Hello!
My Anki has not been working for the past few weeks, and I have tried everything. When I click again on a card, the card just disappears (the card subtracts from the total on the blue stack and does not add to the red stack). My deck options are correct and should not be the reason for why this is happening. I have attached screenshots below. I have deleted my account, made a new account, redownloaded/restarted, deleted add ons, etc, yet none of those things have resolved the issue. PLEASE help. We have tried it all. I miss using my Anki. Thank you.
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Nothing has disappeared. That red number is not a “stack” of cards – it’s a counter of how many Learn/Relearn cards are ready to be studied. That card you just put on relearning step will show up on that red counter after its delay.
If you want to have Anki look ahead and pull those closer if there is nothing else to study – set Tools > Preferences > Review > Learn ahead limit to something at least as long as your re/learning steps – Preferences - Anki Manual . (This will also make it show up on your red counter immediately, since it could be studied.)
The default is 20m. It sounds like you (or an add-on you recently enabled?) reduced it.
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Thank you SO much!!! I set it back to 20 and that fixed it. I appreciate you!
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@AnKingMed this is becoming one of the most commonly-asked questions. Could you please consider adjusting the add-on not to force this setting on existing Anki users who already have expectations about how things should work?
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@arezue_shakeri what did you use to get your settings? Did you change them based on a video (one of mine?) or the Butler addon? Or are you using AnkiHub?
Between here and the Reddit subs, I’d say I see this answer about 3-4 times per week. Do you want to survey any of the others who have needed this same answer?
That definitely sounds snarkier than I mean it to be, so I’m sorry for that. I just don’t want this issue to fade from view on the lack of a single user’s response. I join dae in hoping that you’ll consider downgrading this to a recommendation (if that’s what you think it should be), rather than an unexpected settings change.
A non-exhaustive sampling from the past month. [In the interest of equal-time – by my headcount, this comes up about about 5:1 over users asking questions about decreasing the Learn Ahead limit.]
Scheduling broke after installing Anking
Prior to today when I would go through my cards the “again” button was “<10m” and the missed card would be immediately thrown back into the pile. Now the “again” button is “1m” and will always wait 1 minute before the card is put back into the pile. This means if I have 5 cards left, I miss card #5, I now need to wait an entire minute before finishing my reviews for the day.The only thing I have changed about my ecosystem is getting the Anking MCAT deck and AnkiHub addon.
How do i fix this
i used to be able to just review my learn cards like when i finished everything else that might have been “scheduled” before and now its make me wait after i downloaded the new Anking deck. how do i fix this?
Anking V11—> V12… wtf
Also, I like doing all of my cards in a deck in one setting. However, when I click “again” the card goes missing and when I finish the deck, it says I have like 20 review cards that will come up in the next few minutes. I hate waiting.
How to review ahead anki
I dont want to wait an hour to review those 14 cards. Any simple way to review ahead?
I hear you and certainly can adjust things if needed.
I believe we’ve already had quite the discussion on this topic and it seems to be a continued issue.
If I remember correctly, @dae changed it because there was confusion early on. Perhaps I need to learn from his lesson and just accept that.
The way I see it, the learn ahead limit by default at 0 is ideal from a scheduling standpoint. This is especially so with the new FSRS changes. Having a learn ahead limit mess with what FSRS is determining is the optimal interval is less ideal (though it seems the short term intervals aren’t THAT important really)
The learn ahead limit at 20m (or longer than the again interval) is ideal from a new user standpoint to avoid questions.
Neither option is ideal from both standpoints. I would suggest we improve the situation to achieve both goals (as long as that is reasonable @dae?)
I believe my prior suggestion was to set it to 0m by default, but have a button after completing a deck that would allow you to go ahead and learn ahead (perhaps even link to the learn ahead limit with an explanation of what it is). It would require an extra step, but would be better for new users.
At the end of the day, if you do not want to tackle this issue right now I’m happy to discuss reverting this with the team as I certainly don’t want to cause confusion and it seems like this is doing that.
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I was trying to give myself time to percolate your ideas – but there goes another one today! Incorrect reviews aren’t turning red for a long time
I think you’re over-crediting FSRS’s abilities. Not only are short intervals not that important – FSRS doesn’t actually know how to schedule them optimally. FSRS can now – through the add-on – look at your history and tell you how you’ve done with various step lengths (and in 24.11+ it will suggest step lengths based on that). But there’s no short-term/interday model for memory, so FSRS is not able to make any sound predictions.
A default of Learn Ahead = 0 is only valuable if something magical happens in those few minutes when you’re still waiting for your cards. And you would have to sit there and wait to get that benefit, wouldn’t you? If you go away for a few hours, or if you don’t come back to that card until tomorrow – it seems like the length of the delay didn’t really matter. 
I firmly believe you should be able to recommend whatever you want to your users. The tension for me is that you’re changing a setting (a) that a current user probably doesn’t know exists, (b) that isn’t in the vicinity of the other settings you’re changing, and (c) in a way that makes the user think that something bad has happened (cards are disappearing, grading buttons are broken, remote is broken, etc.). I hope that you and your team can discuss whether this is important enough to justify all of that.
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I hear you and we are talking about adjusting this to prevent confusion.
It does stand to reason, however, that hitting again and seeing it almost immediately is going to use your very short term working memory vs being forced to wait at least a couple minutes so that its actually being encoded in our longer term memory stores. That has been proved with memory research over the years.
