Unable to use Obsidian on a computer that requires Administrative Rights on Windows. This has been the case since 0.9, and it’s been a prior request to make a portable app release of it.
Not sure if this was a regression or necessary for Windows in future plans (if the roadmap is “install once, allow for any user” then it makes sense) as Linux the app appears to work just fine in AppImage/Fuse.
Proposed solution
A possible fix would be allowing installation without Administrator Rights, in other words, installing in “user mode” as similar Electron apps permit like Discord. The popular route for this would be submitting the app to Windows Store as a package, but I imagine while in beta this isn’t desirable yet.
Current workaround (optional)
To get around this, I’ve been using a VM with Ubuntu.
Thanks for posting this - I really want to run Obsidian, but have hit a barrier.
I have admin rights on my computer, but apparently the packaging of the app violates my workplace’s group policy (something about writing to and running from the appdata folder - I’ll confess I don’t fully understand).
It’s strange because I can install other apps like Roam (I believe Roam and Obsidian are both electron apps, but maybe I’m missing some obvious difference between apps and how they install/run).
Any thoughts on what would need to change about Obsidian to make it more palatable.