This happens intermittently and unpredictably: I have obsidian sync enabled, I’ll see a toast saying (something like) “merging changes from another client from sync”, and then I’ll usually lose part of the last line I was writing, or sometimes a couple lines.
I only have one desktop client installed anywhere, I do have obsidian installed on my phone (android) with sync enabled, but I don’t make edits there, and use it pretty seldom, and my usage is not correlated with this bug.
Did you follow the troubleshooting guide?
No, because this happens intermittently enough that I would have to work only in the sandbox for a week or two to see it.
Expected result
N/A, this shouldn’t occur
Actual result
N/A
Environment
SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v1.8.7
Installer version: v1.7.7
Operating system: #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu, 02 Jan 2025 22:52:26 +0000 6.12.8-arch1-1
Login status: logged in
Language: en
Catalyst license: none
Insider build toggle: off
Live preview: on
Base theme: light
Community theme: Vanilla AMOLED v1.0.0
Snippets enabled: 7
Restricted mode: off
Plugins installed: 10
Plugins enabled: 10
1: Code Editor Shortcuts v1.14.0
2: Tasks v7.17.0
3: Dataview v0.5.67
4: Outliner v4.8.1
5: Whisper v1.5.5
6: Settings Search v1.3.10
7: Spaced Repetition v1.13.2
8: Fatebook Predictions v1.0.0
9: Fullscreen mode plugin v0.1.2
10: Natural Language Dates v0.6.2
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”.