Title: Obsidian Helper (Renderer) crashes immediately on macOS 26.4.1 Apple Silicon M1 Pro — all versions, all flags

Bug graveyard
1

Environment:

  • macOS 26.4.1 (25E253)

  • Hardware: MacBook Pro M1 Pro

  • Obsidian versions tested: 1.12.7 (insider), 1.12.7 (stable), 1.9.14

  • Vault: local only, no community plugins

Symptom:

Obsidian loads briefly (menu bar appears, window frame visible), then the window goes completely blank within seconds. App shell stays alive but the

renderer is dead. Happens on every launch, including with a brand new empty vault.

Crash type:

Obsidian Helper (Renderer) crashes with EXC_BREAKPOINT / SIGTRAP in CrRendererMain / V8 (v8::String::NewFromOneByte). Crash reports in

~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/.

Launch flags tried — none resolved it:

  • –disable-gpu

  • –no-sandbox --no-zygote

  • –js-flags=“–jitless”

  • –js-flags=“–jitless --disable-v8-idle-tasks” --disable-v8-idle-tasks --no-sandbox

Notes:

  • Same vault works perfectly on macOS (different version) on M3 Mac

  • Logseq (also Electron) runs fine on this machine

  • No MDM profiles, no third-party security tools

  • Related upstream Electron bug: #49522

2

This looks like an AI generated bug report.

Download and install Obsidian from https://obsidian.md and we can go from there.

3

oh that has been done. layers of troubleshooting with ai assisting. screen goes blank after some time. GPU hardware acceleration - goes blank after 10 seconds. turning it off - goes blank after about a minute. same either way. what do you need?

4

download and reinstall obsidian from the website.
Open only the sandboxvault. copy and paste here the output of “show debug info” command
make a screen recording of this happening

5

thank you, what is the sandbox vault? i’ve installed the latest version, etc

6

read this

7

so when i search for M1 Mac and nothing comes up then I know it is a new bug

I have this setup on my other mac with M3 and there is no issue.

so this bug has not been identified likely?

8

Here’s where I’m at:

  • Latest Obsidian installed fresh from obsidian.md ✓

  • Files stored locally (not iCloud) ✓

  • No community plugins installed (no plugins folder exists in .obsidian/) ✓

  • No community theme in use ✓

The issue: The renderer crashes before any UI interaction is possible. The window goes blank within seconds of launch. I cannot open Settings, the command

palette, or the sandbox vault from inside the app.

Sandbox equivalent already tested: I created a completely empty test vault from scratch (mkdir ~/Desktop/TestVault) and launched Obsidian pointing to it.

Same crash — blank screen immediately. This rules out any vault-specific content, plugins, or themes.

Crash signature: Obsidian Helper (Renderer) — EXC_BREAKPOINT / SIGTRAP in CrRendererMain / V8. Crash logs in ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/. Happy to

attach one if that helps.

Launch flags tested: --disable-gpu, --no-sandbox, --no-zygote, --js-flags=“–jitless” — none resolved it.

Environment: macOS 26.4.1, MacBook Pro M1 Pro.

9

So it seems an issue with that mac or the macOS user account.

Jump into another user account (or create a test one), and try launching Obsidian in there.

10

okay so i have logged in as a guest, and created a new vault and that works.

11

Hello!

I got it resolved, i had Logseq also active and it was doing something to my vault, messing it up. Your questions helped me dig further and so thank you! Pelase close this off