Obsidian cannot open obsidian:// links with spaces in their Note name

Steps to reproduce

  1. Create a note whose name contains spaces - such as “Shopping List”.
  2. Right-click on it and select “Copy Obsidian URL”
  3. Go to a terminal and run xdg-open

Did you follow the troubleshooting guide? [Y/N]

Yes, notably this doesn’t work with the Sandbox either. It’s related to core obsidian:// logic, not plugins. Trying to do it in the Sandbox vault also breaks the link because the vault= part for the Sandbox contains a space too.

Expected result

Obsidian should open the note

Actual result

Obsidian opens, erroneously interprets the space in the note name as a delimiter and displays ‘File "Shopping’ not found"

Environment

SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v1.8.9
Installer version: v1.8.9
Operating system: #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Feb 28 07:06:44 UTC 2025 (ff9b7ff) 6.13.5-1-default
Login status: not logged in
Language: en
Insider build toggle: off
Live preview: on
Base theme: dark
Community theme: Sandstorm v1.2.1
Snippets enabled: 1
Restricted mode: off
Plugins installed: 7
Plugins enabled: 7
1: Dataview v0.5.67
2: Commander v0.5.2
3: Plugin Update Tracker v1.6.2
4: QuickAdd v1.12.0
5: Templater v2.9.3
6: Metadata Menu v0.8.7
7: ChatGPT MD v2.0.1

RECOMMENDATIONS:
Custom theme and snippets: for cosmetic issues, please first try updating your theme and disabling your snippets. If still not fixed, please try to make the issue happen in the Sandbox Vault or disable community theme and snippets.
Community plugins: for bugs, please first try updating all your plugins to latest. If still not fixed, please try to make the issue happen in the Sandbox Vault or disable community plugins.


Additional information

Apparently Obsidian cannot properly interpret the %20 in a file= in the url-scheme as being part of the file name and instead interprets it as a delimiter.

I apparently don’t understand the syntax on this forum lol. Anyway, it is supposed to say
"Go to a terminal and run ‘xdg-open [the link that Obsidian gave you]’

Obsidian interprets %20 fine.
I think the way you are calling the URI may be wrong. Maybe you should enclose in quotation marks to avoid the shell or xdg-open to touch the URI and pass it AS IS.

Sorry, after further debugging it turns out this is a bug in kde-open5, not in Obsidian. I’ll route the bug report in the correct direction.

Once again, sorry for the noise.