Adding characters (< > |) to note names on Linux/iOS makes them inaccessible on Windows

[gpanakkal]

Steps to reproduce

• On Linux or iOS, open a note in a synced vault.
• Open the same vault on a Windows device.
• In the iOS app, add one of these characters: < > | to the note’s name.
• Sync will delete the file on the Windows device and reject the renamed version due to illegal characters.

Did you read and follow the Troubleshooting Guide ?

Yes

Expected result

Any of these would be an improvement:

• Show a notice on the Windows device alerting the user that some files were rejected by sync.

• Prevent < > | from being used in file names (maybe gated behind a setting).

• Show a warning when renaming indicating that files with those characters will not be usable on Windows.

Actual result

If adding |, a warning popup appears saying “Links will not work with file names containing any of these characters: # ^ [ ] |”, but there’s nothing saying sync will reject the file on Windows.

If adding < or >, there is no warning, and the file simply goes missing from vault instances on Windows devices.

[dawni]

It should’ve shown up in your Sync activity log as “Unable to download file with illegal name”: Status icon and messages - Obsidian Help.

Feature request for failed-sync notifications, that you could support:

Obsidian Sync: Notifications when Sync fails

Hello! That would be awesome to have a notification that pops whenever Sync fails, just to make sure we don’t have to open sync everytime we upload multiple files to make sure everything happened well. Have a nice weekend!

Feature request for consistency across OSs:

Handle filename "casing", "illegal" characters consistently across OS’es

Use case or problem Files with perfectly legal characters and different “casing” aren’t handled consistently in Obsidian. Example We have two files, normally created within Obsidian: Test links upper- and lowercase.md, and Test Links upper- and lowercase.md. We can create and access them just fine in Obsidian, but all of the links below point to Test links upper- and lowercase.md, and the graph view also shows just Test links upper- and lowercase. [[Testing/Test links upper- and lowercas…

And FYI, this is what happens on Windows:

And this on (I think) all systems: