Why is my Anki data size exploding?

Anki Syncing & AnkiWeb
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Hey all,

I’m running into a really frustrating issue with Anki. My collection/data size keeps going up, even though I haven’t added any new decks or cards in a long time.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

  • Deleted a lot of old/unused cards

  • Cleared reviews

  • Deleted large media files and even the biggest cards

  • Constantly cleaned up media and database

But despite all that, the data size just keeps sequentially and exponentially increasing, and I keep getting database size excess alerts.

It’s been quite some time since I added anything new, so I can’t figure out why the size keeps growing.Any help would be super appreciated!

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  • Are you studying cards? Review history will always add to the size of your database. It’s only a little for each review, but it adds up.
  • Do you use “reschedule on change” in FSRS? That adds to the size of your database too (as it warns you it will).

See this earlier thread for some ways to figure out what is contributing to your oversized database. Constant Errors Uploading / Sync - #4 by Danika_Dakika

Don’t worry about the media for now – Are there limits on file sizes on AnkiWeb? - Anki FAQs – it’s your actual collection database that is the problem.

[But the media is a separate problem, because you’ve got over 17 GB of media in your account. Hopefully you’ve already taken care of that on your local device, and once you get syncing again, you’ll be able to clean that up on AnkiWeb as well. One thing to note is that if you’ve been deleting/cleaning up media while you’re out of sync, those files might be re-added when you’re able to sync again. You need to get your collection fully in sync and then you can delete that unnecessary media.]

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Are you rescheduling your cards a lot (after optimizing the parameters)? This creates what is called “revlog” entries for each card every time you reschedule. The same happens when you review a card, but in case of rescheduling it’s redundant information. You can remove all redundant revlog entries with the FSRS helper plugin: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/759844606. Be careful, as this is a database operation and can’t be undone.

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You can check the size of your revision log with Note Size addon:

image
image669×109 17.2 KB

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Hey, I decided to delete some unused notes. How can I filter out the notes which are partially done? Suppose if there are 4 cloze cards in a single note, and I’ve only done one cloze card. I don’t want to delete that note.

Is there any filter which I can use in the search bar to filter out this partially done notes?

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Installed an add-on and deleting unused reviews too. Is there anything I can do apart from it?

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I have this add-on, but where can I remove those entries? I can’t see that functionality

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Yeah, I’ve gone through the whole thread, but unable to find what should I do,at the end i felt nauseating😅

Can you send me any simple stepwise plan I should follow?

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I linked you to the specific comment that is exactly that.

I've edited it a bit here, to make it more general --

There are a few ways to track down what is happening there, so you’ve got some sleuthing to do.

  • Use the Note Size add-on to figure out what decks/notes in your collection have ballooned in size. [I recommend that after you get what you need from it, you disable it until you need it again.]
    • At the bottom of the Decks page, hover over the “Collection” size to make sure it’s not the revolgs that are the issue. [New feature added in April 2025]
    • In Browse, try showing the “Size” or “Size (text)” column, and sorting by it to see what the largest notes are.
    • Looking at those notes, if there’s no visible excess of text, check the HTML view of the fields by clicking the < > above the field. Text can be hiding in your fields from things you copied in from other locations that brought too much formatting with them. [A favorite I keep seeing in my own collection is pointless HTML formatting applied to every word/punctuation char, like coding "much": as –
<span style="font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;">"much</span>
<span style="font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;">"</span>
<span style="font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit;">: </span>

When you find the troublemakers, start with the simple things:

  • Delete all notes/decks you don’t need. [And when you do, run Check Media and delete unused media again.]
  • Run Tools > Check Database and make sure you don’t have issues there.
  • If you see patterns of useless text (like the “inherit” one above), you should be able to Find & Replace them away.

Let me know what parts aren’t clear.

There’s no way to do it in one search, but you can leverage searching for cards and tagging (at the note-level) to identify the untouched notes.

  1. Search for cards with is:new – tag those all-new [just trust me!].
  2. Search for cards with -is:new – remove the all-new tag from those.
  3. Search for tag:all-new – those are the notes where you haven’t studied any cards from yet.
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I basically deleted around 10,000 cards which are not useful (I suspended them after seeing them), but only 7MB has cleared.

In the note size add-on, it showed like I am deleting lots of data, but ultimately it is decreasing by only 8MB.

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If you reach the limit you can use a self-hosted server built into Anki to replace AnkiWeb without any limit. Here is my add-on to make it easier to use this self-hosted server: addon: :globe_with_meridians:Local Anki Server - Use self-hosted server with Wifi. The local server is very fast for forced synchronization uploads and downloads (it’s almost instantaneous) so I recommend it if you are editing a lot of cards.

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It’s a good start – 7-8 MB is a bit large for 10K notes (and even larger if it was 10K cards that were made from fewer than 10K notes). But obviously that’s just a drop in the bucket for how much you need to delete. It’s not clear to me whether you worked through all the steps or you just cherry-picked one thing to start with.

  1. Was it 10K notes or 10K cards? For purposes of this, the additional sibling cards don’t take up much space.

  2. What were you looking at in the add-on – the “Size” (which includes media) or “Size (text)” column – or in the pop-up, the “total size” (which includes media) or “texts size”? How much space were you expecting to recover?

  3. Did you identify these notes as ones that had an excess-of-text problem? What was the issue? Or was this just an easy place to start because you didn’t need these notes?

  4. Have you checked the size of your revlog to see if that is contributing to the issue? [Review history isn’t deleted when you delete notes/cards.]

  5. How many notes do you have left in your collection? In Browse, click “Decks” [search deck:_*] and switch to “Notes” mode to see a count.

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Thank you so much! It worked out very well.

On a similar note, is there any way I can prioritize and do Notes in which I have done some clozes. Suppose there are 10 clozes in a note, I have done one cloze, and the other 9 clozes are there mixed in the rest of the new cards.

Is there any way I can prioritize these 9 clozes in that partial done note before that other complete new notes?

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Sorry, I missed your additional question.

You can control that for New cards with –

  • Burying disabled
  • New card gather order – anything non-random
  • New card sort order – order gathered
  • [You might want to consider what you have set for “New/Review order” as well.]

See: Deck Options - Anki Manual

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