Obsidian Sync on iPhone Overwrites Newer Data, Causing Data Loss

Bug reports
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1

Steps to reproduce

I have 321 notes/files syncing between three devices Windows Desktop, iPad and iPhone. Here is how to reproduce the problem:

I have synced all files between all three devices and an update on one gets pushed to the two others. Great. So I continue to work some on my Windows 10 Pro desktop, some on my iPad. I have learned that I really need Obsidian opened on both items simultaneously when moving to the other device, otherwise Im terrified of losing data. So this last week that is what I have been doing and it has been working fine. I work on my desktop. Then when switching to my iPad, I open my iPad with my Desktop Obsidian App already open, and after my iPad updates I close the desktop app and move to my iPad, and I do the same thing the other way around when switching back to my desktop.

Then, after 5 days of this, I have only my iPhone, and I want to add a new thought to one of my notes. So, with obsidian closed on both devices and completely offline, I open my iPhone expecting the 5 days of work to be pushed to my iPhone. Instead, the reverse happens. My iPhone Obsidian app which I havent used in 5 days, pushes its version of my vault to the obsidian sync server, and ERASES hours and days worth of work! Then, when I open Obsidian on either my iPad or desktop, it syncs and DELETES Five days of work from both devices! Now all three devices are five days old and all my new work is lost!

After this happened the first time, I learned to back up my vault, which I did the first time, thank God, but now I do it all the time. But this is STILL happening. I am CONSISTENTLY having obsidian sync erase my work and it seems to be consistently because of the iPhone app. As a result, using Obsidian is absolutely and completely untenable this way.

Honestly I dont know how other people do it, and after searching I have discovered other complaints with people experiencing the same loss of lots of hard work. And upon reading the forums and the manual I found Obsidian making excuses as to why it cant sync properly and saying this is the same with all syncing apps. Umm, NO IT IS NOT. I have multiple apps I use that sync across all three platforms or more, and have used them for years… but after having used Obsidian now for only a month and having to lose my work and restart a new vault from a backup 4 times already, this is absolutely catastrophic and I don’t know why this isnt priority #1 for Obsidian to fix. I cannot use it this way and will not. I will go back to OneNote or something else until this gets fixed, if it ever gets fixed.

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

Expected result

Actual result

Environment

SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v1.6.5
Installer version: v1.6.5
Operating system: Windows 10 Pro for Workstations 10.0.19045
Login status: logged in
Catalyst license: none
Insider build toggle: off
Live preview: on
Base theme: adapt to system
Community theme: none
Snippets enabled: 0
Restricted mode: off
Plugins installed: 3
Plugins enabled: 3
1: Thumbnails v1.3.0
2: Underline v1.3.0
3: Editing Toolbar v2.4.16

RECOMMENDATIONS:
Community plugins: for bugs, please first try updating all your plugins to latest. If still not fixed, please try to make the issue happen in the Sandbox Vault or disable community plugins.

Additional information

4 Likes
2

Hello. I am sorry for you poor experience.

That’s not the case.

One thing that comes to mind after reading your report: Did you place your vault in some other sync/cloud storage system, like iCloud or similar? Because you can’t both iCloud and obsidian sync at the same time.

Another thing, can you provide version logs of some of the files affect by this?

3

No I have only been using Obsidian Sync. Im not sure where those logs might be. I see activity logs but thats it. I can look if I know where to find them.

4

I don’t mean to doubt you, but it’s worth carefully double-checking on each of your devices. Sometimes some default OS folders are automatically synced. For example ~/Documents in MacOS in iCloud or some default Windows folders in OneDrive.

And on mobile, when you create a new vault, if you checked “Store in iCloud” option.

On mobile: In the top left corner, when you access the left sidebar, click on the name of your vault to bring up a list of your vaults. Is “(iCloud)” beside the name? (“TestOnCloud” in my screenshot example.)

IMG_3285.PNG
IMG_3285.PNG1170Ă—2532 104 KB

5

Double checked the iPad and iPhone and there is no (iCloud) next to the vault name.

