The 1.7.4 update has really messed things up. My CSS customizations aren’t working, and the app is lagging. I have over 60 plugins installed, so using 1.7.4 feels like torture. That’s why I’m trying to revert to version 1.6.7. It’s truly frustrating that such a big team would release such an incompatible update. So, how are we supposed to dare to update Obsidian again in the future? Don’t update to 1.7.4!
we are sorry to hear that. make sure you update your plugins and themes too.
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Thank you for your understanding. I’ll continue to stick with version 1.6.7 as I don’t want to deal with the issues. I brought this up just as a reminder to be cautious with future updates. Wishing you all the best and warm regards…
Can you share your output of (Command Palette >) Debug Info?
I had slowness before 1.7.4, which seems to have introduced more fluent handling of larger sheets of text (when scrolling, for instance).
But let me forgo your answer including your output and advise you to disable the following if you have any of these enabled:
- Editing Toolbar (has a memory leak or something)
- Remember Cursor Position (increases RAM of main process to the point of unresponsiveness)
- Style Settings (causes general lag, inviting use of custom CSS)
CSS can also cause sluggish UI behavior, btw.
Otherwise there is nothing wrong with 1.7.4, which makes your use of the imperative in the title rather unfortunate.
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Smooth as silk for me, and very welcome.
Thank you for your response. I experienced the exact opposite of your issue. If there’s no specific problem with version 1.7.4, then could you explain why, with the same settings, I encounter no issues when reverting to version 1.6.7? My title is not unfortunate. If I’m experiencing an issue in 1.7.4 that I didn’t have in 1.6.7, then it’s a compatibility problem. This incompatibility could be related to plugins or CSS snippets. But regardless of the reason, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m facing difficulties as a user. I hope we can understand each other on this.
SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v1.6.7
Installer version: v1.6.7
Operating system: #47~22.04.1-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed Oct 2 16:16:55 UTC 2 6.8.0-47-generic
Login status: not logged in
Insider build toggle: off
Live preview: on
Base theme: dark
Community theme: MagicUser v20.8.0
Snippets enabled: 10
Restricted mode: off
Plugins installed: 84
Plugins enabled: 64
1: Advanced URI v1.44.1
2: Archiver v0.26.1
3: Auto Note Mover v1.2.0
4: Book Search v0.7.4
5: Canvas Card Background Remover v0.1.4
6: Chronology v1.1.11
7: Kanban v2.0.51
8: Map View v5.0.3
9: Media Extended v3.2.6
10: Meld Encrypt v2.3.7
11: Meta Bind v1.1.3
12: Mononote v1.2.2
13: Note archiver v0.1.0
14: Etymology Lookup v1.0.4
15: Extract Highlights v0.0.18
16: File Explorer Note Count v1.2.2
17: Find and replace in selection v1.0.1
18: Fleeting Notes Sync v0.6.3
19: Footnote Shortcut v0.1.3
20: Graph Analysis v0.15.4
21: Hider v1.4.0
22: Highlightr v1.2.2
23: Wikipedia v1.0.3
24: Typewriter Scroll v0.2.2
25: Trash Explorer v1.2.3
26: Translate v1.4.9
27: Tldraw v1.9.0
28: Ink v0.2.6
29: Hyphenation v0.1.0
30: HTML Reader v1.0.12
31: Homepage v4.0.7
32: historica v0.2.5
33: Smart Rename v1.1.2
34: Rollover Daily Todos v1.1.8
35: Reminder v1.1.15
36: Recent Files v1.7.0
37: ReadItLater v0.6.0
38: Clipper v0.2.9
39: Collapse All v2.1.0
40: Dataview v0.5.67
41: Default New Tab Page v0.11.4
42: Edit History v0.1.3
43: Open Plugin Settings v1.3.2
44: PDF Highlights v0.0.4
45: PDF++ v0.40.13
46: Prominent Bookmarked Files v2.0.2
47: Status Bar Quote v0.1.0
48: SupSub v1.0.2
49: Task Progress Bar v2.0.0
50: Tasks v7.11.1
51: Tasks Calendar Wrapper v0.3.1
52: Text Format v3.1.0
53: Writing Goals v0.10.11
54: Update modified date v1.4.3
55: Handwritten Notes v1.3.6
56: Convert url to preview (iframe) v0.5.0
57: Image Toolkit v1.4.1
58: Mousewheel Image zoom v1.0.22
59: Soundscapes v1.4.0
60: Style Settings v1.0.9
61: Surfing v0.9.12
62: Banners v1.3.3
63: Automatically reveal active file v1.0.3
64: Pomodoro Timer v1.2.3
(Problematic plugin: Default New Tab Page. It should only open the default homepage (new tab) in reading mode, but instead, it opens all pages in reading mode. There’s no such issue in 1.6.7. By the way, Style Settings is a plugin I can’t do without, and I don’t see any issues with it in version 1.6.7 either)
Non-functional CSS:
.markdown-rendered ul, .markdown-rendered ol {
margin-block-start: -10px;
margin-block-end: 0px;
}
body {
--p-spacing: 1rem;
--heading-spacing: -2rem;
}
Also, to reiterate, there was terrible lagging and stutterin
Next time, If you can take the trouble to write a bit longer, you could mention how many notes you have and how many plugins you’re using. If I had a total of 10 notes, I would feel the same way!
