Put a .pdf file with a unicode character anywhere in the path (file name or folder name). Like ė, ų, ū and such. Try viewing it in obsidian. It is not opened. Rename it (or containing folder) to eliminate those characters, and the file is didplayed.
Funnily enought, I only started with using snap to rule out influence of non-supported installation methods for reporting another bug…
Sooooo, I should just drop the snap and use which of the installation formats and from which source? Or are there other workarounds?
I had install Obsidian with the snap tool. I tried to launch it with the following command env LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 obsidian, which logged:
/bin/bash: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-8)
2025-07-22 12:08:46 Loading main app package /snap/obsidian/47/resources/obsidian.asar
2025-07-22 12:08:46 Checking for update using Github
2025-07-22 12:08:46 Success.
2025-07-22 12:08:46 Latest version is 1.8.10
2025-07-22 12:08:46 App is up to date.
Then, I uninstalled it and re-installed considering the .deb file downloaded from the Obsidian’s official downlaod website.
Also this old bug - https://forum.obsidian.md/t/some-pdfs-are-shown-as-empty-in-internal-pdf-viewer/73058 - is about the same. It’s already archived and I cannot comment on it, so I’m hoping @isomattis found that snap is the culprit.