Steps to reproduce
I use Obsidian with Sync on my windows device and my iOS device. The iOS device has data enabled, so always uploads changes to the server, but the windows device only does so when I connect to wifi. I often make changes when offline on the windows device. And further, I use many different wifi connections over the course of a week, usually different coffee shops.
As a result, when I open Obsidian on the windows device, after connecting to the wifi, Sync will sit in a state endlessly where it says “Waiting to connect to server.” It seems to try this multiple times per minute.
The only way I can fix this is to close Obsidian and re-open it. Sometimes I also have to pause Sync before closing Obsidian, then resume it after opening. When I reboot Obsidian, my entire vault has to be Indexed again, all the files uploaded/downloaded from both devices, and multiple merges happen. It’s very frustrating.
Expected result
I open Obsidian from a device that was offline, and now online, and it immediately connects to Sync servers, makes only the most necessary uploads/downloads/merges.
Actual result
See above.
Environment
SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v1.4.16
Installer version: v1.4.13
Operating system: Windows 10 Pro 10.0.19045
Login status: logged in
Catalyst license: none
Insider build toggle: off
Live preview: off
Legacy editor: off
Base theme: light
Community theme: none
Snippets enabled: 0
Restricted mode: off
Plugins installed: 7
Plugins enabled: 6
1: Hider v1.2.3
2: System Dark Mode v1.1.1
3: Recent Files v1.3.3
4: Table of Contents v0.1.3
5: Better Word Count v0.8.1
6: Find orphaned files and broken links v1.8.0
This may be an OS or electron level problem that isn’t reporting to Obsidian that the network is not available
The issue may happen when there are multiple independent changes to a note.
For example we begin with Note A that is synchronized in both device 1 and device 2.
If device 1 and device 2 both independently make changes to note A, without having the possibility to synchronize in between, then the automatic merge algorithm can produce undesirable outputs.
However, there is no way really to fix this, because when there are multiple conflicting changes, only YOU (the user) know what’s right. No algorithm can merge them correctly.
There are currently two way to go about this:
- You either let the automatic merge algorithm attempt. If it fails, you can manually look in the previous versions of Note A which are in the sync version history and file recovery version history.
- Disable the automatic merging in case of conflict (We have recently introduce this). In this case, every time there is one of these “merge conflict with independent edits” an additional
Note A-conflict will be generated and you have to manually review it Note A and Note A-conflict for changes.
I am asking anyone who is experiencing the issue in this thread to switch to the new “create conflict file” option and let me know what happens.
If after enabling the new “create conflict file” option, you experience conflict files being created even when NO editing has been done on multiple devices, please go here and provide the requested info.
Because Sync only notifies about conflicts in its activity log which is cleared when the app restarts, I suggest also bookmarking a search for File:“conflicted copy”.