Renamed flags not synchronized across devices

I use Anki with an AnkiWeb profile across 3 devices. I have renamed Anki flags from Red, Orange, etc in one of the devices, but after syncing in that device and syncing in the other 2 devices, the flag names remain unchanged even though changed cards do get synched.

Is this a bug or am I misunderstanding how flags are supposed to work? If renamed flags aren’t intended to be synced, then I won’t use them because I heavily use all 3 devices to manage and review cards. Use case: until now I had a “Note TODOs” field on my notes to flag cards as “split”, “ambiguous”, “I don’t understand it”, etc, which I was hoping to get rid of thanks to flags, but I don’t want to have to remember that “Red” means “Split”, etc.

I’ve found a couple of topics related to flag renaming but none touches on this specific issue.

Works for me. What are those three devices that you use? Not sure about AnkiMobile, but AnkiDroid (and of course Anki Desktop before 2.1.45) don’t support named flags.

I have one AnkiDroid device (thanks, I didn’t know it didn’t support named flags, I saw flags in the Filter dialog and assumed renamed flags also worked there), but the issue also occurs on the other two devices, AnkiDesktop 2.1.53 (qt6) on OSX.

I could try to record two separate videos but I can reproduce it doing this:

  1. Rename flag Purple to Purple2 on device 1.
  2. Sync on Device 1.
  3. Sync on Device 2.
  4. Tag Purple is still called “Purple” on Device 2.
  5. Rename tag Purple to Purple3 on Device 2.
  6. Sync on Device 2.
  7. Sync on Device 1.
  8. Tag Purple is still called “Purple2” on Device 1.

I have triple-checked that both Anki versions are 2.1.53

I feel your pain. I use all the flags and do my reviews on Ankidroid.

I think I will create a deck to memorize the flags :rofl:

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Strange. Then I don’t know what could be the problem.

Have you tried restarting the app after syncing? Perhaps the flag names are just being cached.

Restarting seems to solve the issue in all the scenarios I’ve tried: renaming only on one device, on both devices, etc), thanks @dae, it does seem to be a caching issue. If it’s easy to fix this, I think it would provide a better UX (more consistency, lower cognitive load).

For anyone else reaching this topic: custom flag names now show on AnkiMobile 2.0.87+ (they didn’t on 2.0.83, not sure when the issue was fixed, thanks @dae ? :slight_smile: ).

I’ve added this to the issue tracker: Flag names don't update on sync · Issue #1907 · ankitects/anki · GitHub

Displaying flag names in AnkiMobile’s browser filter screen was indeed added in a recent release.

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I saw you already fixed the issue, thanks a lot!

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