AnkiGlass

Native macOS Liquid Glass for Anki. AnkiGlass gives Anki's main window a real AppKit NSGlassEffectView — the macOS 26 "Tahoe" glass material — behind the deck list, deck overview, and reviewer, with frosted toolbar and bottom-bar controls and a theme-aware tint.

macOS only. Best on macOS 26 (Tahoe) for true Liquid Glass; older macOS gets a vibrancy (frosted) fallback. On Windows and Linux the add-on does nothing.

Screenshots

<img width="1800" height="1169" alt="Screenshot 2026-09-06 at 10 06 39" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/c82c5078-d561-4fa1-bf7e-1bb67de85388" /> <img width="1800" height="1169" alt="Screenshot 2026-09-06 at 10 07 04" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/69c2b21c-4a2a-456e-b90c-b475f38c6885" /> <img width="1800" height="1169" alt="Screenshot 2026-09-06 at 10 04 10" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/678ff45c-b262-49bd-a36d-943fbe8a74e9" />

Install

• From AnkiWeb: search for “AnkiGlass” in Tools → Add-ons → Get Add-ons.
• From a build: run ./build.sh and double-click dist/anki-glass.ankiaddon, or in Anki use Tools → Add-ons → Install from file.

Restart Anki after installing.

Configuration

Tools → Add-ons → AnkiGlass → Config. See src/config.md for each option. In short: choose which screens get glass, whether the card area itself is glass, and the tint colour for light and dark mode. A runtime toggle lives under Tools → AnkiGlass.

How it works

Anki's UI is Qt/Chromium web views, not native AppKit controls, so AnkiGlass does not replace the widget engine. Instead it:

1. Makes the main NSWindow transparent and requests an alpha surface format so Chromium clears its transparent regions cleanly (no ghosting).
2. Hosts a real NSGlassEffectView in a borderless child window pinned behind the main window. The main window is never re-parented, so Qt keeps ownership of its own view and mouse hover (e.g. AMBOSS pop-ups) keeps working.
3. Injects small, scoped CSS into Anki's toolbar, bottom bar, and card pages to make their backgrounds transparent and style the controls as frosted glass.

It talks to the Objective-C runtime through ctypes (see objc_bridge.py) — the same technique Anki itself uses for its bundled macOS helper — because Anki does not ship PyObjC.

Caveats

• macOS 26 (Tahoe) is required for genuine Liquid Glass; earlier macOS shows a vibrancy fallback.
• Tiling window managers may try to manage the child glass window; if the glass detaches on move/resize, that is the window manager, not Anki.
• Some heavily customised note types paint their own full-card background; AnkiGlass neutralises canvas-sized backgrounds automatically, but very unusual templates may need glass_card set to false.

Development

• Source lives in src/. Symlink or copy it into your Anki add-ons folder as anki_glass to test, then restart Anki.
• ./build.sh packages src/ into dist/anki-glass.ankiaddon.

License

AGPL-3.0.