Drag and drop file to Obsidian fails and certain PDFs not rendering / showing

[bear13]

What I’m trying to do

Drag and drop a pdf-file (created in Linux) into Obsidian to embed it.
PDF should render on the screen.

Actual result

Drag and drop does not work. Moving the pdf to the folder in the file manager works. Embedding the link works as well, link shows as valid, but the pdf does not render. It shows the pdf-frame i.e. the header with the menu points (thumbnail selector button, page indicator, zoom level etc.).
It just shows no pages at all.

environment information

• Fedora Linux 41 Kinoite
• Obsidian 1.7.7 flatpak

Things I have tried

additional background info

I have recently moved from Mac to Linux. And had not troubles with the flatpak version of Obsidian so far. My assumption is that this is not a Obsidian specific bug and has something to do with the OS, but I am hoping that someone might be able to point me in the wright direction.

troubleshooting done so far

• deactivated all community plugins
• checked old pdf-files that were created beforehand on the mac → PDF rendering works
• scanned documents on linux and saved as pdf, do not work
• permissions of the files are the same
• printed to pdf a webpage and moved the file to the vault folder (dragging and dropping into Obsidian does not work) → PDF rendering works
• opened a PDF-file that is not rendering with Okular and PDF Arranger and saved and replaced the file → issue persists

[dodo]

Hi,

I have the same problem.

I have Fedora 41 and Windous 11 in the dual boot. Everything works in my Windous Vault, but the content of the PDF is not displayed on fedora. I also tried whether it was due to fedora and therefore tested it on ubuntu and it is the same error.

I checked the developertools. It seems to have something to do with the SharedArrayBuffer.

[dodo]

I found a solution:
try installing obsidian via the software installer (Flathup).
this worked for me and now I can see all PDFs

[bear13]

Hi @dodo
I have already installed Obsidian via flathub.
I am running Fedora 41 Kinoite and since it is an immutable distro, almost all of my applications are flatpaks.

That’s why I assume, that there is somewhere a setting that is restricting access or something else specific to flathub rights.

Do you have the same issue with dragging and dropping a PDF in a vault?
Cause to be honest that is almost more annoying for me.

[dodo]

Hi @bear13
Yes, drag and drop doesn’t work for me either, and I have no idea how to fix it

[Jambilove]

Same issue. PDFs from web pages specifically seem to not work.

[Jopp]

Question, how do you guys manage PDFs in Obsidian?

IMO, Obsidian isn’t ideal for PDF. There are some awesome plugins for annotation like PDF++, but I prefer to use Zotero which is better suited to study books.
You can export your colored annotations (with quick link back to your annotation in Zotero) with a zotero plugin called “Better notes”.

You should be able to drag n drop files on flatpaks, if files reside on the same partition of the same storage medium. (HDD/SSD, etc)
If not, then your copy of Obsidian is missing some permissions to write data.