"Open in default app" freezes obsidian

[UtkarshVerma]

I made a bug report 6 months back but it got moved to a different section. A lot of other people face this issue too.

All the details can be found here:

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

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. [image] Things I have tried I don’t know what I can do here. There’s a similar issue from some years back.

It is a major bug since I can’t open my PDF externally and edit my notes. Please address this since the workaround has stopped working for me too.

[ariehen]

Bug reports need the bug report template followed and included in the post. Thanks.

[UtkarshVerma]

Steps to reproduce

1. Launch Obsidian using XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=dwm obsidian.
2. Try to open a PDF in the vault using “Open in default app”.
3. PDF opens up and Obsidian freezes.

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

Yes

Expected result

Obsidian should not freeze.

Actual result

Obisidan freezes and only becomes responsive after I close the PDF viewer.

Environment

SYSTEM INFO:
	Obsidian version: v1.8.9
	Installer version: v1.8.9
	Operating system: #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sun, 23 Mar 2025 08:02:10 +0000 6.12.20-1-lts
	Login status: not logged in
	Language: en
	Insider build toggle: off
	Live preview: on
	Base theme: adapt to system
	Community theme: none
	Snippets enabled: 0
	Restricted mode: off
	Plugins installed: 4
	Plugins enabled: 4
		1: Dataview v0.5.61
		2: Footnote Shortcut v0.1.3
		3: QuickAdd v1.8.1
		4: Tag Wrangler v0.6.1

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.

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Additional information

N/A

[UtkarshVerma]

I have filled in the details

[WhiteNoise]

I am sorry we only support KDE and GNOME, we dot not have the resources to check other desktop environments/managers. I believe there were other users who had problems with DWM in the past, you can try searching the forum and see if they found an answer.

[UtkarshVerma]

Sure, but I use other Electron apps too (Discord etc.) and they do not have this issue. This is not related to dwm at all and you can reproduce it by launching Obsidian with the command I mentioned:

$ XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=<non-GNOME/KDE> obsidian

When the DE is not GNOME/KDE, Obsidian is probably falling back to xdg-open and it does so in a blocking way. I don’t see why Obsidian goes out of the way to enforce GNOME/KDE DE here; it should work OOTB without making those assumptions.

[WhiteNoise]

Obsidian does not got out of the way to enforce KDE/GNOME. We have not touched what comes out-of-the box from electron.