Unable to turn any community plugins on in a new vault

Help
1

What I’m trying to do

Turn a any community plugin on after successfully installing it into a newly-created vault. All community plugins that I’ve installed today (2025-05-01) display a “failed to load” notification when I attempt to turn them on. They install successfully; they just won’t activate. [Edit to indicate that the error applies to newly-installed community plugins on any vault rather than just community plugins on a new vault.]

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Current version: v1.8.10
(Installer version: v1.8.10)
Obsidian is up to date!

Things I have tried

  • Exiting and reopening Obsidian
  • Uninstall/reinstall plugins
  • Creating a new vault in a desktop-only folder (not Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.)
  • Trying different community plugins
  • Confirming that I can still activate and deactivate plugins on my preexisting vaults
  • Updating the Obsidian installer
  • Confirming that I can still activate and deactivate core plugins
  • Reboot my laptop
  • [Edit: Adding a new plugin to an existing vault. It will not activate.]
2

Worked out that this is not an issue with Obsidian but with a selective company firewall. I’m leaving the thread up in case someone else comes across a similar issue. The firewall allowed Obsidian to collect a plugin’s manifest.json but not any other plugin files. The resulting plugin therefore existed, but in an incomplete state.

To check whether this causes your “failed to load” plugin issue, open your vault’s .obsidian/plugins/[plugin_name] folder. A complete plugin install should include, at a minimum, the files main.js and manifest.json. If any plugin files are missing and you want further confirmation this is a firewall problem, go to the plugin’s page on GitHub and open the latest Release page (link in the right-hand sidebar). Attempt to open or download the missing file(s). If you are blocked by a firewall, there’s your problem. (Deep, disappointed sigh.)

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