Obsidian tends to get closed quickly when I switch to another app with my Pixel 6a. For example, I’ll be using Obsidian, switch over to Audible for a moment, and when I return, Obsidian has closed.
I’ve tried a few fixes on my Pixel, but nothing seems to work. I realize this has happened with other apps, but I don’t notice it as much as those are fast to start while obsidian is slow.
I’m considering getting a new phone that won’t close background apps as aggressively or allows me to choose to keep it in memory. I’ve heard some Samsung models might allow users to pin or lock an app to keep it in memory, but it is hard to tell which phones do that because the concepts of pinning and locking apps also mean different things other than a user selecting an app to keep it from closing.
Here are a few questions I have:
Phone Recommendations for Heavy Obsidian Use: If you have a lot of notes in Obsidian, what is your experience with it? Either so I can avoid getting a phone that won’t actually help me or target one to get.
Experience with Samsung Phones: Does anyone use the app pinning feature on Samsung? Does it help keep Obsidian open?
Other Suggestions: I am assuming I should target phones with high memory, but are there any other considerations about what may help ?
I’d really appreciate any suggestions or personal experiences you can share. Hoping to find a phone that works well with Obsidian.
If you search the forum you should find some discussion about this. If I remember right, experience with pinning has been mixed,
High RAM will help keep it open longer, fast processor will help it start faster.
Another thing to consider is your other apps. When you use any app that needs a lot of memory, that raises the chance of other apps getting closed. And the longer you spend in other apps, the higher the chance Obsidian will have to reload when you return to it. So obviously the answer is to do everything in Obsidian. (Actually you can use some web apps in Obsidian thru an iframe, but I’ve never tried it.)
I see Wikipedia described the Pixel 6a as “mid-range”, so you could perhaps try something higher end, but I don’t know if it’ll really change the experience that much. I use an iPhone 13, which is a pretty capable phone, and it doesn’t close Obsidian every time I switch apps, but it does close it multiple times a day. (And opening the camera always closes it, which surprises me.)
There is also the option of using other apps (like Markor) to interact with your notes when you don’t need Obsidian-specific features.
If you know of any discussions about phone or phone brand recommendations, please let me know. I have done extensive searching in this forum and outside of it and can’t find any discussion of it. There is a lot of discussion about the problem of slow loading, workarounds, ect.
I am using Markor currently for quick capture and previously had a tasker widget setup to open both that and obsidian at the same time.
Somewhat to my surprise, after I did a factory reset of my phone and only had obsidian plus a couple essential apps, I did not have this problem, but then it slowly got worse as I added more of the apps that I use until I was back at where I was pre factory reset. I guess this makes sense in that many apps run in the background so android has less free memory to play with and more aggressively will close apps. I don’t get why it closes the apps that I just used. I wonder if it is just the high memory usage of obsidian. It comes in around 1GB when I check for max usage which is higher than any other app except for chrome, google, and android OS.
I don’t — I meant that in discussions of slow loading, etc., people sometimes mention what phone they’re using, which might give you a sense of whether a different phone would help.
High memory usage would contribute. Obsidian uses more because it runs in a framework that’s essentially a stripped-down web browser, plus think I’ve heard it keeps a bunch of vault info in memory.
I use an iPhone with Obsidian mobile as well as a pc for Obsidian Desktop. I do use Obsidian sync. One relatively small thing that I have struggled with is syncing notes that have characters in their name that are legal on iOS but illegal on Windows. These occur for me as the result of using the Obsidian webclipper bookmarklet for Safari - Obsidian Web Clipper Bookmarklet with full Markdown support for images, headings, and code blocks - #53 by I-d-as. While this is not totally relevant to the question, it is something to consider when getting a phone. As a side note: Copy Sync Log command to respect Errors Only (related feature request for the issue I mentioned).
I ordered an s24+ . Hopefully the high ram and the features samsung has will help keep obsidian open. I’ll report back after I get it and have some time using it.
I experimented with logseq too. Even on a very small subset of my vault, logseq gets closed pretty quickly by the pixel 8.
So my current workflow is logseq for quick capture and notes on youtube videos and obsidian once it is loaded.
I have been using the s24+(snapdragon gen 3 version) for about 2 weeks and would recommend it. I have obsidian set as a “Never sleeping application” and pretty much every time I have to the application it is still open. I also tried force closing and the loading is much faster than on the pixel 8. Somewhere between 2x and 5x faster. Installed dataview and that is faster as well.
You can also use the samsung “keep open” feature. It drains the battery more, but also seems to allow obsidian to sync even when not actively open. With “keep open” enabled, obsidian has more battery drain than any other app. Usually in the realm of 3%-6% of the total. Without just “never sleeping application” enabled. Obsidian is 2nd or third in usage and more like 2% of the total drain. I get a full day of battery even when I use “keep open”.
The s24+ has 12gb of ram. I would guess that the “keep open” feature would still keep the app open for samsung phones with 8gb and maybe lower.
TL;DR I would highly recommend samsung phones over the google pixel line. Obsidian stays open and is faster to load.
(Actually you can use some web apps in Obsidian thru an iframe, but I’ve never tried it.)