Use case or problem
Ability to cut off all internet access to Obsidian from within the app would provide significant benefits to user security, privacy and peace of mind—for those requiring an additional layer of protection or work with sensitive data, aligning with Obsidian’s focus on privacy and security. This is especially pressing because, to quote Obsidian Help:
Due to technical limitations, Obsidian cannot reliably restrict plugins to specific permissions or access levels. This means that plugins will inherit Obsidian’s access levels. As a result, consider the following examples of what community plugins can do:
- Community plugins can access files on your computer.
- Community plugins can connect to internet.
- Community plugins can install additional programs.
The Obsidian team is small and unable to manually review every new release of community plugins. Instead, we rely on the help of the community to identify and report issues with plugins.
Proposed solution
Introduce an “offline mode” toggle in the settings that blocks all internet traffic to and from Obsidian, including:
- Stops Obsidian from “calling home” by blocking any data sent to or received from Obsidian’s servers.
- Disables installed community plugins from making any external network requests.
- Disables any content fetched from external sources (images, videos and other embeds).
- Prevents app and plugin updates from being downloaded or checked within Obsidian. (All updates would need to be handled manually by the user).
Current workaround (optional)
On desktop, firewall applications can be used to cut internet access for Obsidian. However, this is not feasible on i(pad)OS, where system-wide firewalls are unavailable.
The Restricted Mode is not a sufficient solution–it concerns community plugins only.