Obsidian Sync incorrectly duplicates sections of files

[Unroll1289]

Just chiming in with my experience with this issue as well. I’ve been experiencing this for about five months with Obsidian Sync. Primary platforms being synced are iOS, Linux, and Windows. On my iPhone, it is not linked to iCloud.

This morning, I saw that I had some duplicate sections in a note I edited around 6pm yesterday. The strange thing was that the duplicates are documented as having been pushed around 11pm by my iPhone. Both my Windows and Linux machines were fully shut down.

I unfortunately don’t have sync logs of the iPhone’s 11pm push (unless there’s a way to see historic sync logs that I’m not aware of), but there is a version history entry for the issue.

It was simple to revert, but this is a fairly consistent issue I’ve had for months and it’s begun to make me uneasy as I’m not sure where this duplication has happened in other files I haven’t checked recently.

Other than this issue, sync is perfect for me. Let me know if there’s any additional info I can provide.

[CawlinTeffid]

I’ve had a couple more instances lately. The most recent one involved data loss, possibly a first for me. The pirate book entry is just straight up deleted. Also unusual, the other part of the file has duplication within a single line (I’ve seen that before but very rarely). I rolled these changes back and have now closed Obsidian on my laptop to see if that will help.

[CawlinTeffid]

Manually checking the merge error log, I caught one of these duplicates today even tho the vault has been closed on my laptop. (Obsidian was still open in another vault but that shouldn’t matter.)

[Sigrunixia]

Thanks for the continued reports everyone; it helps! We’re discussing things we can do to bandaid as well as address the issue internally.

[lankford]

I had no idea about this thread but sent an email to support and was asked to take a look and share what I emailed in. This thread captures what I have been experiencing. I am getting near the end of my rope. I very much appreciate Obsidian and the team. I also believe that in 2025 it is reasonable to expect that sync is a solved problem. I will allow some time for a fix but this really erodes usability and can’t go on.

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For some time now I have had issues with things getting truncated or duplicated or just otherwise compromised across devices.

I use Obsidian + sync across 4 total devices: 2 PCs, 1 iPhone 16 and 1 iPad Air. Prevent device sleep is enabled on the iPhone and iPad. PCs are generally left on. Obsidian is generally left open on various devices but not always. I am a heavy outliner (via plugin) but apart from that it’s generally vanilla Obsidian.

An example of the kind of thing that happens: Right now when I open my note !LA.02 - Current on PC 1, I see the following (as it should be)…

…yet when I open the same note on iPhone I see the following:

So sync has somehow duplicated content in the file…but not really, because when I expand those bottom repeated headings, the content is different.

This might be chalked up to a merge conflict of some kind, but none are reported. Also, I can add more content on iPhone to one of the top headings (pre-duplication) and it syncs to the desktop without showing the duplicated areas. In other words sync seems to be maintaining two versions of the file that still quasi-sync yet show up very differently on 2 devices. How can this be? It does not inspire confidence in data integrity, that is for sure.

And that is just one example of the kind of thing that happens. More frequently, I will add a bullet to a list in phone, it syncs, then when I go to desktop, it syncs, but I only see part of the text that was entered - it gets truncated or merged with a previous bullet or somehow otherwise distorted.

I love Obsidian but this has become a daily papercut and is killing the experience. I am willing to try anything at this point.

I am including below the lightly redacted logs from PC 1 and iPhone. If you need others let me know. (I don’t know if vault IDs should be considered sensitive - if you need them let me know.)

PC 1:

SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v1.8.10
Installer version: v1.8.4
Operating system: Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26100
Login status: logged in
Language: en
Catalyst license: none
Insider build toggle: off
SYNC INFO:
Vault ID: (redacted but the same as below)
Host server: wss://sync-07.obsidian.md
Device name:
Allowed file types: image, pdf, audio, unsupported
Allowed special types: hotkey, appearance-data, appearance, app, core-plugin, core-plugin-data, community-plugin, community-plugin-data
Ignored directories:
Vault path: C:\Users(redacted)\Documents\Obsidian Vault - (redacted)
Plugins: (4 enabled/17 installed)
1: Outliner v4.9.0
2: Natural Language Dates v0.6.2
3: Simple CanvaSearch v1.0.0
4: Kanban v2.0.51
Sync logs:
1751546449315 Info Connecting to server
1751546449708 Info Connection successful. Detecting changes…
1751546449804 Info Fully synced

iPhone:

SYSTEM INFO:
Operating system: ios 18.5 (Apple iPhone17,4)
Obsidian version: 1.8.10 (197)
API version: v1.8.10
Login status: logged in
Language: en
Catalyst license: none
SYNC INFO:
Vault ID: (redacted but the same as above)
Host server: wss://sync-07.obsidian.md
Device name:
Allowed file types: image
Allowed special types: app, appearance, community-plugin-data, community-plugin, core-plugin-data, core-plugin, appearance-data
Ignored directories:
Prevent sleep: true
Plugins: (3 enabled/17 installed)
1: Outliner v4.9.0
2: Natural Language Dates v0.6.2
3: Kanban v2.0.51
Sync logs:
1751546439177 Info Connecting to server
1751546439639 Info Connection successful. Detecting changes…
1751546439700 Info Fully synced
1751546588805 Info Connecting to server
1751546589388 Info Connection successful. Detecting changes…
1751546618805 Info Fully synced
1751546896807 Info Connecting to server
1751546897307 Info Connection successful. Detecting changes…
1751547162394 Info Connecting to server
1751547163065 Info Connection successful. Detecting changes…
1751547163075 Info Fully synced

[asystole]

I’m experiencing this issue on the latest Insider build. I use a MacBook, iPad, iPhone and Windows PC. Sync needs to “just work” - I can’t use a “second brain” type application if I can’t trust that it won’t mess up my data. I’ve been a paid sync user pretty much since it was introduced but seriously considering moving away from Obsidian completely because of this.

[jke]

I agree with this unfortunately. I noticed that over the last two months I have almost completely stopped using obsidian, and it’s been because I subconsciously switched to using google docs because I would trust that whatever I wrote and synced would still be there later.

So technically I have already moved away from using Obsidian even though I still paid the last couple months of subscription. If this bug got fixed though I would leap back in!!