Exporting Language Reactor to Anki: why it breaks, how to fix it, and the way out

If you're reading this, you probably have a folder of exported .csv files or a .zip from Language Reactor, Anki open in another window, and a growing suspicion that this shouldn't be this hard. You're in good company. The export questions go back years, across the Language Reactor forum, r/Anki, r/languagelearning, and the Anki forums — and the tone rarely changes. One user, after finally getting the files moved: *"There seems to be nobody online who can just give a clear explanation."*

Same disclosure as always: I build Piccard, a vocabulary tool that competes with this exact workflow. That means I have an opinion about it — and also that I've read every one of these threads, because they're my product research. The fixes below are real fixes. If you want to keep your Language Reactor + Anki pipeline, this article should still help you.

What actually goes wrong

The export itself usually works. What breaks is everything after it. The complaints fall into three piles:

1. Media goes missing on other devices. The export produces cards plus a folder of audio and images. On desktop Anki, everything looks fine — which is why the problem is so confusing. Sync to your phone, and the images are gone. The media files have to land in Anki's collection.media folder *on each device*, and the sync doesn't do that for you. The Anki forums thread is exactly this: works on desktop, blank on everything else.

2. The card comes out backwards. Which language is on the front? The export has settings for this, and they're easy to set in a way that reads wrong an hour later, when you're actually reviewing. One r/Anki user exporting Italian got English on the front with Italian audio on the back — the reverse of what they wanted to drill.

3. The CSV/zip step itself. Language Reactor can export a .csv or a packaged zip, and Anki imports them differently. "The instructions aren't working for me" is the polite version; the blunt version, from a user writing a guide to help others: *"Language Reactor's export feature is a mess. It's hard to set up, especially for people who aren't Anki-savvy."*

None of these are exotic bugs. They're the natural result of what this pipeline is: two full applications, owned by different companies, bolted together through files. Someone has to keep the bolt tight, and it's you.

Fix path A: follow the official export exactly

Language Reactor's export help page is the starting point, and it has been streamlined over the years. Things it answers that most broken setups get wrong: which Anki apps import the export properly (desktop Anki and AnkiDroid free; AnkiMobile is a paid one-time iOS purchase; reviewing via AnkiWeb after importing elsewhere works), and how word-with-context versus bare-word saves export differently. If your export "isn't working," read this page before anything else — half the failures are a step skipped in this direction, not a bug.

Fix path B: let a converter do the packaging

If the media-across-devices problem is your pain, 2anki.net's Language Reactor converter exists for exactly this: export the zip from Language Reactor, upload it, download a .apkg deck with your phrases, images, and audio packaged the way Anki expects. It's a third-party service — not affiliated with Language Reactor or us — so the usual judgment about uploading your data applies.

Fix path C: the AnkiConnect route

The community's long-running wish is that Language Reactor would just use the AnkiConnect add-on and push cards directly. While waiting, someone built it: Language_Reactor_to_Anki on GitHub is a separate extension that sends your saves straight into Anki via AnkiConnect. It requires installing AnkiConnect, downloading unpacked-extension source, and enabling developer mode in Chrome — at which point, notice what's happened: you're maintaining three pieces of software to move words from your screen into your memory.

The question under the question

Every fix above is real, and if you're invested in Anki — years of decks, add-ons tuned just so — take one and keep your pipeline. Anki is a genuinely good scheduler, and nothing here is an argument against it.

But somewhere around installing your second helper extension, it's worth asking what the export is *for*. The pipeline exists because Language Reactor finds the words, Anki remembers them, and the export is the customs border between two countries that don't talk.

The other approach is to not have a border: words become cards where you found them, and review lives in the same place. That's the whole idea behind Piccard, and the honest version looks like this:

• Bilingual subtitles on YouTube, per line, synced.
• Tap a subtitle line while watching → the line goes to Piccard → ready-made cards come back: meaning, example sentence, pronunciation. Keep what's worth keeping, discard the rest. One tap, one click.
• Review is built in — FSRS-6, the newer scheduler Anki itself also offers. No export, no import, no collection.media surgery, because there's nothing to move. Each card replays the exact YouTube moment it came from.
• On longer uploads (video or audio files), every transcribed phrase gets a 0–100 worth-learning score with a one-line reason, and the ones worth keeping arrive pre-checked — up to 20 cards per confirm.

The trade-offs, stated plainly: it's YouTube-only (no Netflix), the dictionary side is built for English (en→ko/zh/ja, plus ko→en and ja→en), and the free tier is 150 cards, not unlimited. And if you ever want out, .apkg export is on the roadmap — being locked in by a vocabulary app would be a strange kind of irony.

If you're staying with Language Reactor

Good choice, honestly — the subtitle rendering is excellent and around two million users aren't wrong. Bookmark the export help page, and if the media-sync problem bites you, re-read Fix B above before fighting the zip by hand.

And if what you actually want is a broader look at this whole category — Language Reactor, Migaku, Trancy, and where Piccard fits — that's here.

1. Sources for the quotes in this post: LLN forum export guide thread, r/Anki export thread, Anki Forums media thread, r/Anki card-direction thread, r/languagelearning instructions thread. All visited 2026-08-30.