Sync error with AnkiWeb: many media files added for no reason

Anki Syncing & AnkiWeb
1

Hello!
On the 10.02.25 I had a problem with syncing, a kind of error occured. A lot of media files were added without any reason.
I learned 1 or 2 words and after that I klicked on the sign of syncing (in the right corner of AnkiDroid) in order just to sync the collection to the AnkiWeb. I synced always with AnkiWeb if I was in Ankidroid or in Desktop Anki, it’s my habit. Normally it syncs about 1-5 bytes and that’s it.
On the 10.02 I saw suddenly a popup message:
„Syncing
250 media files downloaded.
Up: 7 KB, down: 11509 KB".
5 min later there were already "850 media files downloaded“. And so on and so forth.
The last screenshot I made shows the popup message with around 8500 files (about 300 MB) downloaded. The sync lasted 20-30 minutes more. There were about 10000 media files (? 400MB) downloaded from AnkiWeb, I suppose.

Before 10.02.25 I hadn’t made any changes on my collection. The last time I added something it was in Dezember 2024, I added one new desk with media files (added in Desktop Anki > sync with AnkiWeb > sync between AnkiWeb and AnkiDroid). But since then I synced my collection a lot of times with AnkiWeb and everything was ok. That’s the reason why I don’t understand what happened during the sync with AnkiWeb and which media files were suddenly downloaded.
My devices: Anki Desktop 2.1.49 (dc80804a) on Windows 8; AnkiDroid is 2.16.5 (Android 6).

The sync with “downloading media files” started 12:29 on 10.02.25 (my first screenshot was 12:29:44 german time) and it took at least 1 hour or more.
@dae Is it possible for dae or a moderator to look into the issue on the 10th of February? To find out what happened? Can one see how many files were downloaded from AnkiWeb on that day during the sync?
I suppose I can’t do it myself.

Thanks und my best regards.

2

You can delete those files using check media.

1 Like
3

There’s no need to ping the developer. There’s nothing we can do about something that happened in your account 5 months ago.

That sounds like your media was rescanned and synced. It’s normal. Once the media on all of your devices is fully synced, you can use Check Media to delete unused media on one device, and sync that to the rest of your devices. If you delete the files when your devices are out of sync, Anki will restore them for you.

2 Likes
4

Oh, I am afraid I don’t understand the answer.
If there are no changes then the sync is almost without any data transfer. In that case there was a download of hundreds of MBs.

5

If those files weren’t there, then it appears the collections weren’t completely in sync. But, as I said – there’s not much we can do about an issue you had 5 months ago.

The fix for you now is to get all of your devices in sync, and then you’ll be able to clean up your unused media.