I’m posting this in case it helps anyone else. I feel like this is a partial solution, but it’s something.
I started with Obsidian on my desktop Mac, and added a number of community plugins. Synced to iCloud.
I then installed the app on my iPhone. When I launched it, it would ask me to open a vault, and then get stuck in a “Loading plugins” screen. The progress bar would complete instantly, the screen would flash, lather rinse repeat indefinitely. I couldn’t figure out how to get past that.
Here’s what works for me.
- Long-press on the Obsidian app icon to bring up the contextual menu. Select “Manage vaults…”
- This will open Obsidian showing whatever folders you have in your vault. Select one.
- This takes you to another screen where you have the option to “Open vault” or “Open vault in restricted mode.” Restricted mode is what you want.
After you’ve done this one time, it seems that Obsidian will save that state and continue to operate in it.
I’m guessing that one of my community plugins doesn’t play nice with my iPhone. I haven’t diagnosed which one. (Aside: I am old enough to remember playing this game with System Extensions on the Mac, and there was an extension manager that had a special mode in which it created subsets of extensions specifically for the purpose of finding conflicts. Glad those days are behind us.)