Shift doesn't work... what are my options?

Anki Desktop
1

My Anki was working fine just a week ago, then suddenly I could no longer open it on Desktop. I’ve heard that this is usually because of an Add-ons, and to hold shift down while running it to tell Anki to start without any Add-ons. However, I’ve tried holding shift down but Anki still refuses to start. The exact behaviour is that it the Anki icon is created in my tray for about 1 second, nothing happens, and then the icon disappears. The same thing happens when I hold shift down.

I’ve double-checked that I’m using the latest version (2.1.54).

I use Linux kubuntu, and when attempting to run Anki from the command line, it outputs:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/eliclax/.local/bin/anki", line 5, in <module>
    from aqt import run
  File "/home/eliclax/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/aqt/__init__.py", line 15, in <module>
    import anki.lang
  File "/home/eliclax/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/anki/lang.py", line 12, in <module>
    import anki._backend
  File "/home/eliclax/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/anki/_backend/__init__.py", line 15, in <module>
    from anki import backend_pb2, i18n_pb2
  File "/home/eliclax/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/anki/backend_pb2.py", line 33, in <module>
    _descriptor.EnumValueDescriptor(
  File "/home/eliclax/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/google/protobuf/descriptor.py", line 755, in __new__
    _message.Message._CheckCalledFromGeneratedFile()
TypeError: Descriptors cannot not be created directly.
If this call came from a _pb2.py file, your generated code is out of date and must be regenerated with protoc >= 3.19.0.
If you cannot immediately regenerate your protos, some other possible workarounds are:
 1. Downgrade the protobuf package to 3.20.x or lower.
 2. Set PROTOCOL_BUFFERS_PYTHON_IMPLEMENTATION=python (but this will use pure-Python parsing and will be much slower).

More information: https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/news/2022-05-06#python-updates

Although it should be noted that this may be caused by trying to run an old version: running apt info anki outputs:

Package: anki
Version: 2.1.15+dfsg-1
Priority: optional
Section: universe/misc
Origin: Ubuntu
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Original-Maintainer: Andreas Bombe <aeb@debian.org>
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Installed-Size: 4,586 kB
Depends: python3:any (>= 3.6~), python3-pyqt5 (>> 5.11), python3-pyqt5.qtwebengine (>> 5.11), python3-pyqt5.qtwebchannel (>> 5.11), libqt5core5a (>= 5.11), python3-distutils, python3-bs4, python3-pyaudio, python3-requests, python3-send2trash, python3-decorator, python3-markdown, python3-jsonschema, python3-distro, libjs-jquery, libjs-jquery-ui, libjs-jquery-flot, libjs-mathjax
Recommends: python3-matplotlib
Suggests: dvipng, mpv | mplayer, lame
Homepage: https://apps.ankiweb.net/
Download-Size: 806 kB
APT-Sources: http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/universe amd64 Packages

(I removed the Description from the codeblock)

What are my options? Are there any ways to manually prevent Add-ons from running?

Thanks in advance!

2

https://docs.ankiweb.net/platform/linux/distro-packages.html

3

Thanks for the response! Unfortunately, I have downloaded Anki via the website, not through my distro, so that page doesn’t really apply to me. Does anyone know a method to disable Add-ons other than by holding the Shift key?

4

You can enable/disable add-ons via Tools > Add-ons

5

The error message you provided indicates you’re not using the bundled build available on the Anki website, as it’s using your system Python install.

6

Uhhhh I’m not sure what happened exactly but I managed to fix it. I tried downloading Anki again, and realised that running the anki.desktop didn’t work, but running <PATH TO DOWNLOAD>/anki from command line did work. It seems like the anki.desktop file was running anki %f from the command line. I changed it to run <PATH TO ANKI>/anki from command line, and everything seems to be working now :slight_smile:

7