Anki deck viewer: open an .apkg without Anki

What it shows

• The decks. Every deck and subdeck as a tree (Anki writes Languages::Spanish for a subdeck), with the cards in each and in everything below it, and the deck description when there is one.
• Every note, searchable. One table per note type, one column per field, with the tags and the deck. Pictures the deck carries are drawn in the cell, and each [sound:word.mp3] becomes a player you can press. Search finds words in any field or tag, ignoring accents, and a tag picker narrows the table.
• The cards as Anki would ask them. Press Cards on a note and each of its cards appears with its front and back, made the way Anki makes them: the note's fields put into the card template's {{Front}} and {{Back}} slots, {{#Field}} sections kept or dropped, and cloze cards with the asked gap shown as [...] (or its hint) on the front.
• The note types. Each note type's field names in order, every card template as its front and back source, and its CSS, so you can see how a deck was built before you import it.
• Study history, when the file has it. A collection backup, or a deck exported with its scheduling, says for each card how many times it was reviewed, how many lapses (times forgotten) it had, whether it is new, learning, in review or suspended, and when it is next due.
• Two ways to take it with you. “Export as CSV” writes one note type's notes with a column per field plus Tags and Deck, as plain text with [image: cat.jpg] where a picture was, or with the HTML kept exactly as Anki stores it. “Save all media” writes one ZIP of every picture and sound under the names the cards use.

What this cannot do

• Study or schedule cards. There are no answer buttons and no scheduler. The due dates and intervals are the ones stored in the file; to study the deck, import it into Anki, AnkiDroid or AnkiMobile.
• Edit the deck. Nothing can be changed or saved back as an .apkg. The CSV is a copy for a spreadsheet or for another flashcard program.
• Run card scripts or show card styling exactly. Templates with JavaScript (type-in checks, shuffled answers, add-on tricks) are shown with their <script> code printed as text; it is never run. The note type's CSS is listed but not applied, so fonts, colours and layout differ from Anki.
• Show HTML formatting. It shows HTML formatting as plain text: bold, colours, tables and lists come out as their words, with line breaks and pictures kept. Tick “Keep HTML in the CSV” to get the fields exactly as stored.
• Load pictures from the web or render maths. A card that points at an image on another site shows only the address, so opening a deck never contacts anyone. LaTeX and MathJax appear as their source, such as \(x^2\).
• Open a whole Anki profile folder. It reads packages (.apkg, .colpkg). A loose collection.anki2 from Anki's profile folder is an SQLite database: the SQLite viewer opens it as tables.

Useful to know about .apkg files

It is a ZIP with a database inside

An .apkg is an ordinary ZIP. Inside is an SQLite database of the notes and cards, a file called media that maps numbered files to their real names (0 is cat.jpg, 1 is gato.mp3), and the numbered media files themselves. A .colpkg is the same thing holding a whole collection, which is what Anki's “Export collection” and its automatic backups write.

Three layouts, one of them a decoy

Anki 2.0 named the database collection.anki2; Anki 2.1 wrote collection.anki21. Since Anki 2.1.50 (2022) the database is collection.anki21b, compressed with Zstandard, the media list is a compressed binary list and every media file is compressed too. Those packages still contain a collection.anki2, but it holds a single note reading “Please update to the latest Anki version, then import the .colpkg/.apkg file again.” for old importers. Tools that only read collection.anki2 show that one note instead of your cards; this page picks the newest collection and says when it skipped the decoy.

Fields, notes and cards

A note holds the fields (Front, Back, or whatever the note type defines), stored in one text column separated by the invisible character U+001F. Each card template of the note type makes one card from the note, so a “Basic (and reversed card)” note gives two cards; a cloze note gives one card per {{c1::…}}, {{c2::…}} number. That is why the card count is usually larger than the note count.

Shared decks usually carry no history

When you export a deck, Anki asks whether to “Include scheduling information”. Shared decks on AnkiWeb are almost always exported without it, so every card is new; a collection backup (.colpkg) always has it. Review dates are stored as day numbers counted from the day the collection was created, which is how this page turns them into dates.

Getting a CSV out of Anki itself

With Anki installed, File › Export › “Notes in Plain Text” writes a tab-separated file. It needs the deck imported first, which merges it into your collection; here the deck stays untouched and the CSV takes one click per note type.