6

Happened again today. This time I had done some work this morning on my desktop, and then went to open Obsidian on my iPad (while Obsidian was still open on my desktop), and the 2-day old Obsidian vault on my iPad OVERWROTE my vault with all the work I did thismorning! This is like the fifth time Obsidian has done this to me. How can anyone use this app?? I dont get it.

1 Like
7

Because most (all?) people don’t have this problem.

We need to figure out why it happens to you. Under which circumstances.

Can you show us a screenshot of the sync history of the affected file?

Is it one file that is overwritten or all files?

1 Like
8

He said he didn’t know where that was. Can you explain what you want shown?

When I run the command, “Open version history for the current file” it brings up a sort of snapshots dialog. It doesn’t look the same as the main Sync “Activity log”, and I’m not sure it has the data you are requesting. Except you can see which devices the changes came from.

9

I am interested in the file version history.
That would be a beginning.

10

Obsidian just “merged” two daily notes and erased all of the content of one (merging it with nothing but hash tags in the other). I noticed that my desktop (MacOS) didn’t receive sync updates from the iOS client and the iOS client hadn’t even tried to sync for the past 8 hours (likely because of poor internet connectivity). I killed and restarted the iOS client and I have apparently lost the contents of the note.

The iOS client’s version history for the note only shows the content from my desktop, not the version I created on it (probably because it never actually synched it before erasing its contents based on incoming content).

iOS sync log:
2024-07-15 20:38 - Merging conflicted file Daily Notes/2024/July/2024-07-15.md
2024-07-15 20:38 - Accepted Daily
Notes/ 2024/July/2024-07-15. md

11

I think this is a similar issue, I posted my merge there.

12

I’ve had probably 6-8 more instances where Obsidian overwrites newer versions of notes on other devices. Its pretty consistent at overwriting notes now. Almost never works properly actually. I’ve just had to stop using sync completely. When Im done with this project I will have to stop using Obsidian.

13

If you would provide the info that has been requested of you, someone might be able to help.

1 Like
14

I know this is an old issue but in case someone wanders by…
This issue with syncing just screams bad system time on the Windows machine. You can be sure that the iphone and ipad have very accurate timestamps. (The celluar phone system depends on accurate time.)
If the Windows machine is using the wrong time from the past then every time that it modifies a file that already exists in the vault it will be seen as being a previous version and guarantees that it will be overwritten.

Most windows machines default to sync their time to Microsoft’s time servers so it is not usually a problem.

I t might have been something else entirely but it’s an easy thing to check during debugging.

15

Updating title to more accurately reflect the subject matter.

17

Same happened to me. Could it be related to open tabs on mobile (Android)? I didn’t open the Android app for weeks, but I had a lot of open tabs - and all of these opened tabs that had changes from Desktop have overwritten the desktop version. Very bad sign

18

I wouldn’t expect it to be open tabs, but we would need to look at with the entire setup you are running.

19

I haven’t had this problem (that I know of), but I experienced something that might be related.

I opened a device (iPad) I use less often. I don’t know when it’s last sync was; when I pick up the device, I usually open Obsidian to do a sync even if I’m not going to use it, because “Conflicts are more common when working offline, as there are more changes and longer periods between syncs, increasing the chance of conflicts” (Troubleshoot Obsidian Sync - Obsidian Help). So it may have synced in the last day, or it may have been a week.

When I opened Obsidian it had a fair bit of syncing to do, and when it was done I had several new sync conflict files (I’m using Sync’s new “conflict files” setting). I used the File Diff plugin to check them, and all of them were just old versions of the files. As far as I could see, there weren’t any changes from this device. I don’t know why Sync flagged them as conflicting, or what it would have done if I’d been using the “merge” setting instead of “conflict files”.

Unfortunately I forgot to copy the Sync log, and when I went back it had reset.

1 Like
20

I added a few paragraph breaks to the original report to aid reading.

21

This happened to me two days ago, iPhone overwrote a bases file that I had changed earlier in the day on my desktop.