Plugins are being disabled every time i close obsidian

Help
1

Steps to reproduce

whenever I open Obsidian on my desktop, i turn on the community plug-ins. if you then close obsidian and re-open it, those changes aren’t saved, and each plug-in is now disabled individually.

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

yes, except for the sanbox vault, because the issue is with things not saving, and the sandbox vault doesn’t save.

Expected result

if i turn on a plug-in (Kanban, for example) and then close obsidian, when i reopen obsidian it should still be turned on.

Actual result

any and all installed plugins are turned off when i re-open obsidian.

Environment

SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: 1.12.7
Installer version: 1.11.4
Operating system: Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26100
Login status: not logged in
Language: en
Insider build toggle: off
Live preview: on
Base theme: adapt to system
Community theme: Minimal 9.0.0
Snippets enabled: 0
Restricted mode: off
Plugins installed: 7
Plugins enabled: 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.

Additional information

i checked the vault in the file explorer and found a few interesting things. 1, the files in the .obsidian folder called community-plugins.json, core-plugins.json, app.json, appearence.json, and workspace(1).json appear to never sync to icoud, saying that they are excluded (not synced). i dont know if that is intended.
2, there are 208 of what looks to be the exact same file, each from a few minutes of each other. the file is: workspace 208.json. (the number goes up by one for each duplicate, ending at 208), and the most recent is from around the time i started writing this bug report.
3, there are 10 app.json files, again each only a few minutes apart. only the original is unsynced.
4, opening the vault on my ipad produced the expected, correct result, even after i click the “reload to configure icloud files” button.
i have several vaults in icloud, and none of the others have this issue. i checked my icloud storage, and it has plenty of room, and icloud is up to date.
this issue started yesterday evening or early this morning. i did have a windows update to install, but the issue wasn’t fixed after i installed it. obsidian is also up-to-date.

2

This isn’t exactly an Obsidian issue, I think it’s an iCloud issue. Is it possible you have “Optimize Mac Storage” checked on? If so, iCloud might be off-loading some of the files to the cloud, and so you’re getting sync-conflicts when Obsidian tries to write the app settings.

You will likely have to turn OFF “Optimize Mac Storage” and then you might have to delete all the duplicated sync conflict files with numbers in them.

1.11.4 is from January 7, 2026. It’s not very old, but there are new installers you can try installing. You are not actually up to date.

  • 1.11 on January 12 specifically fixed an issue with iCloud. “1. If your vault is stored in iCloud, we check if any configuration files need to be re-downloaded from iCloud. After the files are downloaded, you will see a prompt asking you to reload the app.”
  • On March 23, 1.12.7 “The installer has been updated to use Electron v39.8.3 (requires downloading the latest installer).”

So it might be worth downloading the new installer and actually getting up to date. But I still suggest to check your iCloud settings too.

3

Other than what Rigmarole mentions above, there’s also the fact that iCloud on Windows is known for:

iCloud Drive on Windows may lead to file duplication or corruption.

… as stated here: Sync your notes across devices > iCloud and is generally not a recommended sync method when Windows is involved.

4

I wasn’t sure if it was actually an issue with obsidian, but i figured there was no harm in reporting it—especially since I couldn’t find a way to report an issue with iCloud. I didn’t know about the windows being unreliable, so thank you for that, I’ll be looking into other syncing options. Also, when I clicked ‘check for updates’ it didn’t say anything, so I assumed I was up-to-date.

thank you both for your help!

5

For what it’s worth :blush: : That button only checks for the updates of Obsidian, the app :blush: …
The installer, on the other hand, need to be manually updated: Update Obsidian > Installer updates.

It’s generally mentioned somewhere in the release notes when there’s a new installer available but its update, in itself, is somewhat left at the user’s discretion as Obsidian (the app) can work perfectly fine on an older installer for some time.
When an installer is deemed “too old” compared to the version of the app (which is updated more regularly than the installer), “something” should tell you that “you need to update the installer” (but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered the “something” in question as I tend to keep the installer up-to-date :sweat_smile: )