Steps to reproduce
As far as I know, this bug happens with the following app & installer version pairs:
- installer 1.8.10, app 1.9.4 or higher (I can’t test app versions <= 1.9.3)
- installer 1.9.10, app 1.9.10
It does NOT happen with:
- installer 1.8.10, app 1.8.10
Steps:
- Add this PDF file to the sandbox vault: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.20761
- Open the PDF and select the text “Preprint. Under review.” at the bottom of the first page (selection direction: left to right).
- Right-click to show the context menu.
Did you follow the troubleshooting guide? [Y/N]
Y
Expected result
The context menu should allow us to copy a link to the selection via the “Copy as quote” and “Copy link to selection” menu items.
Actual result
The context menu does not contain these items.
Environment
SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v1.9.10
Installer version: v1.9.10
Operating system: Darwin Kernel Version 24.5.0: Tue Apr 22 19:48:46 PDT 2025; root:xnu-11417.121.6~2/RELEASE_ARM64_T8103 24.5.0
Login status: logged in
Language: en
Catalyst license: insider
Insider build toggle: on
Live preview: on
Base theme: adapt to system
Community theme: none
Snippets enabled: 0
Restricted mode: off
Plugins installed: 1
Plugins enabled: 0
RECOMMENDATIONS:
none
Additional information
This bug is similar to the one that I reported before for 1.9.1:
However, the mechanism seems to be a little different this time.
After selecting the text “Preprint. Under review.”, run getSelection().focusNode in the dev console. The result shows that the focusNode is the first .textLayerNode in the NEXT page.
In other words, Obsidian misunderstands that the selection spans two pages, which is not true.
As a result, the pdfView.viewer.child.getTextSelectionRangeStr method fails, and therefore the context menu does not contain “Copy as quote” and “Copy link to selection”.
I tried opening the same PDF file in Firefox (v142.0), which also uses PDF.js (v5.4.19). However, it correctly recognized the range of the text selection, and it turned out that the issue is specific to Obsidian’s version of PDF.js.