I need help urgently. A large number of media files from my Anki collection appear to have been deleted locally, and I believe the deletion has already synced to AnkiWeb.
What happened:
My cards/decks/notes are still present.
The affected cards still contain audio references like [sound:3d16331f99.mp3].
But the actual files are no longer present in my local collection.media folder.
Everything Search still shows stale entries for some of the missing files, for example: C:\...AppData\Roaming\Anki2\User 1\collection.media\3d16331f99.mp3
but clicking them gives a âfile not foundâ error.
Recuva could only recover a few files and did not find many of the missing audio files.
The affected profile path is:
C:\Users\aschl\AppData\Roaming\Anki2\User 1
The missing files are mostly hashed .mp3 audio files used by Japanese/Migaku cards, e.g. filenames like:
3d16331f99.mp3
I have stopped syncing now.
Is it possible for AnkiWeb staff to restore my recently deleted media files from server-side backups? Preferably from yesterday or early 2026/06/26 (The mistake happened at around 11pm that day) I understand local automatic .colpkg backups do not include media, so I am specifically asking about restoring deleted media from AnkiWebâs side if possible.
Please let me know what information you need from me. I can provide my AnkiWeb account email privately if needed.
As for how this happened: I have absolutely no Idea. The first minute it worked just fine, the next minute all of my Plugins except for one (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1872210448) got completely eradicated, including some (but not all) media.
Yes, it may be possible to restore them on the server side, but there are a few better options to investigate first.
Have you looked in your media.trash folder, in that same profile folder in Anki2 â Managing Files - Anki Manual ?
Have you looked in your OS Recycle Bin, or wherever your system puts files when they are first deleted?
I can see that you had another device (AnkiDroid) synced to your AnkiWeb account as recently as a few weeks ago. Are the files still present on that device (open the app in airplane mode to avoid syncing before you are ready)? Have you run Check > Check Media there and compared it to your Check Media result on desktop?
If the files are still there, there are a couple ways you might be able to get them to repopulate your account â
[Option A]
Go to Settings > Sync > AnkiWeb Account > Log out, connect to the internet (turn off airplane mode), and when you sync, it will ask you to log in again. Because your device is not currently in sync, Anki will re-scan all media and restore anything that device has that it doesnât have.
If itâs a lot of media, you might need to run sync a few times before the media sync is complete.
[It might also force you to do a one-way sync, and since that collection is older, I expect you should choose to keep the collection on AnkiWeb â but that wonât impact this media-re-scan process.]
[Option B]
Connect your Android device to your computer using a USB cable so you can navigate it like a drive in Windows Explorer.
Navigate to your profile in /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.ichi2.anki/files/AnkiDroid to find the collection.media folder.
Copy the contents of that folder into your desktop profileâs collection.media folder.
On desktop, run Tools > Check Media.
Before you sync, go to Preferences > Syncing and Log out. Click sync to log in again. This will start the same media re-scan I mentioned above.
The only thing that would cause this from inside Anki is running Tools > Check Media > Delete Unused Media â but in that case, they would be recoverable in your media.trash folder.
When you say your add-ons were eradicated â are they missing from your Tools > Add-ons list or just disabled? Have you restarted Anki since then? Are they still present in addons21 in your Anki2 folder â there should be a folder for each one of them, ânamedâ with the add-on number?
If you have any 3rd-party apps that clean up your hard drive for you, you should make sure they donât have access to Anki2.
Thanks for the response. Yeah, I already tried to look through the media.trash folder and also in my OS recycle bin. I actually already did Option A and B beforehand (exported and imported the files of my other devices like you recommended) but I was unfortunately not able to retrieve all data and saw that a huge chunk still missing.
Btw, when I said eradicated I really meant completely wiped. The entire addons21 folder was wiped except for one folder (https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1872210448). There were no traces of the files anywhere else (First thing I did was search my entire PC for the missing file via a specialized software). I also dont have any clean-up 3rd party apps, and this never happened before. The wipe was also pretty sudden. I was doing my flashcards, switched windows once, and tabbed back into anki. It first lagged, then froze and crashed. When I re-opened Anki all addons were gone and multiple plugin related features werent working anymore. I then checked the addons21 folder and it was empty except for that one folder. I also checked all other folders in AppData\Roaming\Anki2\ but found nothing.I was very confused lol. But I am pretty sure the wipe isnt ankiâs fault but rather a combination of some outdated Addons I used and forgot about which suddenly conflicted horribly.
I reinstalled Anki and plugins seem to work again now. The majority of the media is still missing though. If its fine, I would appreciate it if you restored it from your site!
I can start the process shortly to restore the recently deleted media â starting with the past day. Itâs a lot of files, so I can only tell you it is more than 10K right now.
Please confirm:
(1) that the email address you used to post here is the same one attached to the AnkiWeb account weâre talking about, and
(2) that you want me to proceed with restoring these 10K+ media files deleted in the past day.
Is it possible that youâve used a custom startup folder and the setting got defaulted for some reason, meaning that your previous profile folder still remains somewhere else?
There were no traces of the files anywhere else (First thing I did was search my entire PC for the missing file via a specialized software), and this happened at 11pm long after having first opened Anki and booted up my PC.
It restored 73631 files. (Now that the 1st day is clear, I checked again, and there are no other deleted media files.)
These files will start downloading on your next sync, but itâs about 5.5 GB, so it may take a few tries to download everything.
When the media sync is complete and everything you need is restored (and all of your devices are fully synced), you should run Tools > Check Media > Delete Unused Media to clean up whatever is leftover unused media that you donât actually need. That will make it less likely that your computer will struggle with storing media in the future, make it easier to sync your collection between devices, and make it easier to deal with any accidental deletions in the future.
