#16

No. Most of the threads are about sync problems, and many do have issues with their sync services.
Autosave is different.

#17

I guess it’s worth noting that I dislike the opinionated merge behavior of Sync (in all of its various permutations) so much that it’s the primary reason I don’t use Sync, to the point where I literally won’t buy an iPad even though people rave about it so much, because I couldn’t use Obsidian on it, because of how strongly I prefer Dropbox’s conflict resolution behavior of “making a new file.”

I don’t talk about it much because I told Licat that way back during the early part of mobile beta and I assume he has his reasons (I know a lot of people prefer this method!), but I just want to note that @luckman212 is not alone in finding this frustrating.

2 Likes
#18

afaics from the reports, Dropbox just works better with Obsidian than iCloud and Box (which has more issues reported than I would have expected).

One of the problems with the number of threads on sync problems is a lack of clarity about exactly what the problem is and where it arises.
There are race conditions, idiosyncratic and unpredictable sync services, save and autosave. Potential of conflicts, vaults not opening and files disappearing. I’ve seen complaints about file duplication, file loss, data deletion (as above) and data duplication. I suspect that no algorithm change will cope satisfactorily with a sync service that simply doesn’t play nicely with Obsidian vaults.
I never have a problem with toggles, though I can see why Licat might have. Here, I can see the one mentioned above, but also a toggle about autosave on/off/frequency (I make the assumption that the file changes described above are caused at autosave - presumably Obsidian isn’t watching the file more closely?).

1 Like
#19

Thank you for your reply. I’m not passing blame on anyone, I was just frustrated last night.

Anyway, I think you might be right. This might be my error since I left Obsidian open on two different PCs. That might’ve caused errors, or it could be down to iCloud’s bad conflict resolution.

I’ve switched over to Google Drive for now, and will see how it behaves in the future. Sometimes I do forget to close programs on one of my PCs and I generally don’t shut down but rather put them on sleep. Seems like one of them woke up and caused conflicts for me…

#20

I don’t know it was your error, what you did was normal, and ought not to have caused problems. But I tuen my computers off far more often now than I used to; easier than having to deal with things.

With Google Drive I’d caution against allowing streaming, since that seems to be a source of sync errors with Obsidian.

#21

Yeah, I’ll start shutting them off now. I was in a hurry last week and just put my laptop to sleep, didn’t close any programs.

#22

I use x3 devices: iPhone 8+, iPad 2019, laptop on Windows 10-11. Synchronization via the iCloud is used. x2 problems arise every day:

  1. Duplicate notes files are created.
  2. The notes are automatically merged.

I use only x1 application at a time, most often it is a laptop with Windows. Accordingly, applications for iPhone and iPad are closed. Background sync is also disabled. What is happening seems to be one big lottery, since on different days, subject to the same conditions, there may be only x1 merging of notes or maybe x2 - x3. 1-2 duplicate files can be created or 3-5.

1 Like
#23

@ayli.voltok the merging being discussed in this thread has to do with sync as far as I’m aware. I don’t think Obsidian merges notes based on what external cloud services do.

#24

Cause and effect

#25

That is not true, I don’t use Sync and I’ve definitely experienced the merge conflicts.

#26

sync
Specifically iCloud sync

#27

Right. Licat added this explanation (I’m paraphrasing):
Merging happens also (in addition to Sync) if the file was changed externally and Obsidian is open as well (before Obsidian has gotten a chance to save the edited file) within the 2s window

#28

I was using iCloud many months ago but haven’t in a long time. So Sync or other cloud services might make this problem worse, but it definitely isn’t the only cause.

#29

Ah.
So what else changes the local file in the background?

#30

Text editor… (1 example)

#31

Without file being open?

#32

Any news on this?
I too am having issues with could sync and data loss!

  • Duplicate note files being created preventing Obsidian from starting altogether (stuck at file indexing screen)
  • Notes are automatically merged (even though I am using Obsidian only on one device at a time) resulting in lost data

I don’t have the file open in another program neither.

#33

I just started using Obsidian.
I use it mainly on my iOS devices, but needed to do some work on my Windows laptop so I set up the windows iCloud client and pointed Obsidian at its folder in iCloud.
I am having constant issues with the last line of text being deleted as I type due to the synchronization issue reported here. I am editing the notes on one device at a time - it seems to pick up the on-disk version of the file as more recent than what I am typing in real time.
Is there any resolution to this or a workaround? It’s pretty much unusable at the moment.

#34

Let me add to the pile to help in prioritizing this issue. I am experiencing this issue on a Windows machine with iCloud sync. I haven’t observed it on my MacBook or iPhone. Previously, I used dropbox for sync and I haven’t observed such behavior. So I support the attribution of this issue to iCloud.

I’m not necessary for the disabling of the automatic merge. I’m all for doing something about it as it spoils user experience a lot :worried:

#35

I’m consistently seeing this extremely frustrating behavior.
To give a recent example I typed:

James Smith

Pressed Enter, see the sync popup notice appear, and have my line changed to:

Jamh

I appreciate that the focus of Obsidian development is on the paid subscription sync service, and I also understand that accounting for the quirks of the various cloud storage solutions out there is difficult, but this really is very broken behavior for a text editor.

I am on Windows 10, iCloud 13.0, Obsidian 0.13.14