Restore button is not visibile under some circumstances (tall canvas, etc)

Bug reports
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1

I opened a Canvas on the mobile app only for the contents to be immediately wiped (first unexpected behaviour)

Going to version history on mobile and/or laptop shows the previous Canvas versions with content, but restore is not an option (second unexpected behaviour)

I managed to get the file back by going to logs, getting the deleted JSON, pasting it into a txt file and renaming that with .canvas.
Not an ideal solution though.

Notes:

  • I use obsidian on Mac and iPhone
  • I use Obsidian sync service
  • I do not have my files sync’d by any other means
  • My vaults sit under my Mac user folder ~Jonathan/vaults/…

I hope these screen shots clarify things a bit:

First shows the correct content, but no restore option

image
image2160Ă—916 76.8 KB

The second shows the blank Canvas after opening it on the iPhone:

image
image2164Ă—544 51.5 KB

The only version I can restore is the blank version :frowning:

Here is the older revision from 15:35 on the phone, it shows the canvas content prior to it being wiped, but there’s no restore either:

image
image2194Ă—586 48.4 KB

Thanks for considering how this could be improved/fixed

2

that’s pretty weird.

Is this still happening??

What is your mobile version number? you did not include the show debug info.

3

I’m getting this on desktop as well. Clearly the historical data is safe somewhere, but I see no interface to actually trigger the restore 1.8.9 windows. I was lucky enough to have a git backup on top of sync so I got my file back already.

4

what does this mean?

5

here’s history of a file that somehow got emptied

Obsidian_2025-05-01_16-57-36
Obsidian_2025-05-01_16-57-361106Ă—1002 37.6 KB

Note the option to restore at the top

Obsidian_2025-05-01_16-57-52
Obsidian_2025-05-01_16-57-521113Ă—1017 67.2 KB

here’s an old state with the content I wanted to restore, but the restore button is gone, so I can’t restore it

6

Ok, I’ll double check this. Which obsidian version are you running?

1 Like
7

1.8.9 :smiley: thanks!

8

Ok, we are at 1.8.10.

Does downloading and reinstall obsidian help with this?

9

OK I worked out what it was! (I also upgraded to 1.8.10, though it didn’t change the behaviour)

seems to be an issue of the canvas aspect ratio. when I made it landscape, the controls reappeared. It’s also quite a large canvas, so that may have an impact.

image
image1107Ă—1007 55.1 KB

10

I’ve also had this same issue on Obisidian 1.8.10 on Windows 11, Windows 10, and Android.

From what I can gather, it will sometimes flicker the “show changes, copy, restore” option when I click on the version before the image of the canvas is displayed. This is only happening on my very tall portrait canvases. My current guess is what is happening, is that all of the information is still there, it’s merely a display bug, where the image size is expanding too large, and pushing the copy/restore section out of the visible space.

If it matters, I pay for sync, and it’s quite frightening to me to have this happen, as I rely on version history restore rn when there are data mismatches when I’m working on multiple machines, and a canvas is open, and it overwrites before a sync can happen, thus losing data.

Ideally, the preview image would truncate to the correct aspect ratio, however, if the copy/restore div is still there, it could be forced on top. But I’d be fine with a right mouse button → copy/restore in the list view on the left, it would solve the issue for me. As long as there’s always some way to restore a version, that’s the most important part for me.

11

yes, you are correct. We are aware of this bug.

1 Like