Perfectly. I am also a user. When something changes for the worse, we want to go back to where we were, so as to be able to use the app.
When I hit problems a few months back, I didn’t suspect the plugins “I couldn’t do without.” You see, computing doesn’t work with emotional attachments.
So i just deactivated the usual suspects: Graph plugins, anything that does indexing, etc.
But believe me, I took a long time fixing the vault that was going down in a spiral.
With all due respect, this is not to deter you from the course of action you want to take. I’m not the enemy here. We are all victims of circumstance.
Still, my question is: are you going to stay on this version forever with the theme, plugins you need and trust, and give up future updates (fixes, new goodies)?
I can only share my own experiences here and I want to share with the community.
By the way, I have 15k notes, so I can say I am a power user. I have many many links.
Slowness will be picked up the user only with a large vault, as you rightly surmised.
Bottom line is:
- Don’t use themes and Style Settings. Use a Default or no-frills theme with some CSS.
- Some plugins are no longer maintained and their GitHub Issues pages are scattered with bug reports. You need to stay on top of these and find alternatives.
- I’m going to draw your attention to the following (and do this by saying I don’t know all your plugins, so some will be based on hunches):
- Encrypt? How many notes? What penalties?
- Meta Bind: you are behind with several updates. How late are you with other plugins’ updates?
- Banners → Use ITS CSS instead.
- Mononote and Default New Tab Page: anything to mess with Obsidian tab opening, I ditched.
- File Explorer Note Count, Automatically reveal active file and Recent Files: anything to do with files and explorer I ditched, a long time ago; for recent files I use dashboard DV queries
- Typewriter Scroll: anything that messes with Obsidian handling text especially in Live Preview, ditch it or at least try deactivating
- Soundscapes: slow and pointless (for me; check the Task Manager for CPU usage when running it, btw)
Now, these are just tips. Half of your plugins I don’t even know.
Also, I took to using a plugin loader to separate indexing instances of various plugins or processes. I wrote about this here.
Now, I’m not saying everything you see here written by me is money or golden but at least you can understand about the typical problems a user can face and we also must understand that in order to have some things evolve, some parts we need let go, let them devolve, somewhere else.
3 Likes
Dear Yurcee,
Thank you very much for your thoughtful and detailed response. I’m sure your writing will also be helpful to other Obsidian users reading this thread. I, too, would like to share my experiences with Obsidian and its plugins in the future. I believe such posts are extremely valuable for both developers and users alike.
However, the response you gave me, no matter how valuable its content, does not align with my motivation for opening this topic. I’m telling you that the 1.7.4 update has negatively impacted my app experience, but you want to place all the blame on plugins alone, which isn’t fair. If plugins and snippets that worked seamlessly in the previous version start causing issues in the next version, we can’t solely blame the plugin developers. In that case, Obsidian developers should ensure backward compatibility for these plugins to provide a good user experience and to prevent stability issues like those both you and I are facing. Don’t you agree?
You asked why I haven’t updated certain plugins. This is precisely why. I’m so tired of the risk of updates breaking things that I now try to keep updates to a minimum, reading the changelog carefully each time.
If any Obsidian developers are reading this, please review the negative effects that the changes in 1.7.4 have had on plugins and snippets, and take concrete steps toward backward compatibility in the next update. If there are incompatible plugins, it’s within your power to remove them from the active development list. Additionally, before releasing an update, sharing the beta version of the update with plugin developers first and waiting to release the full version until you’ve received confirmation from them that they’re ready could also be an option.
But as users, I don’t think we deserve to face these issues because of such factors. For instance, I spent a lot of time identifying that the issue was coming from version 1.7.4, which was not a pleasant experience.
Thank you…
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Obsidian developers will not align themselves with plugins and plugin makers. There are certain directives laid down even down to how on GitHub they need to name or organize their typescript/javascript files. There can be API changes, whatever…I am not a developer.
My experience with plugins and plugin makers is this: they cannot test thoroughly enough, so there are always potential hidden deficiencies and quirks.
