Why is my Anki data size exploding?

Anki Syncing & AnkiWeb
9

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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