I can search later when I have more time, but I have also had questions in the past with people wanting to wait and not understanding why the button says “15m” but they’re not actually waiting 15m (admittedly less questions than seem to be popping up currently though)
My point is not that you’re wrong (I think you’re right). My point is that the current solution is not optimal and the best solution would be a happy medium (that doesn’t currently exist) and I’m suggesting we improve Anki to include that. It’s clearly a confusing setting for new users regardless of which way it is set and I’m thinking we should brainstorm and find a way that users don’t even need to touch the setting because the features are all there (i.e. a button at the end of their study session that lets them learn ahead so they know that they’re doing so). Is there a reason why you would oppose that? (genuinely curious if there is something I’m missing)
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I put a poll up on Instagram to survey people and see what they think. Can also poll here:
- Anki default - learn ahead is automatically enabled
- AnKing recommended - learn ahead is 0 by default, forced to wait for learning cards
- New idea - learn ahead is 0 by default, but there’s a button when finishing a deck that allows you to learn ahead immediately
- Other (please comment)
0
voters
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Whatever the decision may be, a button to learn ahead would be useful such as the concept image that Anking showed above
Another thought I have is including that setting or details about that setting in the options so that users are aware these are connected
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I can follow up after the full 24 hours but I think the results are pretty consistent here and there. I will include the stories below so you can see how I presented it (tried to be as unbiased as possible).
I think 2 things are clear:
- me forcing people to wait probably isn’t best and we should revert that in the meantime
- The current Anki default isn’t ideal either and a 3rd solution should be explored. I did receive multiple DMs saying they love the idea of a button that allows them to study ahead when they want to. @dae are you open to this?
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I’m with you there – but you’re talking about hitting Again on one of the last 3-5 cards of the day, when you’ve got 0 cards ready in your Learn queue already. How often does that happen? And even when it does – isn’t the smart user going to just put Anki down and come back later?
You don’t need to search those up – I’ve definitely seen them too (albeit in much smaller numbers), and I’ve said as much! [I also know I’m being a bit of a jerk by continuing to show you examples, so I’m not going to link to the one I had earlier today. 
]
The difference is – that is coming from a new user trying to understand why the cards are coming faster (or occasionally, an experienced user who changed that setting themselves not understanding what it was). These posts are from experienced users, who have had the rug pulled out from under them. Their confused cries for help often come after they have put in substantial effort trying to troubleshoot it themselves. So the very easiest solution is to stop changing it behind their backs.
My main opposition to that is that I’ll have to click it every day. 
But it also gives me a bright flashing signal that says these cards are the ones you already missed today – making it much easier to get them right (a bad thing, from my perspective). I also genuinely believe that the current default Learn Ahead setting is better for most users – new users who are cautiously trying Anki, and don’t want to be told to wait – but also experienced users, who don’t plan to spend all day on Anki.
I also hate scope creep. The issue isn’t what the default should be in the future, and what new buttons there should be to work with that default (the question addressed by the poll). The issue is users who are confused by this behavior changing on them. I don’t want a solution for them to be held up by trying to figure out what new features should be implemented.
And I do really appreciate you engaging on this, because I know at the end of the day you want (as do I) users to have a good learning experience with Anki.
I commented previously on the button suggestion: Set Learn Ahead Limit to Zero - #23 by dae
I’m afraid I still feel that it would be a regression for users who prefer to have a non-zero lookahead. Such users would need to press the button every day, and wouldn’t be able to see the near-due cards shown in their due counts until they hit the button, unless we make things even more confusing by keeping the existing learn ahead limit as well and making the button optional.
Agreed about the scope creep - all I was hoping for in my initial request is you do something like check the creation time of the collection and avoid adjusting this setting if it’s over some threshold like a day, so it doesn’t cause user confusion.
Seconded!
My whole study session is about 20-30 minutes a day so if learn ahead is 15-20min those cards are coming back pretty quick. I think you’re making a lot of assumptions and my honest answer is I don’t really know how often it occurs… I personally leave the learn ahead limit at 0 and crank it up at the end of the day if needed.
To be fair we do disclose that we’re changing stuff and have lots of resources explaining everything… But I do see your point.
@andrewsanchez @abdo can we change what we do with the learn ahead limit in AnkiHub and the Butler add-on for the time being until we figure out a better solution?
I don’t see any reason you would have to do that. Learn ahead limit could still be set to 20 minutes for you, we’d just set it to 0 minutes for everyone else so they click the button and also offer an explanation right in that screen “if you would like to always learn ahead, alter the learn ahead limit in the settings [link to settings]”
Does this have to make things more confusing? I definitely understand where you’re coming from… trying to brainstorm ideas… Maybe others will have better ideas than me
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Sorry, I fear I’m still missing something, as your idea still doesn’t make sense to me. Let’s examine it from the different user types:
- Someone who always wants to review ahead. They don’t want to have to use a button, so the old learn ahead limit setting would need to be preserved, and a separate setting would be required to enable the button.
- Someone who always wants to wait the entire learning step. The button is not useful to them.
- Someone who wants to switch between the two modes. Do such people exist?
That sounds like you’re thinking of a separate setting to control how far the button looks ahead vs what is automatic?
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Not necessarily. It could just be if the learn ahead limit is set to 0 min, the button appears. Otherwise, no button shows up and it just follows the learn ahead limit as it currently does
Agreed, but also doesn’t hurt
Yes definitely. I would argue this is the majority actually hence the survey results. I certainly fall in this group where I want to be forced to wait unless I’m at the end of my learning session and then I want to go ahead and learn ahead.
Essentially I think this is a very complicated and confusing setting for new users (regardless of whether you turn it on or off by default) and a button or something similar that is needed to make the user deliberately study ahead makes it clear to them what is happening.
But that’s what Anki already does? It won’t show learning cards ahead of schedule unless there’s nothing else to show.
Yes but that’s not something a new user is aware of