As the title suggests, I opened Obsidian one day and all the content in my notes disappeared. But, the file names and structure is intact.
What I’m trying to do
Restore functionality to my obsidian.
Things I have tried
I have updated Obsidian, restarted it, and sometimes I can see the content flicker before it becomes completely inaccessible. I have my files backed up in an iCloud folder. Each file still shows the correct word count and backlinks, but I just cannot see any of it! In fact, I can create a new note, name it, and see the character count going up as I type, but I cannot see anything I’m doing.
This has never happened in my 4+ years of using Obsidian.
Markdown are simple text files, therefore; check if your files (markdown notes) are still intact. Simply use your file browser and open some of your notes in a simple text editor for inspection.
If the body of your notes is still there, deactivate all your plugins step by step and check if this brings back your note content.
A faster way is to activate safe mode (deactivating effectively all plugins at once) and check again your notes.
Also deactivate all your CSS snippets.
If you encountered this issue recently, try to downgrade Obsidian to an older version which worked for you.
I am not an Electron guy but this sounds like you have an ages old installer.
You need to download the latest installer and install it (it will overwrite the current install, so no need to uninstall).
If you have a lot of numbered lists in your notes, I recommend you install this instead:
And when the new 1.8.5 version comes out with the fix, you will need to install that.
The same behavior happened to me after installing 1.8.4. What restored the display of my notes was turning off all plugins, then turning them back on, though I left Sliding Panes turned off.