Hi there,
Last few days am getting the following message
Prior to this message it does pop up that the sync is complete
And when I check anki on other devices it seems to sync with no issues, although im not certain whether all the media files are synced.
No issues syncing with other devices. Ive tried hotspotting and restarting the computer but seems to be an ongoing issue.
Would appreciate any help possible, thanks!
This seems related to Can't sync since 1/1/2026.
The solution there was to increase the timeout in the settings.
Thanks for that, unfortunately just tried this trick and no change. Even tried increasing the timeout to 50s and retried hotspot
If you are syncing successfully and still getting the timeout message, it’s likely related to your media – which syncs in the background after your collection database is completed.
Have you run Tools > Check Media lately? Does it find any oversized files, or unused media you can clean up?
Thanks for your help. It seems i have a lot of unused files 2164.
Im not sure how to check if these are part of my notes, would it be safe to delete them?
There are (at least) 2 reasons it is safe to delete them.
media.trash folder – which means they won’t be synced anymore, and Anki on this device won’t use them. But if you notice images are missing in the next few days, you’ll still be able to recover them from there.If you’ve imported decks with media in the past and later deleted them, it’s very normal to have unused files. If you want, you can “View Files” to start looking at some of those and see if they look like something you need. Or you can search your collection for those filenames. But that’s probably being overly cautious.
Thanks for explaining, unfortunately still the same issue happening. Ive been tracking my recent edits and the media files are not being uploaded - on another computer they’ve come up as missing images. Things seem to sync on other devices fine just this desktop but unfortunately it is much easier to use my desktop make flashcards compared to the laptop.
Update - have to tried add in those missing images (15 images) on my laptop and now getting the same messages there
Yes, that’s because your media sync is timing out.
I’ve deleted all unused images on all 4 of my devices.
Medial syncing enabled on all devices.
I dont think the missing files are particularly large. Have previously added much larger or higher number of images with no issues.
Unfortunately same problem 
If your devices weren’t all fully in sync (including media) when you deleted the unnecessary media, it’s likely that Anki will be (helpfully) restoring it for you as you sync. So you might keep seeing the same problem.
Try choosing just one device – log out of AnkiWeb in Preferences, and then click sync and log in again. That will cause sync to rescan through all of your media. Once that device is fully and successfully synced (which might take several tries, because you have over 5 GB of media in your account), you can try that with the next device too.
Thank you, it works now! Turns out some of my images were too big! Back to study!
Hi again,
Since this has happened, I’ve noticed that I can’t upload as many photos as I used to on anki. I’ve been cautious to not use large files but still keep getting the timed out message from time to time and then have to end up deleting my media file. I’m wondering if there is a maximum amount of media or storage and how to avoid getting the timed out message when uploading images? Thank you!
There’s an individual-file size ilimt – Are there limits on file sizes on AnkiWeb? - Anki FAQs – are you hitting that?
Have you run Check Media again, since getting your devices in sync? If you deleted the media when you devices were out-of-sync, Anki may have “helpfully” restored that for you. Make sure your devices are fully in sync, then delete that media again.
Looking at your AnkiWeb account, you’ve got a reasonably sized collection database – 18 MB – but a huge amount of media – over 5 GB. You can use the Note Size add-on to figure out what notes in your collection are using the largest files. Once that’s installed and you restart, you can display the “Size (files)” column in the Browse window, and sort by it.
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