Obsidian window goes blank when typing a heading

Help
1

I’ve got a weird problem where sometimes when I start to type a heading in Obsidian (one or more # followed by a space) the Obsidian window just goes blank. It’s definitely happened on my Mac, and maybe on Windows though I cannot remember for sure. It’s happened half a dozen times now.

To recover I have to quit and restart Obsidian. Sometimes the heading I was typing is gone, so Obsidian did not save the last few characters I typed.

I suspect it may be something like a plugin crashing, but I don’t know how to troubleshoot it. The last time it happened I tried selecting the View > Toggle Developer Tools in the menu, but nothing happened – the screen stayed blank.

I’m just wondering, the next time this happens what can I do to collect more information and find out what is causing it?

2

First, could you share your debug information? Help and support - Obsidian Help

3

Try to Rebuild vault cache in Settings > Files and links

It solved my issue.

4

I have done the Rebuild vault cache, to see if that helps.

In the meantime, debug information is as follows:

SYSTEM INFO:
	Obsidian version: v1.11.5
	Installer version: v1.8.3
	Operating system: Darwin Kernel Version 25.2.0: Tue Nov 18 21:09:40 PST 2025; root:xnu-12377.61.12~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T6000 25.2.0
	Login status: logged in
	Language: en-GB
	Catalyst license: insider
	Insider build toggle: on
	Live preview: on
	Base theme: adapt to system
	Community theme: none
	Snippets enabled: 3
	Restricted mode: off
	Plugins installed: 15
	Plugins enabled: 13
		1: Book Search v0.7.5
		2: Linter v1.30.0
		3: Dataview v0.5.68
		4: Meta Bind v1.4.6
		5: Omnisearch v1.28.0
		6: Outliner v4.9.0
		7: QuickAdd v2.9.4
		8: Style Settings v1.0.9
		9: Templater v2.17.0
		10: Todoist Sync v2.5.0
		11: Zoom v1.1.2
		12: Excalidraw v2.19.2
		13: Plugin Update Tracker v1.7.0

RECOMMENDATIONS:
	Custom theme and snippets: for cosmetic issues, please first try updating your theme and disabling your snippets. If still not fixed, please try to make the issue happen in the Sandbox Vault or disable community theme and snippets.
	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.
```
5

The full troubleshooting guide is here: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/about-the-bug-reports-category/24/11.

No need to file a bug report yet, but looking at your debug info I’d go to Settings > Community plugins > Restricted mode and click Turn on and reload. The issue is probably not from a snippet, but I’d disable those as well for testing.

If you don’t see the issue in Restricted mode, it’s coming from one of your plugins. Turn Restricted mode OFF (enabling community plugins), disable all the plugins individually, and restart. You don’t have that many so you can slowly turn one on at a time to see how it goes for a hour or so. No problem → enable another and so on.

6

It just happened again, so Rebuild vault cache did not work.

The problem is it happens intermittently – like once every few days, it would be a pain to disable plugins.

Before I go down that path, is there any other way to extract information from Obisidian while it is in this blank state?

Selecting the menu option View > Force Reload brings it back, but there are no errors in the console (probably because of the reload).

This is what the Obsidian window looks like:

image
image1906×1060 51.1 KB

7

Can you get to the dev tools when it’s in that state? If so, you could look in the console tab for anything.

MacOS: CMD + OPTION + i

8

I have not tried the keyboard shortcut, but selecting the menu option View > Toggle Developer Tools does nothing.

9

Your installer version is older. You could update it to the most recent version to see if that will fix you issue. Update Obsidian - Obsidian Help

10

@Zodian It’s worth trying, but the v1.8.3 installer isn’t so far back at this point.

11

Looking at the list of plugins installed, I’d say what could interfere with the DOM is

		6: Outliner v4.9.0

Try reinstall with the latest installer and disable plugins one by one, starting with this, probably.

12

Thanks for the tips, everyone. It looks like doing the long way, trying to work out which plugin is causing it, may be my only option.

I just wonder, does Obsidian really have no other way of determining which plugin could be causing the issue?

13

You don’t have that many plugins. Others have 5-10 times more.