#9

Hey all, running Android 11 and also experiencing app crashes on initial loading of a directory as a vault. The last output I see is a toast that says:

Obsidian is indexing your vault…
This should only happen once.
Some functionality may not be available until this is complete. (0/95)

Then the app crashes. I’ve tried:

  • rebooting the app
  • restarting my phone
  • reinstalling the app
  • clearing the app cache

I’ve verified my directory, and its sub directories’, contents do not contain a file name with any characters that are a-z, 0-9, dot, dash, or underscore by running:

$ find . -type f | grep -i '[^a-z0-9\.\/_\-]'

at its root.

I’ve also verified that if i open a small sub directory of the root, the app loads as expected.

Any advice on how to get more info on the crash? I’d love to read and provide any logs…

#10

Hi Silver, was the question for me?

I doubt it can be a memory issue, since the problem disappears when I simply move the folder somewhere else, then move it back again. Or could it?

I have a Google Pixel 5.

The folder I’m syncing and trying to open with Obsidian is 1.1GB.

#11

Did you try simply moving the directory to somewhere, and then opening it?

If that works, it’s the same as me. See [BUG] App crashes - #4 by yusufhgmail.

However, anytime I start syncing that folder again, Obsidian crashes.

#12

Interesting @yusufhgmail, I’m glad you mentioned that, as that worked for me!

I moved my directory up one level:

$ mv new-notes ..

And I was able to open new-notes as a vault. The original directory this was under was simpley titled Git.

I’d obviously prefer to be able to control my directory structure but this is a fix for now.

I’m still happy to explore why it’s crashing by reading and providing logs, I’ll just need to be told where they are.

Edit: I must have misunderstood what you wrote until now, as my Obsidian app also crashes on reopening… Hahaha so close to having it work! Gah this is frustrating ha

#13

@yusufhgmail probably unrelated but what path do you have the directory you use as your vault stored at?

#14

I’m having the same problem. I created a folder on my phone and synced using DriveSync and Google Drive. I installed and tested the Obsidian app, creating a new vault on my phone and it worked fine. But as soon as I “opened folder as vault” using my synced folder, the app crashed.

Even worse, the first few times I tried, I had to uninstall the app as it wouldn’t launch without crashing. After reinstalling, I could keep it working as long as it used my “dummy” local vault, but as soon as I pointed it back at the synced folder, it crashed again.

Now, I can’t even get the app to launch after a fresh install.

I assume that there must be a corrupt file somewhere that causes the Obsidian mobile app to crash.

Very annoying, but I guess the app is very new and this is part of the teething process.
I’d be interested to hear if you fix your issue.

Edit: After deleting all the folders that I’d used as vaults off my phone, the app is once again able to launch.

Edit: The official help available from within the mobile app (“How to set up mobile sync”) specifically mentions “Third party sync” options and links to Dropsync and Folder Sync". So surely it must work for most people?

#15

Yeah this sounds exactly like our issue we’re having to. Just a tip, if you want to launch Obsidian without crashing and without uninstalling, you can move your underlying directory opened as a vault. That will work until the next time you open the app.

I’m still waiting to hear back how to debug this, as it’s incredibly frustrating haha

Let me know if you learn anything and I’ll do the same

#16

Do you have weird character in the filenames? How big is your vault? The app may also crash because it can’t fit your phone RAM.

#17

I created my filenames using Obsidian, I don’t think there are any disallowed filenames. The vault is less than 10Mb.

I don’t think it is a RAM issue.

#18

you may have created your filenames in Obsidian, but there are different characters allowed in different OSes (users wanted direct control).
So if you are not using Obsidian Sync, it is on you to make sure that your sync solution doesn’t create funky files. Do you have files that contain #:% or other weird character?
Why don’t you try to move one directory at time from the vault that doesn’t work to the one that works to see if you can narrow down the issue?

#19

Reading various forums, it seems that quite a few people use google drive to sync obsidian. I haven’t seen many people with my problem.
I’m going to assume from that that the most likely problem is files with weird characters in my Vault. All my files work with the desktop app, so there must be a difference between mobile and desktop that causes mobile app crash.
My next step from here will be to search for and try to eliminate files with “weird characters”, but I can only guess what that means.
It’s a pity that the app can’t parse this out rather than crashing.
Thanks for the tips though.

#20

Hey @WhiteNoise,

For context from the rest of the thread, I searched throw my notes programmatically to try to find any files with weird characters and could not find any.

I’ve verified my directory, and its sub directories’, contents do not contain a file name with any characters that are a-z, 0-9, dot, dash, or underscore by running:

$ find . -type f | grep -i '[^a-z0-9\.\/_\-]'

Is there any way we can procure some log or crash report to understand why our app is crashing rather than guessing?

I’m also not convinced this is a ram issue, as I can restart my phone and only open this app and have it crash. Additionally my directory / vault only contains raw mark down as a flat directory. IE no images etc.

#21

How big is your vault?

If you create an empty vault on mobile, does it work?
If so, move your files into this vault a bit at time, when does it stop working?

#22

Also, when you submit bug reports, there should be no third party plugins and no custom theme enabled.

#23

My vault has about 12 MB of content, exclusively markdown files a few directories. For magnitude, it clocks in at 532 files.

I’ll start bisecting the files and adding them slowly at a time to see if I can manually spot the culprit.

Understood. I’ll remove the plugins I have. This wasn’t my original thread, as I was ushered here haha

I want to ask this again, as it’d be way easier to fix this:

Is there any way we can procure some log or crash report to understand why our app is crashing rather than guessing?

#24

I was able to open my directory without the app crashing. I achieved this by deleting the three directories I still have in my vault folder, as I haven’t gotten to refactoring them out into a flat hierarchy.

I don’t know which file caused an issue but I can identify the file that’s causing problems in the future and share that here.

#25

that would be awesome. Ping me when you do.

1 Like
#26

I ended up paying for sync. When I did, during sync error messages kept popping up, saying that particular files couldnn’t be synced. Looking at the files, all the ones I noticed had a semicolon “:” in the filename. Maybe try search and replace all semicolons in your vault and that might fix your problem. I’d be interested to hear if that works for you.

#27

Interesting I had the same issue, do you remember actually writing the semicolon in the filename?

#28

Interesting.

Unfortunately I’ve ready verified that I do not have weird characters in my file names. Quoting from above:

I’ve verified my directory, and its sub directories’, contents do not contain a file name with any characters that are a-z, 0-9, dot, dash, or underscore by running:

$ find . -type f | grep -i '[^a-z0-9\.\/_\-]'