Installing & Upgrading Anki on Linux

Requirements

The packaged version requires a recent 64 bit Intel/AMD Linux, and common libraries like libwayland-client and systemd. If you are on a different architecture, or a barebones Linux distro, you will not be able to use the packaged version, but you may be able to use the Python wheels instead.

On recent Ubuntu installations, please use the following before installing:

sudo apt install libxcb-xinerama0

If Anki fails to start after installing, you may be missing other libraries.

Installing

To install Anki:

  1. Download Anki from https://apps.ankiweb.net to your Downloads folder.
  2. Open a terminal and run the following commands, replacing the version number as appropriate.
tar xjf Downloads/anki-2.1.XX-linux.tar.bz2
cd anki-2.1.XX-linux
sudo ./install.sh
  1. You can then start Anki by typing 'anki' and hitting enter. If you encounter any issues, please see the links on the left.

Upgrading

If you were running Anki from a .deb/.rpm/etc in the past, please make sure to remove the system version before installing the package provided here.

If you're upgrading from a previous package, simply repeat the installation steps to upgrade to the latest version. Your user data will be preserved.

If you wish to downgrade to a previous version, please make sure you downgrade first.

Add-on Compatibility

Some add-ons have not been updated to support the latest Anki release yet. If an add-on you depend on has not been ported to the latest release yet, you may have more luck with 2.1.44 from the releases page.

Problems

If you encounter any issues when installing or starting Anki, please see the following links on the left.