Export Tags as Text

Tags provide a many-to-many classification of the notes in an Anki collection: a note may carry several tags, and a tag may apply to many notes. In collections whose tags encode subject matter, the tag system can function as a lightweight ontology: top-level tags can identify domains, while hierarchical tags use :: to represent subdivisions within those domains.

This add-on exports the complete tag list as sorted plain text, either to the clipboard or to a file, for inspection, comparison, or use with an LLM.

Export Tags as Text complements Export Deck Guide as Text, Export Deck Tree as Text, Export Field and Tag Legend as Text, and Export Note Types as Text. Together, these five add-ons provide collection-level context. In the Browser, Selected Notes to Structured Text supplies selected notes for assessment or as exemplars for note generation.

Installation

Install Export Tags as Text from AnkiWeb using add-on code 550673409.

Usage

<img src="export-tags-as-text.png" alt="Export menu with Tags as Text commands" align="right" width="320">

Choose either of the following menu items:

• Export → Copy Tags as Text
• Export → Save Tags as Text…

Both commands export the same tag list: Copy Tags as Text places it on the clipboard; Save Tags as Text… writes it to a UTF-8 text file, by default named anki-tags-YYYY-MM-DD.txt.

After copying or saving, Anki reports the total number of tags and the number of top-level tags.

Before exporting, you may wish to run Tools → Check Database. Anki retains unused tags in its tag list until that list is rebuilt; Check Database removes such entries.

Configuration

The keyboard shortcuts can be changed in the add-on’s configuration dialog:

Tools → Add-ons → 𝕾 Export Tags as Text → Config

The default configuration is:

{
    "shortcut_copy": "",
    "shortcut_save": "Meta+Ctrl+Shift+T"
}

shortcut_copy is disabled by default.

On macOS, Qt interprets Meta as Control (⌃), Ctrl as Command (⌘), Alt as Option (⌥), and Shift as Shift (⇧). The default shortcut for Save Tags as Text… is therefore ⌃⇧⌘T.

No restart is required.

Format

Each tag is written exactly as stored by Anki, one per line. Hierarchical tags retain Anki’s :: separator. An example:

HTML
HTML::charref
HTML::charref::named
HTML::charref::numeric

The add-on exports Anki’s registered tag list, which may include unused tags. It does not modify the collection.

Compatibility

Tested with Anki 26.08 on macOS Tahoe 26. Windows and Linux have not yet been tested.

Suggestions and bug reports are welcome. Please open an issue on GitHub.

License

Licensed under the GNU AGPL v3 or later.