screen.

Phone

AnkiDroid Version = 2.23.3 (9001068fd4819c6fb66cb8239e7166868ab47859)

Backend Version = 0.1.62-anki25.09.2 (25.09.2 3890e12c9e48c028c3f12aa58cb64bd9f8895e30)

Android Version = 16 (SDK 36)

ProductFlavor = play

Device Info = samsung | samsung | e1s | e1sxeea | SM-S921B | s5e9945

Webview User Agent = Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 16; SM-S921B Build/BP2A.250605.031.A3; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/146.0.7680.164 Mobile Safari/537.36

ACRA UUID = 2904041d-fe3e-4668-98b2-9c0a81defdaf

FSRS = 5.1.0 (Enabled: true)

Crash Reports Enabled = true

Tablet

AnkiDroid Version = 2.23.3 (9001068fd4819c6fb66cb8239e7166868ab47859)

Backend Version = 0.1.62-anki25.09.2 (25.09.2 3890e12c9e48c028c3f12aa58cb64bd9f8895e30)

Android Version = 16 (SDK 36)

ProductFlavor = play

Device Info = samsung | samsung | gta4xlswifi | gta4xlswifieea | SM-P620 | s5e8825

Webview User Agent = Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 16; SM-P620 Build/BP2A.250605.031.A3; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/146.0.7680.119 Safari/537.36

ACRA UUID = e630f6b9-7911-45c0-9b51-68d12e86c5a4

FSRS = 5.1.0 (Enabled: true)

Crash Reports Enabled = true