What I’m trying to do
Open Obsidian on Android and have it open in a reasonable time, say < 1 sec.
Instead it takes 5-11 seconds. My vault is about 4,000 files and 1,000 images in 800 MB total. I do have one “dump” note folder with 1,800 notes which need to be sorted. I removed this, just to test, and it did not change loading time at all.
I notice that the Obsidian startup timer shows multiple tabs open - up to 40 or 50 sometimes. I don’t understand this, as the mobile app view does not show tabs. Tabs don’t seem to be a feature of the mobile app at all, so why are they piling up in a background I can’t access?
I discovered that clearing the workspace-mobile.json file brings my app open time down to about 1 second, which is great. It opens to a blank screen, which I don’t mind at all.
However, Obsidian quickly starts piling notes up in the workspace, and app time bloats up again.
I discovered there’s a “tab view” in the command screen - so I closed all tabs. However, Obsidian does not respect this and still shows 9 tabs in the background, it seems.
So let’s start. Here’s my load time with zero community plugins:
Obsidian version: 1.13.8 (367)
API version: 1.13.8
Operating system: Android 17 (Google Pixel 9)
Webview version: 153.0.0.0
Total startup time: 4,262ms
Initialization: 489ms
Boot: 363ms
Response: 12ms
DOM parse: 65ms
Script evaluation: 285ms
Language: 27ms
App setup: 99ms
Vault (3,632 files): 2,394ms
Configuration: 53ms
Reading files: 2,312ms
Loading file metadata: 26ms
Metadata listeners: 4ms
Workspace (10 tabs, 9 deferred): 293ms
Components: 27ms
Managers: 11ms
Settings: 16ms
Appearance: 6ms
Managers: 70ms
Metadata types: 18ms
Secret storage: 25ms
Hotkeys & commands: 27ms
Layout: 186ms
Load layout: 184ms
Finalize: 2ms
Extra: 3ms
Core plugins: 279ms
Community plugins (0 active): 807ms
Here is my load time after clearing the workspace-mobile.json file. It dropped to a shocking 2 seconds!
Obsidian start-up time breakdown
Obsidian version: 1.13.8 (367)
API version: 1.13.8
Operating system: Android 17 (Google Pixel 9)
Webview version: 153.0.0.0
Total startup time: 2,441ms
Initialization: 538ms
Boot: 408ms
Response: 9ms
DOM parse: 105ms
Script evaluation: 293ms
Language: 30ms
App setup: 100ms
Vault (3,632 files): 1,026ms
Configuration: 53ms
Reading files: 932ms
Loading file metadata: 30ms
Metadata listeners: 11ms
Workspace (9 tabs, 1 deferred): 160ms
Components: 28ms
Managers: 11ms
Settings: 17ms
Appearance: 6ms
Managers: 67ms
Metadata types: 16ms
Secret storage: 27ms
Hotkeys & commands: 24ms
Layout: 55ms
Load layout: 54ms
Extra: 4ms
Core plugins: 304ms
Community plugins (0 active): 414ms
Things I have tried
This is the command I ran to clear the workspace-mobile.json:
cat > .obsidian/workspace-mobile.json << 'EOF'
{
"main": {
"id": "0f93609c5bb37662",
"type": "split",
"children": [
{
"id": "21ac148177293b4b",
"type": "tabs",
"children": [
{
"id": "21da50514c0e999a",
"type": "leaf",
"state": {
"type": "markdown",
"state": {
"file": null
}
}
}
]
}
]
},
"left": {
"id": "b54efb143561a528",
"type": "mobile-drawer",
"children": []
},
"right": {
"id": "2f1e3affe7077f2a",
"type": "mobile-drawer",
"children": []
},
"active": "21da50514c0e999a"
}
EOF
Then I re-enabled my plugins, including Sync Engine. I am not sure if Sync Engine pulls workspace state from my desktop, but I believe the Sync Engine docs say that all dot files (.obsidian, etc) are ignored.
Obsidian soon slows down again.
Here is my latest time:
Obsidian start-up time breakdown
Obsidian version: 1.13.8 (367)
API version: 1.13.8
Operating system: Android 17 (Google Pixel 9)
Webview version: 153.0.0.0
Total startup time: 6,254ms
Initialization: 493ms
Boot: 369ms
Response: 11ms
DOM parse: 78ms
Script evaluation: 280ms
Language: 26ms
App setup: 98ms
Vault (1,812 files): 3,190ms
Configuration: 54ms
Reading files: 3,112ms
Loading file metadata: 23ms
Metadata listeners: 2ms
Workspace (9 tabs, 8 deferred): 1,273ms
Components: 27ms
Managers: 10ms
Settings: 18ms
Appearance: 7ms
Managers: 69ms
Metadata types: 18ms
Secret storage: 26ms
Hotkeys & commands: 25ms
Layout: 1,165ms
Load layout: 1,162ms
Finalize: 3ms
Extra: 5ms
Core plugins: 320ms
Community plugins (3 active): 978ms
Sync Engine (3.1.6): 227ms
Templater (2.25.0): 142ms
Front Matter Timestamps (1.5.5): 17ms
Other: 592ms