In the past day I stumbled across some text that may have been duplicated as long as a month ago.
Then, minutes ago, a few more conflicts happened (no notification, just the log). A couple of the files were ones I’d been working with while merging my weekly notes, but one wasn’t. That one, I have been sometimes editing in an outside app, which leaves fewer changes in the history (and I have to remember to open Obsidian after using the other app, so it will sync).
Some of these files are kind of long, and even with the version history and “show changes”, I basically took it on faith that I was restoring to a good version and not losing data in the process.
I reached out to support about this, and they mentioned this thread. This thread exactly describes my issue! I’m using Obsidian on iPhone 16 (latest OS) and a MacBook Pro (latest OS), and I use Sync. For some of my frequently edited notes (such as a running grocery list that I edit frequently), I see this happening. But it happens sporadically, and it’s hard to replicate.
I managed to have this happen once to me. These were the factors at play:
I had a device open at home that had Obsidian open, and Obsidian Sync active
My mobile device was connected to the internet, but the internet quality was poor.
I had a disconnect from sync (due to poor internet) during my edits.
After I reconnected, I had the duplication of a checkbox item.
So my question to everyone is:
How many of you keep a device always on, with Obsidian open (and is it foreground, or background)? Does the behaviour persist if the app is closed?
When experiencing these duplications, what is the strength of the connection on the device(s) you are using? Are there any chances that you are frequently going offline?
I keep my PC on all the time with Obsidian open. I haven’t tried closing it since I’d be opening it and closing it all the time, but I’ll try to close it more often in the interest of helping to debug this issue.
I don’t think it’s at all related to signal strength for me. It’s happened to me most often when I’m at home, connected to my WiFi with a strong connection. I usually would just avoid opening Obsidian if I had a very poor connection since I’d have to wait longer for it to sync, and I don’t like closing the app before it’s done syncing.
Obsidian on my Macbook is generally always open, but the Macbook is frequently in standby/sleep (lid closed, no external display attached) while I use Obsidian on my iPhone or iPad. So for me, the problem definitely also occurs while Obsidian on the Mac is not running.
I have observed these problems while connected to my home Wi-Fi. My iPad doesn’t have cellular at all, so it never has a (potentially less stable) cellular connection. So I’d say it’s unlikely that lost connections were a primary issue, although it’s hard to say for certain.
I understand, but given the risk of introducing these merge conflicts I remain extremely hesitant to use Obsidian on my secondary devices at all. I try not to open Obsidian on my iPhone or iPad unless I can first commit all changes on my Mac in Git, because the Git diff is the only way I trust to notice new merge conflicts right away (The “Merge conflicts” view is unreliable for me, see below). This severely limits the way I can use Obsidian on mobile.
I mostly use Obsidian on iPhone and iPad to look up stuff, very rarely to edit notes. Unfortunately, not doing any editing doesn’t prevent these merge conflicts.
Other things I have observed:
The duplicate content is almost always (I’m nearly certain it’s actually always, but I can’t be 100 % sure) one or more entire line, i.e. a full Markdown paragraph, heading, or bullet point. In other words, a merge conflict isn’t just a single word or sentence inserted at an arbitrary point.
The duplicate content is sometimes a single line (e.g. a bullet point in a list) and sometimes a long section spanning several paragraphs and thousands of characters. It’s usually (not sure if always) a single duplicated section per file, not multiple sections in the same file.
Duplicate content can appear in notes that have never edited or opened on a secondary device at all. Just the process of syncing “creates” the issue. (Whether this suggests that an extension is to blame for the the issue, I don’t know.)
The “Merge conflicts” list on the secondary device that “created” the duplicate content shows the majority of files where duplicate content was created, but not necessarily all of them. In other words, I have noticed the issue in files that Obsidian didn’t show in “Merge conflicts”. (This is one reason why I trust my Git diff a lot more to detect these problems.)
Renaming a file can also cause problems, at least if combined with simultaneous editing. The order of events in this case:
2025-03-07: On my iPhone, after letting it fully sync, I edit file a.md and let the change sync to Obsidian Sync (one of the quite rare instances where I did edit a note on my iPhone).
Later that day: I open my Mac, the change to a.md syncs correctly to my Mac.
Later that day: I rename the file on my Mac to b.mdand edit it some more.
2025-03-11: I open Obsidian on my iPhone again and let it sync fully. It apparently re-syncs the file under its old name and with the old contents.
Obsidian on the Mac accepts this old file as new. So now I have both a.md (old contents) and b.md (new contents).
2025-03-18: I open Obsidian on my iPad and let it sync fully. It again recreates a.md with the old contents and syncs it back. So now I have 2 files again where there should be only one.
