Losing notes after getting Obsidian Sync

We strongly recommend you to search the forum with possible keywords before submitting a new bug report. Please also try your repro steps with third-party plugins and custom CSS disabled and see if it’s still reproducible. If it’s an issue with third-party plugins or themes, try contacting the author for help. Once you’ve done the above, delete this line.

Steps to reproduce

Expected result

Actual result

Environment

  • Operating system:
  • Obsidian version:

Additional information

This has happened to me at least twice now (two times that I have identified), both after subscribing to Obsidian Sync.

The notes themselves do not disappear, they still exist in the graph with the same titles - however, their content gets removed entirely.

In one case, I had a note that had a title of “Focus.” When I viewed this note on the iOS app, it was empty. However, there was another note that had been automatically created called “Focus 2.” This note had all the content that had previously been in “Focus.”

Recently, I noticed that there was a new note called “Focus 3” and that the prior two notes “Focus” and “Focus 2” were no longer there (I had not deleted them). The only issue is that “Focus 3” was completely empty, and the content previously there was apparently not backed up on another item.

I found another note that was also emptied, though this note did not go through the same pattern as the one above - the content in it was simply removed during a sync process, I assume.

CONCLUSION: Obsidian Sync is randomly removing my notes, and deleting all of their content. The fact that this is possible is rather disturbing, as I have been using Obsidian for all of my note-taking for many months, and subscribed to Obsidian Sync mainly to support the project.

This bug could be silently destroying people’s notes that they NEED to keep for many years to come.

1 Like

My conclusion is different. I believe you are using obsidian sync and some other sync solution (icloud?) and you shouldn’t as described in the docs
Move your vault off of icloud. It’s in icloud who is creating the files.

Any advice on how I can recover the notes I lost?

First i would do a backup.
You can try both the file recovery plugin and sync.

I lost about 40 files (.png, .jpg, .md) during Sync. I don’t use any other sync services/apps. I didn’t open vault’s folders manually in Explorer. I use Obsidian on severals PCs (Windows) and on one Android phone.

I decided to check: could I recover deleted file as it said in Obsidian Sync help page:

  1. Create test file:

  2. Wait until Sync’s icon become green.

  3. Delete the file.

  4. Go to Settings → File recovery and found my file:

But it has only part of its original content. How can I restore full version of the file?

How can I recover image file?

  1. Create test note and paste screenshot in it:

  2. Delete image file from attachment folder:

  3. Open Settings → File recovery and serach for deleted image:

There’s no such file.

How can I restore it?

If found them! In Setting => Sync => Deleted files => View.

And I found which client deleted my note files (.md). It was Android app:

I think it was after renaming days to Days on desktop.

But there’s no 24 deleted attachmentes in this list.

@JJJ follow this and create a vauilt on your iphone in non-iclould mode.
https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/iOS+app#Obsidian+Sync