Problem: Some AnkiDroid cards are missing their audio files.
What I’ve Tried: I searched the forums, and I’ve already tried checking media, checking database, uninstalling/installing AnkiDroid, logging out/logging back in, and I did check that the audio files that are missing on Android are available on both AnkiWeb and Anki PC. I have a total of 4,427 .mp3 files totaling 184 MB. Is that too much for the server to sync reliably? I did let my Android sync for several days on a strong WiFi connection. I don’t know what else to do. Cards just randomly are missing audio files—some cards have audio, some cards don’t. I haven’t counted which don’t, but if I had to guess, maybe 5% are missing their audio files? Too bad I can’t copy the files to the Android audio file (because of Google Play store policies).
AnkiDroid Debug Info:
AnkiDroid Version = 2.23.3 (9001068fd4819c6fb66cb8239e7166868ab47859)
Backend Version = 0.1.62-anki25.09.2 (25.09.2 3890e12c9e48c028c3f12aa58cb64bd9f8895e30)
Android Version = 16 (SDK 36)
ProductFlavor = play
Device Info = Google | google | lynx | lynx | Pixel 7a | lynx
Webview User Agent = Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 16; Pixel 7a Build/CP1A.260305.018; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/145.0.7632.159 Mobile Safari/537.36
ACRA UUID = b66457f3-c184-45da-839f-deeb0ce972ca
FSRS = 5.1.0 (Enabled: true)
Crash Reports Enabled = true
I tried to look at your AnkiWeb account, but I’m not sure I’ve found the right account. There isn’t one with the email address you used to post here, and the only account that comes close doesn’t match up with what you’re describing. Please add your AnkiWeb email address to your account here (in the Forum) as a secondary/alternate address, or send it privately to us by DM to @ moderators.
Other things you can check –
- Do you have media syncing enabled in both desktop Anki –
Preferences > Syncing > Synchronize audio and images too – and AnkiDroid – Settings > Sync > Fetch media on sync?
- What results do you get when you run
Check Media on desktop Anki and AnkiDroid? Do they match for missing and unused files?
There is a way you can do that, if you can’t wait to figure out the issues with syncing. If you plug your Android device into your computer via USB, you should be able to see your AnkiDroid storage location through your computer’s file browser – look for /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.ichi2.anki/files/AnkiDroid. You can copy any files from your desktop Anki collection.media folder – Managing Files - Anki Manual – to that collection.media folder.
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Updated my forum email to match my account. Check media shows 0 missing or unused files. Media sync is enabled both ways, which explains why most cards have their audio files intact on both PC and Android. I will try manual copying if syncing can’t be fixed. Thank you.
Thanks – I think I see the right account now.
On both devices? Then the files aren’t missing. Or perhaps they aren’t used in your notes/cards in a conventional way, so they aren’t being identified correctly – as used, unused, missing, or even needing to be synced.
What’s one of your notes/cards where the media appears to be missing on AnkiDroid? I can look for it by the text of the note, or the audio filename.
If you note makes multiple cards, is the audio missing from all of them?
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Yes, 0 missing or unused files on both devices.
In my Dark Green (Cloze) filtered deck, this card doesn’t have audio:
Withdraw (m.) money please.
Something that I haven’t noticed before is that on my PC, the audio file for this card has been correctly imported into two separate decks (one’s audio first, the other is the sentence first):
The same sentence/audio file is in two different decks, as seen above. However, for some reason, only one of those cards are visible on AnkiDroid (even though both Anki and PC have a total of 9280 cards):
Maybe this is giving insight into what’s causing the problem?
I don’t think this is related to your issue, but the reason the audio file is attached in 2 places is that you’ve made 2 nearly duplicate notes, differing only by note type. A better way to make those 2 cards is to use a single note that makes both cards. [Make sure you understand the difference between notes and cards.]
Since the cards are in different decks (and different Filtered Decks), I assume the difference between those search results has to do with what you’re searching for, or how you have the search displayed on each device. If you search just withdraw money on each device (without any other limitations), I expect you’d see 6 cards (from 6 notes).
Other than that, the notes and card templates look fine for both the Hebrew note type and the Hebrew (Cloze) note type. [I’m setting aside for now that you’re using Filtered Decks with overlapping search filters, and that you have note types/decks called “Cloze” when they don’t appear to be actual Cloze note types. If nothing else is fruitful, we can revised those issues.]
I verified that those files have reached AnkiWeb, so everything is working between desktop and AnkiWeb.
Since your Check Media result shows no issues, I’m wondering what it means when you say the cards are missing audio. Can you say more about what you’re seeing that led you to that conclusion? Where were you looking, what screen were you on, what errors were you getting, what were you expecting to happen that didn’t happen, etc.?
Since you have the same audio file attached to multiple notes, find all of the cards that use that file. Is the audio missing from all of them or just some?
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Thanks for your patience with this issue. I can confirm that just searching for “withdraw money” shows both cards in AnkiDroid:
Check media shows 0 missing or unused in AnkiDroid:
What I meant is that whenever I click on any card with the “withdraw money” audio file, clicking on the play button doesn’t play any sound. My phone’s volume is at max and other cards work fine. I can record the whole interaction with a separate cell phone if it’s not clear.
Again, clicking on the above play buttons does nothing, even though no files are missing. These are the only two cards that use this file, and both cards don’t play any sound. Strange.
(On a separate note, I’ve been confused by the difference between notes/cards/fields etc., which is why I created two decks:
Deck #1: Front: Audio; Back: English/Hebrew
Deck #2: Front: English + Type; Back: Audio + Hebrew
Are you saying that it is possible to have both of these note types in the same deck? One reason for me not to do this is because it’s often more convenient for me to practice Deck #2, when I’m unable to listen to the audio outdoors, so having a separate deck helps me to easily control which note type I want to see. I’ll get rid of “Cloze” in my deck names; that was a mistake.)
You originally said that audio files were missing from your Android device. However, it seems that isn’t so. Instead, it seems that the problem may be that audio files are not playing on some cards.
For the “Withdraw (m.) money please” card, what is the name of the audio file and what type of audio file is it? (Could it be that it is an audio file type that can be played on PC but isn’t supported on Android?)
It is possible to have both types of cards in the same deck, created from a single note. Please see the “Basic (and reversed card)” note type in the documentation.
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This solved it. I checked the .mp3 file in question and it was encoded in the opus format. I then asked Claude to check all of my 4k+ files, and there were 68 opus files detected. I searched for a couple of those files on AnkiDroid, and they were not playing either. Searching the forums also confirmed this. Thanks for everyone’s help. Converting the opus codec to lame using ffmpeg solved the issue.
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