Problem
I was seeing different text wrapping in the same Obsidian Canvas on different devices.
My setup:
- Desktop
- Xiaomi Android phone
- Samsung Galaxy Tab
Desktop and the Xiaomi phone produced approximately the same line wrapping inside Canvas nodes.
On the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the same text occupied more horizontal space and wrapped onto different lines.
This was especially noticeable in narrow Canvas nodes.
What I tested
At first I suspected the theme or font rendering.
I tested CSS changes for:
font-family- explicit
font-size - explicit
line-height text-size-adjust
The CSS was definitely being applied on all devices, and I was able to change the font family.
However, the Samsung tablet still produced different line wrapping.
So in my case the problem was not solved by changing the Canvas CSS font size or font family.
Solution / workaround
On the Samsung Galaxy Tab I changed:
Settings → Display → Screen zoom
My tablet was set to level 4.
Reducing Screen zoom by one step:
4 → 3
made the text width and line wrapping inside Canvas nodes approximately match my desktop and Xiaomi phone.
For reference, my Xiaomi phone uses its own display scale at level 2, but these level numbers should not be treated as equivalent between different manufacturers or devices.
The important part is that reducing Samsung Screen zoom by one step fixed the layout for me.
Result
After changing Screen zoom:
- text occupies approximately the same amount of space inside the Canvas nodes;
- line breaks are now consistent between the devices;
- the actual font rendering / font family can still look slightly different.
So if Canvas text wraps differently specifically on a Samsung Galaxy tablet, I recommend checking:
Samsung Settings → Display → Screen zoom
before trying to compensate with CSS font sizes.
Notes
This is a workaround based on my testing, not necessarily the underlying fix.
I have not determined whether the underlying behavior comes from Samsung One UI, Android/WebView, or Obsidian itself.
Hopefully this saves someone else from spending time debugging Canvas CSS.