I downloaded a popular Anki deck a few months ago and have been doing my Anki reviews every day using this deck. However, from yesterday to today, all the images in the deck (47,000 cards) disappeared.
Last night, I created a deck with images, and when I woke up today, all the images were gone. My friends who use the same deck also reported that the images stopped appearing on their Anki cards.
Before ending every study session, I always run “Check Media” on my devices (iPad and iPhone). I restored older backups, but the images still did not appear. I also logged in and out multiple times, but that did not bring the images back.
Does anyone know what might have happened, and how I can reverse this and get my images back?
If the images stopped appearing for multiple users at the same time, it seems a good bet that this isn’t Anki-related. Look at that note in Browse, find the field that includes that image, and click < > above the field to open the HTML view. Does that show a local image filename, or a URL to a remotely-hosted image?
This is a link to a remotely hosted image. Anki isn’t showing it to you because it can’t find that file – perhaps it’s not posted there anymore, or your internet can’t reach that site. If you copy the text inside the quotes for the src="insidethequotes" , you can paste it in a browser try to find the file, but if it’s a lot of images, you should probably contact the deck author to fix this.
The conventional way to attach images to your collection results in Anki making its own copy of the file, so you’ll have it wherever your collection goes, and it can still be accessed offline. If there are other remotely hosted images that you can still see, an add-on like Localize Media[updated link] will help you download all of those at once and update your notes to point to the correct files in your collection.
I believe all of the images were set up that way (hosted through links, as you described). Unfortunately, I don’t know who originally created the deck, so I can’t contact the author.
Also, it seems that everyone using this deck lost access to the images at the same time, not just me. Several friends who use the same deck are experiencing the exact same issue.
Is there any way for me to get the images back? For example, if they were removed from the original server, are there any recovery options available, or would I need to find another copy of the deck from someone who still has the images saved locally?
Thank you very much for your help so far. You’ve been incredibly helpful.
Yes, everyone would lose access to the images at the same time if they were no longer available on the site you’re all linking to. Or if regional internet restrictions made it so you and your friends (who are probably located in the same place) couldn’t reach the site anymore. It might be a temporary server outage, or it might be permanent.
If you give me the text of the link – `between backticks`, so I get the whole thing – I can see if it’s reachable from where I am.
Not within Anki, because Anki has never had those files. As far as accessing things that have been removed from the internet, the Wayback Machine – https://web.archive.org/ – is one way, but given the look of those links, you might not have much luck.
I’ve been studying a deck called “Flashcards Osler 2025,” and when I opened my cards today, I discovered that all the images indexed to the cards are showing as “not found,” even though I have them all downloaded directly to the “collection.media” folder (which I backed up). I’ve already tried reinstalling Anki on all my devices (I first saw this behavior on the Android version and then on Windows. After all the uninstalls and synchronization attempts, I tried the web version but I still can’t see the card images). WHAT DO I DO? Please help me, this is my main way of studying right now!
Did you have any success fixing the images on the cards using this “localize media” add-on? I downloaded it and applied to my cards but it wasn`t able to localize the images for download
I’ve encountered a severe issue with my media files (MORE THAN 8000) after a sync
After a sync, all my media (images) stopped appearing in my cards. I initially thought they were local files that failed to sync, but after checking my collection.media folder, I realized the files are there.
Upon inspecting the card HTML, I found that the images are not pointing to local filenames, but to remote Firebase Storage URLs.
What I have tried:
Checked collection.media folder: The files ARE present locally.
Verified Database: No errors found.
Tried restoring backups: The backups also seem to contain these remote URLs rather than the actual media files.
“Check Media”: Lists the images as missing/not used
Is there any way to force Anki to re-fetch these remote assets?
i was stupid enouth that my mobille device also sync and lost the medias
If I’ve joined you to this thread, it’s because it sounds like you’re all dealing with the same issue with the same “Osler” deck. So far, no one seems to have indicated (or to know?) the source of the deck – but that’s who is most likely to be able to restore the images where they are supposed to be hosted, or provide you with an updated version of the deck that relies on local media.
The easiest path is that this is a temporary or regional server problem. But until someone shares one of the links with me, I can’t help you look into that.
