Hi everyone! I’d like to ask about an issue I’m experiencing with Obsidian Sync on Android and hope to get some advice or insights.
Problem Description:
I recently switched from an iPhone to an Android phone (Google Pixel 9 Pro / Android 15) and have started facing a rather troublesome sync issue. I’m using Obsidian version V1.8.10 (latest on both devices). The most noticeable situation is: When I’m editing a file on my MacBook Air (macOS Sequoia 15.4.1), if I then open the Obsidian app on my Pixel 9 Pro, the content of the same file I was editing on the Mac sometimes instantly turns blank.
Additional Context:
This issue never occurred when I was using an iPhone + Mac; sync was always smooth.
I know I can use the built-in “Version history” feature in Obsidian Sync to recover the file content immediately, so if I notice it right away, the data is recoverable.
My Real Concern:
My biggest fear isn’t the immediate inability to recover, but that this type of sync error might happen to files I don’t open very often. If a file’s content gets overwritten with an incorrect version (like blank or an incomplete old version) due to a sync initiated from the Android app without my knowledge, I might only discover it months or even a year later (potentially after the version history retention period has expired). At that point, the data would essentially be “permanently lost.”
My Questions:
Have other Android users reported similar sync conflicts or data overwriting issues, especially those using Pixel phones or Android 15?
Are there any recommended solutions or workarounds to prevent this?
Thank you very much for any shared experiences, advice, or official clarification!
I found this problem by chance. I had note A open in Obsidian on my computer. I also opened the Obsidian app on my phone because I wanted to add photos from my phone to note A (The app usually opens the daily note first). I was just waiting for the phone app to sync and didn’t click anything. Suddenly, I saw that the content of note A on my computer screen disappeared. It looked like a new, empty note. By the way, I’m using the official sync.
Because I was worried, I checked the notes I added last week, and I found that every few days, several notes turn blank. You can’t really prevent it.
This is a screenshot of the history of one of the files, edited on macbook at 8:13, then after opening on pixel phone at Sun, 20 Apr 2025 8:14 it became a new file mode, the metadata is my new file default template. I did not put it in cloud storage places like icloud, google drive, etc
I initially created this note on a Macbook, it should have been created at 19:14 on the same day. But after you mentioned it, I discovered that this note file’s version history from much earlier seems to be mixed up with the version history of other ‘untitle’ notes. Is it because I first created an ‘untitle’ note, then changed the file name? However, other note files don’t seem to have the ‘untitle’ history mixed in.
I just want to express that this note becomes the blank state when I initiate a new note file. The reason for this default metadata is the format I applied using the Templater plugin, that is, when a new note is generated, it automatically includes this metadata containing: tags:, up:, related:, aliases.
I discovered yesterday that another note also encountered the same situation, and it wasn’t a note created starting from an ‘untitle’ note. The note content simply disappeared upon opening it on the Android phone. This time there was no warning; I only discovered it because I deliberately went back to check for sync bug info from the previous few days.
In the sync log, including under All, Errors, Skipped, and Merge conflicts, there are no records at all. Is there any way to query past records? Because the window only shows log content from the last few hours at most.
However, it’s obvious that the note content disappears only when opening it cross-device on the Android phone. Previously, when using an iPhone, there wasn’t this problem. So, is this related to plugins? Moreover, I rely on plugins for note-taking almost every day. If I switch to restricted mode, I won’t be able to perform many of my daily tasks.
May I ask, haven’t other users encountered this problem?
My Real Concern:
