ames

Anki media extractor script (ames): Update Anki cards with desktop audio, screenshots, and clipboard sentences on GNU/Linux.

ames automates the process of adding information and media to your latest added Anki card, making immersion mining smoother and more efficient.

Requirements

• A Bash interpreter.
• Anki and AnkiConnect. Note that Anki must be running.
• X11: Wayland version (wlroots) in contrib/wayland
• pactl: detecting and recording from audio monitors (pulseaudio and pipewire-pulse tested).
• ffmpeg: encoding desktop audio.
• maim: screenshots.
• xdotool: detecting active windows.
• libnotify: sending notifications.
• xclip: pasting clipboard content (xsel is supported, but may be removed in the future)

Installation

General

1. Download the ames.sh script somewhere safe.
2. Edit the script and change the first two lines to match the names of your Anki model image and audio fields.
3. Bind the following commands to any key in your DE, WM, sxhkd, xbindkeysrc, etc.
   • bash ~/path/to/ames.sh -r: press once to start recording, and again to stop and export the audio clip to your latest-created Anki card.
   • bash ~/path/to/ames.sh -s: prompt for an interactive screenshot selection.
   • bash ~/path/to/ames.sh -a: repeat the previous screenshot selection. If there is no previous selection, default to -s.
   • bash ~/path/to/ames.sh -w: screenshot the currently active window (requires xdotool).
   • bash ~/path/to/ames.sh -c: exports the currently copied text in the clipboard to the sentence field (requires xclip).

Arch users

1. Install the ames package from the AUR.
2. Copy the default config:

mkdir -p ~/.config/ames/ && cp /usr/share/ames/config ~/.config/ames/config

3. Edit the config file however you like, but make sure your Anki image and audio fields are correct.
4. Bind the same commands however you want, but now the ames command should be in your PATH, so you can bind, for example, ames -s instead of bash ~/path/to/ames.sh -s.

GNU Make

1. Move contrib/Makefile.contrib to the root of the project:

cp contrib/Makefile.contrib Makefile

2. sudo make install.
3. See Arch users.

Notes

• You may also define config options in ~/.config/ames/config. These must be Bash variable declarations, with no spaces like in the script or in the sample configuration.
• The aforementioned file is read after all functions have been defined at runtime. This means that you can change any behavior of ames by redefining a function in Bash. See the source code for function names and some caveats for redefined functions to work. For example custom configs, see the contrib directory.
• ames tries to pick the right output monitor automatically. If this doesn't work for you, you can first list monitor sinks with pactl list | grep -A2 '^Source #' and then redefine the OUTPUT_MONITOR variable with the name of the correct sink.
• By default, images are scaled to a height of 300px.
• Prefix your ames command with LANG=ja for Japanese notifications to achieve maximum immersion.

Contrib

The contrib directory stores some custom configurations that modify the functionality of ames.

• wayland: replace X11-dependent tools with wayland (wlroots) compatible tools
• python: replace command line tools with python programs, which should work cross-platform. Also deals with ffmpeg's recording/encoding delay.
• jq: replace regex-based response parsing with jq, leading to better error messages.

Please see the README files in each of their respective directories for more information about usage.