Anki: corrupted database

08 Apr, 2026 • 204 words • 1 min • updated 12 Apr, 2026

Life is hard. Today, when opening Anki on macOS:

DbError { info: "SqliteFailure(Error { code: DatabaseCorrupt, extended_code: 11 }, Some(\"database disk image is malformed\"))", kind: Other }

Database corrupt? What is this, are we in the 2000s? Goodness.

I have automatic backups enabled. For 4 years I haven’t needed them. Today is the day. Never say never!

     shell
     
   
% ls -lt "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Anki2/Thiago/backups/"
total 234496
-rw-r--r--@ 1 tperrotta  staff  3911921 Apr  8 00:12 backup-2026-04-08-00.12.17.colpkg
-rw-r--r--@ 1 tperrotta  staff  3911921 Apr  7 00:16 backup-2026-04-07-00.16.26.colpkg

I try:

     shell
     
open "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Anki2/Thiago/backups/backup-2026-04-07-00.16.26.colpkg"

…but apparently that file is corrupt as well.

I am not particularly worried because I sync my notes to AnkiWeb. Even if the entire local collection were corrupt, my flashcards are in the cloud.

So I decided to simply start from scratch¹.

     shell
     
   
mv ~/Library/Application\ Support/Anki2/Thiago/collection.anki2 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Anki2/Thiago/collection.anki2.corrupt
rm -f ~/Library/Application\ Support/Anki2/Thiago/collection.anki2-shm ~/Library/Application\ Support/Anki2/Thiago/collection.anki2-wal

Then I open Anki.

It prompts me to download my decks from AnkiWeb.

And now everything works as usual! Last cleanup:

shell

trash ~/Library/Application\ Support/Anki2/Thiago/collection.anki2.corrupt

No idea why this has happened. First time. Life goes on.

!next

Previously.

The idea was mine. The decision was mine. The LLM suggested the command on how to do so. I can still self-troubleshoot, mmmkay? ↩︎

Backlinks

anki: auto-sync (Apr 12, 2026)

¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)