I also am grateful for their work, but…going forward one must prioritize the soup and meat over the salt they’re bringing to the table. The salt is always optional and the meat has salt in it already…
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Hello. I feel this is going a bit off topic.
We did make same changes in V1.7.x, mostly for improving startup speed on mobile. Most plugins were unaffected, some needed a minor update. 1.7.x was in beta period for a couple of months to give plugin developers time to make the necessary changes and most have.
That’s why I suggested you to make sure your plugins are updated.
4 Likes
Thank you for your response. From the beginning, I’ve been sharing my experiences with version 1.7.4 and expressing my thoughts specific to this issue.
Considering that I use over 60 plugins and, apart from the snippet I shared and the lag and stuttering issues I encountered, I’m only experiencing issues with one active plugin, it’s true, as you mentioned, that most plugins aren’t problematic. However, it’s also clear that significant changes were introduced with version 1.7.2, and a guide was even published about this:
Therefore, I assume that many plugin developers have not yet made the necessary updates yet when I reverted to 1.6.7. I also find it very reasonable to allow developers time to make adjustments. Until reading your message, I wasn’t aware of such a procedure, and I’m glad to know about it as a user.
It seems that holding off on major updates and waiting for a follow-up release would be beneficial for those like me who use a lot of plugins and snippets. If the issue persists in the next update (say 1.7.8), I’ll test it and open a new thread. If there are no issues and the experience is stable like in 1.6.7, I’ll provide feedback here.
Thanks again.
PS. By the way, as a Linux user, I’ve tried both the AppImage and DEB versions. I found the AppImage to be more stable, so I’m using that one.
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This is so condescending and unnecessary.
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If you read carefully, the sentence before that referred to my own case, my own shortcomings.
What do you have on the main subject, though?
Any insights you’re willing to share?
It seems you use a lot of custom CSS. I’m sure you put a lot of research and time to collect and maybe adjust them to your workflow and now all these conveniences don’t work anymore, which is pretty frustrating.
The general conception of “updates” is that updates are a must and therefore, most people won’t think twice before they update.
Simply put, updates add to, remove or replace older code.
Some changes are minor, some changes are major. Major changes will definitely break older code from CSS or plugins.
A solution is, to provide bug reports to plugin authors or ask on the forum for help to update CSS snippets.
I didn’t check what plugins don’t work anymore with Obsidian v1.7.4 and didn’t see any issues so far, except for the Style Settings plugin which is now partially broken.
Sometimes but not always the switch from light to dark mode causes a transparent theme, where font elements seem to merge.
I hope Mr. Mgmeyers will update his popular plugin soon.
Furthermore, I hope that the great Style Settings plugin will be added in future to core, it really deserves its place as a core plugin. But I digress.
It’s also true, you can’t stick forever with an app version, because progress is unavoidable. However, it’s a good idea to not update too early. After all, if you enjoy a perfectly working app, take your time before your next update.
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Let’s please stay calm. Thank you for your sensitivity. However, I don’t believe @Yurcee was launching a personal attack against me. If that were the case, I don’t think he would have given advice about the plugins. After all, we’re all Obsidian users, and we’re trying to make this great app even better through our feedback. So, even if we sometimes struggle to keep our tempers in check, it’s best to avoid personal attacks.
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Thank you for your understanding and constructive comments. I agree with your suggestion regarding the Style Settings plugin; it would indeed be a fantastic improvement.
However, our approach toward updates depends on the developers. I believe it’s essential for plugin developers and Obsidian developers to work together on common ground to prevent issues like this.
I was using my problematic CSS snippet in version 1.7.4 for the attached dashboard. If you’d like to take a look, I’d recommend it. Best regards…
plugins can be very useful sometimes, ultimately however, plugins are just a temporal addition, as harsh this may sound.
Most plugin authors don’t get much support in every sense, so plugin authors may stop to provide updates at some point. Also, it takes time and effort to code plugins even if you have the right tools and life situations change too.
Anyway, I agree, a dashboard/home page is essential, please have a look at efemkay’s excellent CSS snippet:
I believe there was a bump in the Electron version between 1.6.7 and 1.7.4. To upgrade Electron, you need to download a fresh installer from the Obsidian site and not just update from the app settings.
Idk whether that’s the cause of the issues you describe, just suggesting it as a possibility.
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I’m only responding now because the thread was slowed down.
Thank you for the link. I would agree with your argument about the plugins if they weren’t open-source. Luckily, even an abandoned plugin can be continued under a different title thanks to this. This is only one of the beauties of the free software world.
While searching for the cause of the issue, I completely uninstalled and reinstalled both the .deb and .appimage versions of the application. So, I believe I did a “fresh install.” If you have any other suggestions, I’d be open to trying them.
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