Installing & Upgrading Anki on Linux

Requirements

The packaged version requires a recent 64 bit Intel/AMD Linux with glibc, and common libraries like libwayland-client and systemd. If you are on a different architecture (e.g ARM/AArch64), 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.

Debian and derivatives, such as Ubuntu and Chromebooks with Linux enabled, please use the following before installing:

sudo apt install libxcb-xinerama0 libxcb-cursor0 libnss3

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

If you're on Ubuntu 24.04 and Anki won't start, please see this thread.

Anki's build system only supports glibc, so musl-based distros are not currently supported.

Installing

To install Anki:

  1. Download Anki from https://apps.ankiweb.net to your Downloads folder.
  2. If zstd is not already installed on your system, you'll need to install it (e.g sudo apt install zstd).
  3. Open a terminal and run the following commands, replacing the filename as appropriate.
tar xaf Downloads/anki-2XXX-linux-qt6.tar.zst
cd anki-2XXX-linux-qt6
sudo ./install.sh

On some Linux systems, you may need to use tar xaf --use-compress-program=unzstd.

  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 may not always work with the latest Anki release. If you upgrade to the latest Anki version and find an add-on you cannot live without stops working, you can download older Anki versions from the releases page.

Problems

If you encounter any issues when installing or starting Anki, please see the following pages: