Desktop: Spellcheck is not initialized when opening a note

Bug reports
, , ,
1

Steps to reproduce

  1. Enable built-in spellcheck and select American English.
  2. Open a vault manually from the vault selection screen.
  3. Type helllooo and confirm it is marked as misspelled.
  4. Quit Obsidian while that vault is open.
  5. Start Obsidian again.
  6. Obsidian automatically restores the remembered vault.
  7. Type helllooo again.

Did you follow the troubleshooting guide?

Y, all tests were done in restricted mode. The Sandbox Vault shows the same problems if it is the automatically opened vault.

Expected result

Spellcheck should be initialized whether the vault is restored at startup or opened manually.

Actual result

Spellcheck does not work in the automatically restored vault.

If I use “Manage Vaults,” return to the vault selection screen, and manually reopen the same vault, spellcheck immediately works again for that session.

Environment

SYSTEM INFO:
	Obsidian version: 1.13.4
	Installer version: 1.13.4
	Operating system: #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Jul 24 20:44:56 UTC 2026 7.1.5-200.fc44.x86_64
	Login status: not logged in
	Language: en
	Insider build toggle: off
	Live preview: on
	Base theme: adapt to system
	Community theme: none
	Snippets enabled: 0
	Restricted mode: on

RECOMMENDATIONS:
	none

Distro Name: Fedora
Distro Version: 44
Desktop Environment: KDE
Installation method used: AppImage and Flatpak

Additional information

  • Issue reproduces with the AppImage and the Flatpak.
  • Rolling back to Obsidian 1.12.7 fixes the issue.
2

This is not a linux specific problem.
You don’t even need to restart Obsidian. Just closing and reopening the note has a problem

3

this is an upstream electron regression

5

I’m having this issue to and nothing I’ve done so far (all the tips I found while searching) has restored the spell check functionality. I hope someone can get this working again.

6

Same, I posted the below to the Help forum with what I have tried. I am very new to Linux though, so do not have any history of how long it has been broken. The spell checker fine for me on macOS and Windows 11.

7

It’s upstream of upstream. (Chromium review #8206965 and Github electron/electron issue #50327.)

Here’s the work around that worked for me, based on the information in the closest upstream bug. Before launching Obsidian (every time), delete the cached dictionary files:

rm ~/.config/obsidian/Dictionaries/*.bdic

This wastes ~450 KB of bandwidth re-downloading the dictionary from Google on every startup. However, it restores the spellchecking functionality. Maybe one in ten times, this doesn’t work. Quit, delete again, and relaunch — it’s a timing issue, so it’ll be a bit random.

8

@WhiteNoise, please note the suggested workaround from upstream:

mainWindow.webContents.session.setSpellcheckerEnabled(false);
mainWindow.once('ready-to-show', () => {
    mainWindow.webContents.session.setSpellCheckerEnabled(true);
});

The Chromium fix will probably take a while to land and be backported and shipped by Electron.

9

This workaround worked in DEB version of Obsidian on Linux Mint, but I am using Flatpak version. Anyone know workaround for that? BTW this is huge, this makes Obsidian useless for me, and probably many many other people.
And someone wrote, that this will take awhile to fix, cos it is Electron (Chrome) problem? Is this true? I love obsidian but will have to switch to something different if there is no workaround. Maybe I can switch to DEB for now.

Edit: I did that workaround with Flatpak. In my system dictionaries are in:

~/.var/app/md.obsidian.Obsidian/config/obsidian/Dictionaries

I made .sh script deleting them and running flatpak version of Obsidian:

#!/bin/bash
rm -f \~/.var/app/md.obsidian.Obsidian/config/obsidian/Dictionaries/\*.bdic
exec flatpak run md.obsidian.Obsidian "$@"

save this as

obsidianfixspell.sh

then make it executable with

chmod +x obsidianfixspell.sh

now you can run it, it will delete those dictionaries(obsidian will download new ones), and run obsidian. You can add this file to start menu to have nice icon in taskbar, and/or add it to autostart. Claude will help in seconds if it is different on your system.
I hope this will be fixed soon.
PS:
I still need to type something in a note to spell-check “red snakes” to appear under words with errors, is this normal? I don’t remember.

10

Hello! Is there any update on this issue? Is this something that Obsidian can resolve it do we have to wait for the upstream fix?

For info, I run the DEB on Ubuntu 26.10

11

Linux Mint. I can get it to work again if I add a random language to the spell check, then click the reload symbol that pops up. This removes the random language and apparently reinitialises the spell check correctly.
It’s annoying though, having to do this every time I open a vault.

12

We are aware of this issue.
This is an upstream chrome/electron bug. A workaround has been proposed in electron but they have not yet releases a version that includes said workaround.

If this problem is too severe for you, I suggest you uninstall obsidian and reinstall version 1.12.7 which bundles an older version of electron.

13

Hi, additional info: I just opened a different vault from the one I ususally work in, and for that vault spell check works right from booting up.

So I guess my case has nothing to do with Electron and I’m going to have to rebuild the vault to figure out which plugin broke it. Joy… /s

14

I downgraded to 1.12.7 cos even with fixes/workarounds spellcheck ribbons in newest version keep glitching on and off when typing.

15

I’ve run into this same issue on mobile and Linux client (Debian and Flatpak versions). Since it’s unknown when this issue will be resolved I found the community plugin “Humspell Spellchecker” by Delon Borges works to replace the default spell check for Obsidian. It doesn’t have this issue and works as expected.

Only quirk of this plugin I have, that I may just be a my system issue is the it automatically downloads Austrian English rather than letting me choose. But you can fix that easily by downloading the preferred dictionary for your language manually off the LibreOffice/dictionaries github page. Then .aff/.dic files into the plugins languages folder.