Rotating the screen with the set due date dialog open resets the study screen

[ZornHadNoChoice]

Checked for duplicates?

• This issue is not a duplicate

Does it also happen in the desktop version?

• This bug does not occur in the latest version of Anki Desktop

What are the steps to reproduce this bug?

Add some code to the template to make it random, for example:

<div id=t>{{Front}}</div>


<script>
var e = document.getElementById('t');
e.innerHTML = Math.random();
</script>

then open the set due date dialog and rotate the screen. Notice that the screen was reset, so the number is different.

Screenrecorder-2026-04-22-17-41-46-982.mp4

Expected behaviour

No resetting.

Debug info

AnkiDroid Version = 2.24.0alpha14 (b9e52b175cd656018d0655da8ddcfb37ed10b881)  
Backend Version = 0.1.64-anki25.09.2 (25.09.2 3890e12c9e48c028c3f12aa58cb64bd9f8895e30)  
Android Version = 13 (SDK 33)  
ProductFlavor = full  
Device Info = Xiaomi | POCO | mondrian | mondrian_global | 23013PC75G | qcom  
WebView Info = [com.google.android.webview | 768017703]: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 13; 23013PC75G Build/TKQ1.220905.001; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/146.0.7680.177 Mobile Safari/537.36  
ACRA UUID = 4afc3b3f-e93f-4a66-bc71-2b9476ef9eb0  
FSRS = 5.1.0 (Enabled: true)  
Crash Reports Enabled = true

(Optional) Anything else you want to share?

Also happens in the old study screen and in the new beta.

Research

• I have checked the manual and the FAQ and could not find a solution to my issue
• (Optional) I have confirmed the issue is not resolved in the latest alpha release (instructions)

[Ayush-Patel-56]

I have successfully reproduced this. As suspected, rotating the screen while the 'Set due date' dialog is open causes the underlying activity to recreate, resetting the study screen state (timer, card rendering, etc.). I would like to work on a fix.

Screen_recording_20260423_113620.mp4

[ZornHadNoChoice]

The timer doesn't reset for me, only the card rendering.

[Ayush-Patel-56]

I think the recreate() call in SetDueDateDialog.kt that causes the re-rendering. Even if the timer persists, the card reload is still disruptive. I'm looking into handling the dialog's layout update manually during rotation to avoid the activity restart. What do you think about this ?

[ZornHadNoChoice]

I don't know, but go ahead!

[david-allison]

This one might be hairy, but if it's causing user-facing issues, rather than a bug report due to Zorn's (deeply appreciated) thorough user testing, then let's prioritize it.

If not, we'll be able to resolve this once we're fully moved to the new reviewer, which should handle config changes properly

Anki-Android/AnkiDroid/src/main/java/com/ichi2/anki/scheduling/SetDueDateDialog.kt

Lines 124 to 137 in 859851f

	override fun onConfigurationChanged(newConfig: Configuration) {
	super.onConfigurationChanged(newConfig)
	// HACK: After significant effort, I was unable to properly handle the interaction
	// between the ViewPager and `android:configChanges="orientation"`
	// (the window size & position was incorrectly calculated)
	// There was a minor bug in Reviewer (timer is reset), which meant that
	// generally we could not remove the configChanges
	// For now, only recreate the activity if this dialog is open
	if (getScreenRotation() != initialRotation) {
	Timber.d("recreating activity: orientation changed with 'Set due date' open")
	requireAnkiActivity().recreate()
	}
	}

[ZornHadNoChoice]

Haha, I only observed it from testing. It's very niche indeed.

[david-allison]

Ahaa! I did a lot of testing when I started out in software 😉.

@Ayush-Patel-56

I'd propose leaving it as 'priority-low': It could be a lot of work, which should become trivial in a release or two once we've moved to the new reviewer. There's higher impact issues (unless fixing this excites you)

[Ayush-Patel-56]

I'll look for other issues for now, will fix it in new reviewer screen. As I think it may require a long time to fix.