I have been using Obsidian Sync for a while now. I have recently come across an issue where Sync and certain plugins don’t work well together.
My main device is a macbook. I have modified the settings of various community plugins as per my need. But these plugins and their settings don’t get synced properly to mobile apps.
I have enbaled the option to sync Community Plugins and the option for Community Plugin settings. Despite that these plugins either get uninstalled or disabled automatically on mobile.
After I re-enable/re-installing them on mobile, they revert to their original settings. Then the new “clean” settings getting pushed to the servers and I lose all my custom settings on
my main device.
I have already lost some 10+ quickadd recipes
Things I have tried
I tested with the Quickadd plugin.
I opened Obsidian on both devices at the same time to compare. As soon as an update is pushed from the macbook, the plugin gets disabled in the mobile app. Trying to enable it fails with an error notification.
Reinstalling the plugin clears its data.json file (which contains all the recipes) and pushes that update to the server, which then clears the same file in the macbook.
If I add a new recipe from the mobile device, that syncs over to the macbook just fine. But as soon as I make any change in the macbook, the plugin gets disabled in the mobile app.
Does anyone know what might be going on? I am going a bit crazy with this. And I don’t think it’s a plugin issue because this happens some other Community plugins as well, including Tasks.
You may need to restart Obsidian for synced settings to take effect. Unfortunately that means you have to remember to do it (or wait for the mobile OS to push it out of memory).
Thanks for your response! I have restarted Obsidian multiple times. Restarting triggers a new sync operation, which then causes the plugins to get disabled.
tl;dr: Obsidian Sync works, but plugins and their settings do not get refreshed until the app is restarted so it looks like it didn’t work. Don’t go into the settings and start changing things until you have restarted the app, as that will overwrite your settings.
What was happening?
When I set it up on a new device, the options for syncing plugins and their settings is disabled by default. After I enable the option, it automatically downloads all the settings.
But if you go into the community plugins settings, you won’t see any of your custom settings there. It looks like nothing was downloaded. This is because settings files of the plugins (data.json) is not loaded into Obsidian while it is running. They will be loaded on the next restart.
However, if you go into the settings and change things because you think the sync didn’t work, the settings file will get overwritten and synced to all your devices. Thus clobbering all your custom settings in all your devices.
The fix
After enabling the options to sync all your plugin settings, wait for the sync to complete and then close or quit the Obsidian app!. Kill it, quit it, close it. Especially for mobile devices, don’t just press the Home button, kill the app.
Then restart the app and all your settings should show up as expected!
