Anki text widget

A Linux widget that shows you how many Anki cards you currently have to study. It can be used in a text-based bar, like i3bar or waybar, or with a GNOME extension that runs a command-line program and displays the output in the status bar (like this one).

Example output

Default format: Anki - due: 12, new: 20

Short format: 12 / 20

Installation

Download binary

Download the latest release and place it in your path (in $HOME/bin or $HOME/.local/bin, for example).

Build using build script

To compile the widget, we need to build the Anki Rust code, which requires protoc v3.15 or later. Run the script build.sh to download a recent version of protoc, build the widget, and clean up afterwards.

Build manually

On Ubuntu 24.10 and later, you can install protoc using apt install protobuf-compiler. On other distro's, you can check your package manager for its protoc version.

On earlier versions of Ubuntu, you can manually install protoc by downloading a zip file here (you probably want protoc-<version>-linux-x86_64.zip).

Unzip it, and place the file bin/protoc in your path.

Once you have installed protoc, you can run cargo install --git https://github.com/evavh/anki-widget to compile and install anki-widget.

Setup

To try it out, run anki-widget one-shot in the terminal, and follow any instructions for configuration. No configuration should be needed if you only have one Anki install with one user profile.

Once you have working output, you can follow the instructions for your bar on how to add the widget to it. Be sure to check whether your bar runs the command every time it updates (use the one-shot command) or expects continuous input (use the continuous command).

Usage

A widget that shows Anki's current due and new card counts

Usage: anki-widget [OPTIONS] <COMMAND>

Commands:
  one-shot    Print output once and then quit, used for GNOME and text
              bars that do the refreshing for you by running the command
              again
  continuous  Print output every minute (by default), used for text bars
              that only run the command once and expect output to change.
              Settings: --refresh-delay, --retry-delay
  help        Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -s, --short                   Print only the card counts, in the form <due> / <new>
  -j, --json                    Print output as machine-readable json of the form {"msg": "<output>"}
  -p, --path <PATH>             The full path to your Anki2 folder, by default the
                                widget will search for this. Use this if you have
                                a custom path, or multiple paths were found
  -u, --user-profile <PROFILE>  The user profile to use. Use this if multiple
                                profiles were found
  -h, --help                    Print help
  -V, --version                 Print version

Possible future features

• Provide binaries
• More formatting options (suggestions welcome)
• Windows support?

If you find any bugs or would like to suggest a feature or improvement, feel free to create an issue.