"Open in default app" blocks Obsidian until app is closed

[UtkarshVerma]

What I’m trying to do

My vault contains books as PDFs that I open using the default app to edit and highlight. My default PDF viewer is sioyek and whenever I try to open the PDF using the default app, sioyek gets launched, however, I can’t do anything in the Obsidian window.

Things I have tried

I don’t know what I can do here.

There’s a similar issue from some years back.

Opening in default app now results in Obsidian blocking until I close the default app

Things I have tried I searched in this forum I searched on the Obsidian site using Google What I’m trying to do I love Obsidian. But since I am more used to my own editor, I have used the default app option since beginning to use Obsidian over a year ago. Until recently, one of my favourite workflows would be to open the note I was working on in the default app, and then use the Obsidian interface to open other notes with relevant bits that I can use/ link to / draw on for my current not…

[vanadium]

I cannot reproduce that, but then, it may be due to my operating system, Linux Fedora 40.

[UtkarshVerma]

I noticed this bug happens with Okular as well. My Obsidian version is v1.5.12.

[UtkarshVerma]

I found someone else facing the same bug.

'Open with default app'-issues under linux

I had problems with the ‘Open in default app’ feature under linux. I am running Arch with no pre-built desktop environment, so I am used to this kind of stuff not working out of the box. After a little bit of digging I found a rather hacky solution which I doesn’t quite satisfy my needs. Therefore I wanted to share my solution and ask for other peoples solution. The Problem Long story short: When I opened, say, a PDF, my reader okular would open just fine but Obsidian would become unresponsive…

It’s a pretty annoying issue. Could someone from the team please address it as a bug and work on it?

[vanadium]

Nobody can help you fix this if you do not disclose your operating system. Many people on many operating systems do not have the issue.

[UtkarshVerma]

I am using Arch Linux.

[UtkarshVerma]

I have found a way to reproduce this. This seems to happen on setups without a desktop environment. For example, even on Fedora 38 (quickemu VM), there are no issues on GNOME, but if I install i3 on it, then I get the same issue.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Install a non-DE window manager (e.g. i3wm).
2. Launch Obsidian.
3. Open an attachment using the default app.
4. Obsidian UI freezes.

[UtkarshVerma]

@vanadium I’ve narrowed down the exact behaviour. This bug happens on setups where the XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP variable is not set to GNOME.

To reproduce, launch Obsidian as follows:

$ XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=i3 obsidian

Opening any PDF in the system PDF viewer will block Obsidian now.

In contrast, things work fine if I do launch Obsidian as follows:

$ XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME obsidian

I don’t know why Obsidian changes the process spawning behaviour based on the DE. Because, by spoofing GNOME, Obsidian is working fine for me even with DWM on Arch Linux.

The fix should be to have the same behaviour as GNOME for other values of XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP as well.

[be_cracked]

@UtkarshVerma, that is a way easier fix than mine! I didn’t even think about that being a possibility. I second that Obsidian should not alter the spawning behavior based on the DE. That is very unintuitive.