I also ran into a similar issue. After enabling lockdown mode Obsidian Sync would lose the connection to my Vault. Toggling it in the exclusion list seems to have fixed it.
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I’ve also run into this situation today. Obisidian is left in a failure state where the remote Vault is synced once, but it is not connected to the remote vault to sync in future. I have helped two other paying Obsidian Sync users who were hitting this failure case and were very frustrated by the process. They ended up giving up on trying to get Obsidian working on mobile and blamed the Obsidian app
I only discovered this thread today which explains the bug is coming from a bug in the Obisidian app when running under Lockdown Mode. Lockdown Mode is an important security mode and Obsidian should aim to be compatible with it. Clearly the Obsidian app can function sufficiently to decrypt and sync the remote vault. I believe it must be possible to resolve the remaining issue to persist the new remote vault sync state without much work.
On iOS you can either use the Apple Webkit API to alert the user about the need to disable Lockdown Mode for Obisidian. Alternatively you can implement a simple Webview feature check to identify if Lockdown Mode is active (see example in is-lockdown), and use that flag to dispaly an informational message directly in the Sync configuration page.
Both options would at least inform users about the need to disable Lockdown Mode for the app. However a technical solution to allow the app to function without a Lockdown mode exception would be ideally.
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Some more fuel for the forge: I’ve been using Obsidian while in lockdown mode for over a year & never had any issues until today when I got the “ReferenceError: Can’t find variable: indexedDB”. I followed the solution above excluding Obsidian from Lockdown mode & it magically started working. for kicks I flipped the switch back on & Obsidian stopped working. Seems like the error is triggered by some aspect of lockdown mode, but again - I’ve been using Obsidian in lockdown mode without the exclusion for over a year with no issues. idk why today was the day it decided to be unhappy about it
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I experience the exact same issue as described by @Demeter1 on iOS 17.7 with Obsidian 1.7.4.
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I get the same issue as @Demeter1 on iPadOS 17.6.1 (lockdown mode) with Obsidian 1.7.4.
I have never used obsidian sync and do not intend to, but I still can’t open any of my vaults. Creating a new vault doesn’t work either.
Thankfully it works after adding a lockdown exclusion for obsidian.
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Here to confirm I experienced the same issue as @Demeter1, @hatr, & @rr2, running iOS 18.2 (with Lockdown Mode…). I can confirm making an exception for Obsidian fixes the issue. Are there any updates on this? @WhiteNoise @ryanjamurphy
I’m surprised this is not only still an issue almost ~2 years later, but has now gotten even worse and appears to be impacting users who don’t even use Sync, such as @rr2. This is a serious problem: This bug completely breaks your app, without giving any information or indicator to the user as to why. I never would’ve guessed this problem had anything to do with Lockdown Mode until stumbling upon this thread. I can imagine lots of users have tried Obsidian, ran into this error, and simply uninstalled the app out of frustration without a second thought.
At a bare minimum, could you please consider making the “ReferenceError: Can’t find variable: indexedDB” error less vague? Something like “ReferenceError: Can’t find variable: indexedDB. Do you have Lockdown Mode enabled? If so, please make an exception for Obsidian by navigating to your Settings app → Privacy & Security → Lockdown Mode → Configure Web Browsing." would make a massive difference IMO.
I also want to reiterate DonnchaC’s points above, which would be far better solutions:
Lockdown Mode is an important security mode and Obsidian should aim to be compatible with it.
Alternatively you can implement a simple Webview feature check to identify if Lockdown Mode is active (see example in is-lockdown), and use that flag to dispaly an informational message directly
Both options would at least inform users about the need to disable Lockdown Mode for the app. However a technical solution to allow the app to function without a Lockdown mode exception would be ideally.
But even the bare minimum I described above would at least be an improvement.
Curious to hear your response to this. Thank you for your hard work and for creating by far the best note-taking app I have ever used. Just wish I could actually use it… 