Assuming the underlying issue can’t be fixed, here’s a workflow suggestion that would help me at least notice and fix these merge conflicts more easily:
I’d like to see all Merge conflicts created/“resolved” by my secondary devices (iPhone and iPad) in Obsidian on my primary device (Mac). Because the Mac is the place where I can actually deal with these conflicts as this is where I have access to a keyboard and my Git history.
Don’t make me remember to look up Merge conflicts manually in the Activity log. Give me an option to display an unmissable notification whenever a merge conflict occurs so it’s impossible to miss them. Again, this notification should appear on my primary device (Mac) even if the merge conflict was “resolved” by another device because the Mac is where I can actually deal with it.
Since I use iPhone and iPad so rarely for editing and because the “Merge conflicts” view doesn’t catch all instances of duplicated content, I’d actually like a notification on the Mac not only for Merge conflicts, but every time the Mac receives an edit from another device via Obsidian Sync. That way, I could check each file manually for merge conflicts.
The Activity Log view is clunky for checking sync activity because it’s modal, i.e. I can’t easily leave it open all the time. The Sync History pane is better. If that pane had a filter to “only show events received from other devices”, I imagine it would be quite close to what I want. (It’s still only a workaround, but much better than unnoticed file corruption.)
My laptop is always on and Obsidian is always open. The laptop is often asleep, but I believe it wakes every hour to run background tasks. Also something may be keeping it awake sometimes when it should be asleep. Obsidian is unminimized but not necessarily the last-used app.
I don’t know what the connection strength is when it happens. That’s not something I normally pay close attention to, plus I typically notice the duplications some time after they’ve happened (Obsidian never notifies me about merge conflicts). Signal can be spotty where I live, but I’m usually at home on wifi. Sometimes I allow Sync to lose its connection when I’m going back and forth between Obsidian and another app on mobile, because waiting for it to sync every change would add too much friction for no benefit.
So I have the same setup, and my Mac frequently “wakes” even when closed. I know there are BIOS settings that can allow this, as well as power settings.
Shutting my computer down fully stops the behavior, personally. Its not ideal.
I’m having the same problem for the past few months with lists. For example, I keep a list of books I read. It’s a numbered list, and when I finish a new book, I added it to the list: title, author. Sometimes the same, one appears twice in the list; sometimes three lines in a row are duplicated. And sometimes, part of a list entry is cut off, such as half of an author’s name.
I use Obsidian Sync, and my subscription runs out next week, and I’m thinking of switching back to iCloud. I started using obsidian Sync a year ago because of all the problems that were with iCloud, but now that iCloud has an option to keep all files, downloaded, iCloud syncing should work correctly.
@Sigrunixia So far it seems that closing Obsidian on desktop might be preventing sync issues when I open the app on my iPhone. So, it might indeed be related to the two instances running at the same time.
I’ll continue to try to see if it ever happens with Obsidian closed on my desktop PC.
I’m cancelling my Sync subscription. I can’t lose data. I don’t see how something that syncs files can mess up data like this. I’d expect this from a database, but not a system that syncs entire files.
That shouldn’t happen. That’s not an excuse for a broken sync system. Since you never quit the app on mobile - or not in normal use - then having any two instances break sync means that the sync system isn’t working correctly.
Could this be related to the automatic renumbering of “smart lists”?
Maybe merge doesn’t recognize the same list item as the same list item, because it has different numbers on both devices or because it has been renumbered? Or there’s some weird timing, because the list is being renumbered in the wrong moment?
That is why I am asking for users to test this, because I agree it should not happen. Being able to show that this scenario is what is causing it, gives us something more concrete to look at and fix.
I haven’t seen that, or mention of it in this thread, unless it’s a partial duplicate. If there isn’t also a corresponding complete version, I wonder if these might be from closing Obsidian too soon on mobile (in which case the last state synced would be a point where you hadn’t finished typing the line).
I just had a Sync issue when I’d closed Obsidian on my desktop PC and then synced it with my iPhone shortly after. It took content I’d deleted earlier today and re-added it to a note after the content I’d added to the note. A rough idea of what I’m talking about follows. All edits were performed on my desktop.
This was the format of the note as it was yesterday:
# title 1
line 1
# title 2
line 2
line 3
I edited the note this morning to remove the lines from yesterday and replace the line under title 2 with a new line:
# title 1
# title 2
line a
I synced the above version to my iPhone successfully with Obsidian closed on my desktop. Later, I edited it to have a new line under title 1:
# title 1
line b
# title 2
line a
I closed Obsidian again and when I synced the above version to my iPhone, it created this:
