We are receiving reports that users who are on certain devices for Android 16+ are run Obsidian once installed from the Play Store. The application will start, and immediately crash.
We will need the following information:
Your device type
Your device ROM/Build
Your current webview
Can you confirm Obsidian has permission to access the filesystem on Android? Y/N
Does the same happen when you side load the app from Obsidian Releases?
Is the Obsidian build 1.9.14? Y/N
Did you get any Android update recently?
Requesting debug assistance
As we are unable to reproduce, we could use some help from those affected. To those who are familiar with accessing Android’s stack or with using Android Studio, we request a log from the logcat pane when starting the app to determine at what point(s) the app is crashing.
It seems that the problem is not in the changes made by you but in the changes in Andoid.
• The system failed twice to create or ensure the app’s folders on external storage:
Failed to ensure /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/md.obsidian/files and /cache → IllegalStateException from StorageManager.mkdirs.
• Right after that, the FilesystemPlugin tries to access a URI and throws a NullPointerException: file inside Uri.fromFile(…) → FATAL EXCEPTION: CapacitorPlugins.
In other words, getExternalFilesDir(…) returned null (external storage is unavailable or not yet prepared), and the code didn’t check for null.
Why this can happen on a newer Android version:
• On Android 14/15, external storage behavior and access to /Android/data/… have become stricter. At the very early startup stage, external storage may not yet be “mounted” for the process, so getExternalFilesDir() can return null. If the plugin calls it without a null check — that results in an NPE and crash.