Not all changes get synced

Bug graveyard
,
1

Steps to reproduce

in my Obsidian folder in another app (VSCode), I did a global find & replace that touched 248 files

Expected result

I checked the sync log and expected to see 248 files uploaded

Actual result

it shows 29 files uploaded, meaning 219 files are now wrong on my other devices

Environment

  • Operating system: Win 11
  • Debug info:

SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v0.13.23
Installer version: v0.13.23
Operating system: Windows 10 Home 10.0.22000
Login status: logged in
Catalyst license: none
Insider build toggle: off
Live preview: on
Legacy editor: on
Base theme: dark
Community theme: none
Snippets enabled: 1
Safe mode: off
Plugins installed: 5
Plugins enabled: 5
1: Dataview
2: Calendar
3: Tag Wrangler
4: obsidian markmind
5: Quick Latex for Obsidian

Additional information

this is not the first time I’ve had files get out of sync, USB syncing to my work PC resynced everything

I also use xcopy to create a backup of my vault outside Obsidian’s ecosystem, and that picked up all the changes based on file timestamps.

2

just discovered a much better work-around (while playing with something unrelated): exiting & restarting Obsidian

3

I am gonna need a screen recording of what exactly your doing.

4

not sure how to get all of this in a screen capture, but here’s my step-by-step (nothing in my vault is being edited on any device, except where I say so in step 2):

  1. with Obsidian open and Sync active, I opened my Obsidian folder in VS Code
  2. (in VSCode) “find in files” and “replace all”… it showed 248 files changed
  3. view Obsidian’s sync log, it listed 29 files uploaded and “Fully synced”
  4. ran “xcopy /d /s /c /y” with my obsidian vault as the source folder & my external hard drive as target (something I do daily) it showed 248 files copied
  5. exit & relaunch Obsidian
  6. check Obsidian sync log, see a bunch of files uploading, including many in a subfolder that was the bulk of the 248 files from steps 2 & 4 (that subfolder was not listed at all in the 29 files of step 3)
5

which files where not synced right away?

6

in case it’s relevant… stats of my vault, obtained with dir /s in cmd:

MD files: 2870 totaling 16.2 MB
total files: 5697 totaling 1.49 GB

the non-MD files are mostly .pdf, .png, & .jpg, and the .obsidian folder of course

7

good question, they were all MD files within the Obsidian vault… I’ve got a Bible folder with a subfolder for every book of the Bible & an MD file for every chapter of the Bible… that was the bulk of what was changed, and they were all missed in real-time but caught after the restart

I do bulk find & replace seldom enough that if I have to recycle Obsidian after it’s not a big deal… as a .NET dev, I’ve definitely seen some wonky behavior from file watchers, but fortunately I haven’t had to deal with them at all the last few years

I guess next time I can try in Obsidian and see if that makes a difference… I’m pretty much just using Obsidian for Sync (after using git previously) and mobile, and VSCode on desktop (yeah, I’m one of those people who turn off wikilinks :slight_smile: )