Hello moderators and bug team, I hope you will please kindly consider this bug. It prevents me from using the Obsidian app entirely at times, and makes my knowledge base inaccessible for large times. It also interrupts my ability to communicate with colleagues during meetings, which is especially painful for everyone involved — there are real world impacts of this bug.
I am posting this bug here after searching the forum for similar bugs, finding no resolutions, and upon receiving advice to do so from an Obsidian Forum Moderator. Thank you for considering this.
Steps to reproduce
When editing notes in my Vault, the notes will periodically go completely blank, leaving only the note’s title showing, but all note content inaccessible. If (in the same Obsidian tab) I switch to view a different note, wait for that different note to load, then switch back to viewing the original note and wait for that original note to load, the note’s content usually reappears. I believe that sometimes I have to restart the Obsidian app entirely to fix this bug, although my memory may be incorrect on this last troubleshooting step.
Sometimes this bug happens once per hour, other times it happens every 5 seconds.
I have noticed a few trends:
• These notes have 30,000+ characters.
• These notes have 10-50 embedded images (.png screenshots).
• Most often, this happens after 10 seconds of not editing the note. When this happens, I am typically operating in a separate Chrome window that is streaming a video or in a Zoom meeting while doing this (and taking notes in Obsidian on the side). I have not tested if this bug happens while using other programs at the same time.
• Sometimes the note will go blank right after a Mac notification slides into the top right of the screen saying that Obsidian has been updated externally. I’m not sure why that notification appears, because I have sync turned off, and I have no community plugins enabled.
Did you follow the troubleshooting guide? Yes
• I have relaunched Obsidian in restricted mode and this still happens.
• I have turned off the 2 community plugins I have installed, and this still happens.
• I have Sync turned off and this still happens.
• I am using Obsidian’s Default theme, and have never downloaded any others.
• I am using Obsidian version 1.8.9
→
Expected result
Notes should never go blank.
Actual result
The note will go blank, leaving only the title of the note appearing on the screen.
To restore the note’s content, one will have to either switch to viewing a different note in the same Obsidian tab, then switch back to the original note, or sometimes, if it’s really bad, one will have to relaunch Obsidian entirely.
Environment
I’m unsure if you are asking for Obsidian debug info, or my entire Macbook Pro’s debug info. I am uncomfortable sharing my entire computer’s debug information publicly over the internet.