Keep vaults in the vault selector when their location is (temporarily) not available

Feature requests
1

When I use obsidian with a bitlocker vault on USB, the vault gets removed from the selection screen when (temporary) not available. This results in the vault configuration to be removed, like the sync information, etc.

Use case: I sync my work notes but want them secure. So I put an obsidian vault on a USB stick with bitlocker.

  1. I mount the USB stick by unlocking the bitlocked vault
  2. I select my vault in Obsidian (in this case D:\Work)
  3. I have to setup sync, disable safe mode, etc.
  4. It sync perfectly once mounted
  5. I restart my PC (or boot up the next day)
  6. Obsidian starts up
  7. The vault D:\Work is gone

And I have to start from step 2) again.

Desired outcome, leave unavailable vaults in vault selection screen (it might have a cross or if not available, canā€™t be selected), but deleting all config and cache once itā€™s temporarily not found, is a bit destructive.

Same goes for a vault on a network share. If the share is unavailable (due to a network hickup), the vault info should also not be deleted.

5 Likes
2

I understand your POV. This is not a bug per se. Moved to FR.

1 Like
3

Also my biggest issue that Iā€™ve been having from the start and finally came here to report in case it wasnā€™t known.

Like Jorg, my vault is in a wise place for such a thing - in my case the vaultā€™s on a RAIDed NAS. But for me itā€™s about:

  • RAID redundancy
  • a single source of truth for access from both desktop PC and laptop
  • Adequate storage (6TB) for an efficient workflow keeping media assets directly in the vault and thus not suitable for syncing due to client storage sizes and speed.

So I find myself often redoing thing like putting quick access icons in the right panel again.

Iā€™ve been meaning to deduce where this configuation information is stored and version control it for easy recovery. If youā€™ve done similar, Jorg, LMK, and I will likewise.

4

I also agree with Jorgā€™s desired outcome.

5

Would be nice to have, but no movement in over 2 years:

1 Like
6

Bump. It would be nice feature, when vault is placed in encrypted directory. Selecting the location every time I accidentally encrypt the vault before closing obsidian is annoying.

1 Like
7

Hi,

A bump from me too as Iā€™ve got the same issue. Iā€™ve just started testing Obsidian as a replacement for the aging and abandoned Keynote NF. Obsidian seems to have all I want, except for one small thing: with Keynote NF I had one public set of notes and one private set on a VeraCrypt drive. I tried doing the same with Obsidian and it works when everything is open, but once the private vault location is offline it is immediately removed from Obsidian, even when Iā€™m only looking at the public one for a second. Iā€™ve made direct shortcuts to both vaults, but even when I point straight to the private vault using a ā€œobsidian://open?path=xxxxā€ link (I even tried linking to a file inside) it just pretends it isnā€™t there. Not sure if thereā€™s anything else I can do, but it appears not.

It would be great if the encrypted vault could be pinned down or something, so it wouldnā€™t be forgotten. Simply being able to open an unknown vault via an obsidian:// link would make me more than happy too. Hope something like this could be added in the near future, so I can finally get rid of the old tool.

8

I am glad to see that this FR is marked as valuable. I would propose an operation along the lines of:

  • on any activity where a vaultā€™s path is re-checked for existence:
    • e.g. opening Obsidian,
    • or listing vaults,
    • or opening a specific vault
  • if the path does not exist then,
    • instead of removing the vault from the list,
    • simply mark it as inactive
      • ā€˜greyed outā€™ or equivalent,
      • so that it cannot be selected for opening

Hopefully this logic is relatively straightforward, with relatively little impact on UIs, making it comparatively simple to code, test and release. Many thanks for listening to your user community

1 Like
9

Hi,
Iā€™ll second this request as in my case I use vaults locally but also on a SMB share, from MacOS.
This vault on the share, if not browsed before opening Obsidian, will disappear from the vault list.
The same will occur with vaults on USB sticks (encrypted or not).

I agree that having the link greyed out if unavailable would be nice, but at least do not automatically remove the vaults from the list when unavailable.
The clean up can be done manually by the user.

Thank you for considering this usecase in a near release.