How to begin troubleshooting when I can't open Settings

Help
1

What I’m trying to do

Get to Settings so I can find out which plugin is breaking things.

The problem

My vault opens (hangs a bit when loading plugins), has the most recent notes open at the top, I can scroll the open note and the left sidebar, but I can’t do anything else. Nothing responds to mouseover or click within the UI. I can click and open the menus at the top (on mac, so: Obsidian, File, Edit, etc) but nothing besides “Toggle developer mode” actually does anything. So that means I can’t open Settings to be able to troubleshoot which plugin is causing this.

Things I have tried

Creating another fresh vault. Everything works there just fine. I know I just need to be able to turn off some plugins and find the culprit, but not sure how to do that without being able to access Settings.

2

Removing or renaming the
{VAULTNAME}/.obsidian/community-plugins.json
file would be the smallest possible impact to start. It will turn all your plugins off (but not remove any of them). If you can get in, great. Then try turning on a plugin-at-a-time with closing and opening of the vault after each one to track it down.

If that doesn’t work, you can move the entire {VAULTNAME}/.obsidian/ folder out of the vault and Obsidian will start in a fresh state (default settings, no plugins, no themes, etc.). Your notes won’t be affected.

Depending on your OS, the .obsidian folder may be hidden and you’ll need to enable Windows File Explorer or the Finder to show hidden files and folders.

1 Like
3

Thanks, that’s exactly what I needed to know! Now to find the culprit.