Obsidian "open folder as vault" => spinning wheel and program hangs

Steps to reproduce

  • Install Obsidian (1.9.10, OSX 15.6 Sequoia)
  • Attempt to “open folder as vault”
  • Get spinning wheel, program not responding

This is not a problem with the default vault or the sandbox vault; but it makes it impossible to use with any other vault, or to create a new one.

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

Expected result

A OSX Folder window

Actual result

Spinning wheel and unresponsive Obsidian program

Environment

SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v1.9.10
Installer version: v1.9.10
Operating system: Darwin Kernel Version 24.6.0: Mon Jul 14 11:30:40 PDT 2025; root:xnu-11417.140.69~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T8132 24.6.0
Login status: not logged in
Language: en
Insider build toggle: off
Live preview: on
Base theme: adapt to system
Community theme: none
Snippets enabled: 0
Restricted mode: on

RECOMMENDATIONS:
none


Additional information

I’ve found a workaround which is to open the program from the command line, using sudo. So it looks like its a permissions problem inside Obsidian.

I’d already given the program “Full Disk Access” permissions, it still needs the sudo to work.

I’ve installed the program both with brew, and also by downloading the image directly; same behaviour with both.

We had report of this happening when Obsidian was installed under one user and executed with a different user.

It may be another problems with permission, but you should check your mac for where exactly the problem is.

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