"Media is being synced in the background": How can I check the progress?

AnkiDroid (Android) Help
1

Hello, I’m trying to debug a sync issue and I’m not even sure if the problem is with the desktop client or with AnkiDroid yet. Basically, I created a file _style.css in my collection.media/ folder on the desktop and I @import this from various places in the CSS for my note types to define common styles.

For some reason, my phone is using an old version of _style.css (I can tell just looking at the rendering), and it won’t update to the new version despite forcing one-way syncs on both the computer and phone, and enabling “all media types” in the AnkiDroid advanced settings. (I also did the database and media scan/repair thing on both devices and neither reported issues.)

The only thing I can think is that my phone is stuck syncing “in the background” (as the popup referenced in the title says when you press the sync button) but I don’t know how to audit this.

  • How can I see explicitly which file version has actually been uploaded to AnkiWeb (to determine whether the phone or computer is the cause of the problem)?
  • How can I force a reupload/download of _style.css on both the desktop and phone?
AnkiDroid Version = 2.20.1 (e32a82c33646807ea19623c9c88be38965bc07e6)

Backend Version = 0.1.48-anki24.11 (24.11 c47638ca36f99dd4f3b81ae82d964aec66e392e0)

Android Version = 14 (SDK 34)

ProductFlavor = play

Manufacturer = samsung

Model = SM-G991N

Hardware = exynos2100

Webview User Agent = Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 14; SM-G991N Build/UP1A.231005.007; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/137.0.7151.61 Mobile Safari/537.36

ACRA UUID = d473ee58-014d-40f8-9da2-a0203092927b

FSRS = 1.4.3 (Enabled: true)

Crash Reports Enabled = true
2

If you opened the file on desktop and edited it – that’s to be expected: Syncing with AnkiWeb - Anki Manual . An internally modified file isn’t queued for syncing, so it’s not stuck – it just never started.

I’m going to skip your 1st question, and just answer the 2nd one. To force a rescan of all media, you can –

  • Add or remove one file from collection.media. A great chance to run Tools > Check Media and clean up unused media, if you haven’t done that lately, but otherwise just copy any file into there.
  • Log out of syncing [Preferences > Syncing] and click Sync to log in again.
3

Thank you! Going forward, then, is there a better approach I can take to single-source my CSS so that it syncs to all devices?

4

Not really. If you also happen to be regularly adding/removing media, you won’t even notice this and the sync will happen naturally. If the only change you’re making is to edit that external CSS, you’ll need to do an extra step to make sure it syncs.

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