There is no indication of whether all files were saved . Large amount of content can be imported, parent system can be overloaded or straight up incredibly slow itself, power can go off and leave user guessing whether anything was lost, and etc .
Single icon which:
I think there is some misunderstanding here. When a note is saved, it takes a fraction of a second to write it on disk. The visual indicator is just gonna flicker all the time.
Or do you think that it takes multiple seconds to save a note and you keep an eye on the saving indicator, so if the system crashes you know something happened?
Im C# programmer, ik the time ranges. Allow to disable it in Settings if you are worried about flickering. If system crashes, user will know whether the work was saved or attention needs to be put into reconstructing certain parts. Indication needs to guarantee that all operations were finished before it switches. ~0.2s delay between the switches also can be added to it (about the time to switch attention when finishing work), main thing is that there must be indication for all latency and structurally possible lag. You could also make added content/text grayed out until all operations succeed, but that is noticeably more expensive.
i’m not nearly as experienced as OP when it comes to the intricate details of file management and programming in general but i also feel that certain pressure points and resulting issues need to be addressed
i am not here for saving indicator specifically but some other internal troubleshooting method that oversees current stability of main app and switches off certain plugins or asks the user to reload obsidian while printing pertinent messages for the user when the system is overloaded or is lagging enough so that the core app no longer can save or index files
investigating this on a per-third party plugin is difficult and does not concern the developer team but the average user who is not aware of potential file content loss (which you can only see once you restart obsidian and have a version control program like git open) will continue to pile on the plugins in good faith not knowing potential trouble ahead
…and before we wave this off as ‘out-of-our-hands’, let me just say core functionality involving rendering large markdown tables is rather unfortunate and taxing on the system currently…
when i have more time, i will share my experiences more fully
I tried pasting content and closing the app, and Obsidian closed without caring to save the content. Even worse, when i tried to wait before the content fully appears in the editor, and closed after, it still didn’t save it fully.
So Obsidian not only closes without waiting for save operations, it even provides absolutely no way for user to know when their content finished saving.
I have no words to express this. Obsidian devs, you have a great idea, and are doing alot of right things, but im begging you, fix this fundamental flaw.
Obsidian does wait when closing. Perhaps the pasting process wasn’t finished.
Obsidian is not currently well suited to handle very large markdown file. Considering that whole bible is around 4MB and you are trying to work with 20MB file, you are gonna get a frustrating experience.
That is simply not true, you also say like “pasting process” isn’t a data input which in turn the whole issue is about.
That is not the point, the latency depends on the system and it’s state, its not constant, just is often low enough.
Also, for those who aren’t very into tech. You won’t see any lag, if something happens to overload your hard drive, operation which causes you to loose data even with small amount of input, will look completely normal because all the visible parts are using RAM.
Not adding to the discussion but I’m surprised we’re still talking about this fundamental problem well over 3 years after I reported it here. There are lots of other threads too, here’s another one.
I’ve developed muscle memory to always pause for 2-3 seconds after pasting in Obsidian for the caches to be updated, and the data to be written.
Those bug reports that you linked are fixed.
Those specific bugs might be fixed. The situation is definitely better than in was prior to 1.3.2 when a more catastrophic version of this bug still existed.
But, based on the comments here, there seem to be related bugs that manifest with the same end result: the data you see in front of you when you quit Obsidian is not guaranteed to be present the next time you launch it.
If there is a data loss, please open a bug report and follow the bug report template. We will try to figure out what happens.
I literally also reported a case with data loss, in this thread.
Please open a bug report in Bug reports and make sure you follow the bug report template and troubleshooting guide. Let’s leave this thread to the discussion about the save status indicator.
In my experience it’s still advisable to wait after pasting to confirm data was committed. I wrote a plugin (never publicly released sadly) that pops up bubble Notices when data is being saved. So I am visibly aware when files are being written to disk. I still see these delayed writes happening and the visual helps me know when it’s “safe” to quit or switch to a different note.
It’s still on my list to make this plugin public but I got busy with other stuff. New year’s resolution maybe…
wow id love to use that plugin.
do you know if the situation on mobile(android) is any better or is it advisable there too to not leave the app immediately after pasting sth inside a quick note for example?
thanks for the response btw
I also want to echo that this is not true. My notes are synced through OneDrive and there is some delay in saving and syncing. I have found that if I click between notes too fast, the save is not complete and Obsidian just leaves the note without fully saving. This is while Obsidian is open! I have also found the next day after closing, some notes are incomplete. My machine is very slow so having a save indicator would be extremely helpful and help prevent data loss.
@ipdiot You may be experiencing an issue that is specific to onedrive. Meaning, that OneDrive tells us that the note is written and it’s actually not. (btw did you configure onedrive to keep the files local?)
Nevertheless, this is OT in this FR, kindly open a bug report and make sure you follow the bug report template. Also move your vault out of Onedrive and see if that happens.
Hi everyone, I have asked the same question as the original creator of this thread
Title: How do I know when Obsidian has saved my work?
Link: How do I know when Obsidian has saved my work?
Why can data fail to be written?
There can be many reasons as to why a data is not saved to persistent storage, just to name a few
- Congestion and Queue (IOPS)
- Network loss (NFS, iSCSI, Cloud storage)
- Permission changes
- System / hardware errors
In my own thread I raised two questions I had hoped I could get answered, but that was not possible in my own thread so I will try and continue here.
Question. Are there any specific reason as to why the Obsidian team has not added this feature? The concensus seems to be, ‘because Obsidian saves every ~2 - 3 seconds’ but clearly this is not “bullet-proof” as users has demonstrated.
Question. Is this in the pipeline for implementation?
I think Obsidian is a fantastic tool, but the overall argument of “we don’t need an indicator, because Obsidian saves every ~2-3 seconds” is only true as long as Obsidian, or any application, is physically able to write the data, and this can fail to happen for a multitude of reasons.
In 2024 in a reply it was written
If there is a data loss, please open a bug report
If you’ve reached the point of data being lost, it is my opinion that you’re already too late, and a bug report helps little in the regard of getting your notes back that you may or may not have spent a long time on, or have had an creative epiphany to create and can’t easily re-create.
The ‘saved indicator’ seems to be a low hanging fruit, so it is kinda backwards to be that the pushback is so intense.
Best regards