This add-on will only help you deal with media files that are still hosted somewhere. It can’t recover files that are not longer available at the URL.
Some of you seem to think you have the files stored locally, but it’s not clear why you would if your deck has only pointed to the remotely hosted versions of them. Was there a change to the deck – where the notes used to use local attached files, and the notes were changed to point to remotely hosted files?
[@luana2 – I’m confused by what you said. are the files listed as “Missing” (meaning you don’t have them), or as “Unused” (meaning you do have them, but your notes are using them)?]
I can think of ways you might be able to recover if you have the files –
Restore/reimport an older version of the deck that properly references the local files. That might be –
another downloaded version of the deck that actually includes the files. You should be able to tell by the size of the file whether it actually includes the media.
a version that you extract from an automatic backup. You’d need to import the backup into a fresh, temporary profile and export a clean APKG of the deck with media.
Edit the current version of the deck so that it references the local files. How difficult this would be depends on what changed. I might be able to help you with ideas for what to do, but as I said above, I don’t have the text of a URL, I don’t know if the URLs are all the same form, I don’t know if the filename in the URL matches the filename of the local file, etc.
This is likely going to be something where users are going to have to help each other. Reddit user eujosias seems to have found a solution, but then they deleted their post, so it’s not clear what they got to work.
We figured out what happened. The original deck was actually using images hosted on an external website. When that website went down, all of the images stopped working for everyone using the deck.
Fortunately, there is another version of the exact same deck available. Instead of linking to images on a website, this version contains the actual image files (JPG/PNG) inside the deck itself. That’s why the file is much larger (about 2.2 GB).
The solution is simply to import this complete version of the deck into Anki. You do NOT need to delete your old deck, and you will NOT lose your progress. When you import the deck with the embedded images, Anki automatically restores the missing media files, and the images should reappear on your existing cards.
It may take some time to import and sync because the file is very large, but after that everything should return to normal.
Thank God, all of my images came back after doing this.
If you need the deck with the images included, please send me a message on Telegram and I’ll share the file. I apologize for asking people to contact me there, but it’s the only practical way for me to share the file, since I can’t upload or send a 2.2 GB deck through this website/forum.
Conseguimos descobrir o que aconteceu. O deck original utilizava imagens hospedadas em um site externo. Quando esse site saiu do ar, todas as imagens deixaram de funcionar para todo mundo que utilizava o deck.
Felizmente, existe outra versão exatamente igual desse deck. Em vez de utilizar links para um site, essa versão contém os arquivos de imagem (JPG/PNG) baixados dentro do próprio deck. Por isso o arquivo é muito maior (cerca de 2,2 GB).
A solução é simplesmente importar essa versão completa do deck no Anki. Você NÃO precisa apagar o deck antigo e NÃO vai perder seu progresso. Ao importar o deck com as imagens incorporadas, o Anki restaura automaticamente os arquivos de mídia ausentes, e as imagens voltam a aparecer nos cartões antigos como se nada tivesse acontecido.
A importação e a sincronização podem demorar um pouco porque o arquivo é muito grande, mas depois tudo volta ao normal.
Graças a Deus, todas as minhas imagens voltaram depois que fiz isso.
Se você precisar do deck com as imagens incluídas, me envie uma mensagem no Telegram que eu compartilho o arquivo. Peço perdão por precisar pedir que me chamem por lá, mas é a única forma prática de enviar um arquivo de 2,2 GB, já que não é possível anexá-lo ou compartilhá-lo nesse site.
Thank you so much for all your help throughout this situation.
I really appreciate the time and effort you’ve put into helping everyone, especially knowing that multiple students were dealing with the exact same problem at the same time. Even so, you continued responding, investigating possible causes, and doing your best to help us understand what was happening.
This was actually my first time posting on the Anki Forums, and your replies helped me understand the root of the problem much better. In the end, we were able to figure out what had happened, recover the images, and help everyone who was affected by the issue.
Thankfully, everything worked out in the end, and all the images came back. Thanks to your guidance, we were able to identify the cause and find a solution much faster than we otherwise would have.
Thank you again for your patience, kindness, and willingness to help. It is genuinely appreciated.
