Steps to reproduce
- On a blank vault, install community plugins Git, Kanban, Chronos and QuickAdd.
- Restart the computer.
- Start Obsidian.
- Notice the long loading time (>7s).
Did you follow the troubleshooting guide?
Yes.
Expected result
The loading time for these 4 plugins didn’t use to be this high. Something off is going on with latest Obsidian versions.
Please note that if closing/restarting Obsidian, then the launch time is normal :
Actual result
Environment
SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: 1.12.7
Installer version: 1.12.7
Operating system: Windows 11 Home 10.0.26200
Login status: not logged in
Language: en
Insider build toggle: off
Live preview: on
Base theme: adapt to system
Community theme: none
Snippets enabled: 0
Restricted mode: off
Plugins installed: 4
Plugins enabled: 4
1: Kanban v2.0.51
2: Chronos Timeline v3.6.3
3: QuickAdd v2.12.0
4: Git v2.38.2
RECOMMENDATIONS:
Community plugins: for bugs, please first try updating all your plugins to latest. If still not fixed, please try to make the issue happen in the Sandbox Vault or disable community plugins.
Additional information
For investigation, I tried the following :
- Disabling Internet didn’t solve this issue, so it’s probably unrelated.
I can’t reproduce this and I don’t think we have changed anything recently around this.
Where is your vault stored? HDD or SSD? over the network?
Are you using some third party sync system?
I have noticed the same thing, except it not recent.
The first launch always takes long for me (using Obsidian since 2024). I just assumed that’s normal behaviour.
I’m on HDD and using 3rd party sync. But I there’s no difference based on different or no syncing options.
First launch
Obsidian start-up time breakdown
Obsidian version: 1.12.7
Installer version: 1.12.7
Operating system: Windows 10 Home 10.0.19045
- Total startup time: 19,633ms
- Initialization: 1,207ms
- Vault (829 files): 602ms
- Workspace (7 tabs, 4 deferred): 897ms
- Core plugins: 166ms
- Community plugins (25 active): 16,762ms
- Gemini Scribe (4.8.0): 3,776ms
- AnyBlock Min (3.4.3): 3,517ms
- Plugin Update Tracker (1.7.0): 1,776ms
- Custom Attachment Location (10.3.4): 1,408ms
- Note Toolbar (1.30.19): 904ms
- Remotely Save (0.5.25): 571ms
- Excalidraw (2.22.3): 557ms
- Templater (2.20.4): 503ms
- Meta Bind (1.4.10): 457ms
- Iconize (2.14.7): 386ms
- Style Settings (1.0.9): 371ms
- Easy Typing (6.0.7): 333ms
- Tag Wrangler (0.6.4): 262ms
- Various Complements (11.3.0): 260ms
- Extended Markdown Syntax (2.0.11): 227ms
- Global Search and Replace (0.5.0): 193ms
- Modal forms (1.65.1): 190ms
- BRAT (2.0.4): 150ms
- Unicode Search (0.7.3): 146ms
- Fleeting Notes Sync (0.6.3): 133ms
- floating toc (2.7.1): 79ms
- Badges (1.1.0): 50ms
- Settings Search (1.3.10): 36ms
- Sheets Basic (1.0.0): 32ms
- Legacy vault switcher (1.0.0): 30ms
Second launch
Obsidian start-up time breakdown
Obsidian version: 1.12.7
Installer version: 1.12.7
Operating system: Windows 10 Home 10.0.19045
- Total startup time: 3,420ms
- Initialization: 386ms
- Vault (829 files): 291ms
- Workspace (7 tabs, 4 deferred): 777ms
- Core plugins: 59ms
- Community plugins (25 active): 1,908ms
- Excalidraw (2.22.3): 429ms
- Remotely Save (0.5.25): 350ms
- Gemini Scribe (4.8.0): 180ms
- Plugin Update Tracker (1.7.0): 109ms
- Custom Attachment Location (10.3.4): 107ms
- Meta Bind (1.4.10): 101ms
- AnyBlock Min (3.4.3): 94ms
- Iconize (2.14.7): 83ms
- Easy Typing (6.0.7): 51ms
- Modal forms (1.65.1): 39ms
- Note Toolbar (1.30.19): 37ms
- Unicode Search (0.7.3): 37ms
- Fleeting Notes Sync (0.6.3): 35ms
- Global Search and Replace (0.5.0): 35ms
- Templater (2.20.4): 29ms
- Various Complements (11.3.0): 23ms
- Style Settings (1.0.9): 18ms
- Extended Markdown Syntax (2.0.11): 18ms
- Tag Wrangler (0.6.4): 17ms
- BRAT (2.0.4): 13ms
- floating toc (2.7.1): 12ms
- Settings Search (1.3.10): 7ms
- Sheets Basic (1.0.0): 3ms
- Legacy vault switcher (1.0.0): 3ms
- Badges (1.1.0): 3ms
@dmantisk In your case, the difference if explainable with the HDD. The first time that you run Obsidian, you read it from hard drive, the second time the OS uses cached copies in RAM.
Thanks for your reply @WhiteNoise.
Oh that’s odd. Could you please confirm you get less than 7s loading time with these 4 plugins installed on a new blank vault, after rebooting your computer, on Windows 11 ? What loading time do you get, so that I know what to aim for ?
A few other people seem to be mentioning this issue on the Kanban plugin Github page : https://github.com/obsidian-community/obsidian-kanban/issues/1209
The new blank vault is on a SSD, located in C:\Users\[USERNAME]\Documents\Obsidian. It’s not over the network, and for this new blank vault, I’m not using a third party sync system.
For my main vault, I’m using SyncThing to sync to my iPad and to my Android phone.
If I turn off internet, I still get that long loading time after rebooting PC, so issue is probably unrelated to internet.
A few hypothesis I’m going to check this afternoon :
- Issue with Windows Defender antivirus ?
- Issue with Obsidian cache ? (is there some cache I could delete without data loss ?)
- Issue with
C:\Users\[USERNAME]\Documents path ?
@WhiteNoise : So I think I’ve identified the root cause of this issue.
When “Real time protection” is turned off in Windows Defender, Obsidian vault boots instantly after a PC boot/reboot.
No idea if it’s a change recently introduced by Windows, anyway I don’t remember having such slow loading time in Obsidian before.
I’ve tested on my main vault, and boot time goes from 13s to less than 1s after a PC boot/reboot after disabling real-time protection in Windows Defender.
Possible solution :
- Add Obsidian vault to exclusions list of Windows Defender (which probably isn’t a good idea at all).
If you have other ideas, feel free to share.
Good to have confirmation, thank you.
I can confirm that Windows Defender is causing longer startup time on cold boot. It seems it is scanning the plugins more thoroughly.
Nice, thanks for your confirmation.
Is there any hope we can find a solution other than adding Obsidian vault to Windows Defender exclusions (which probably isn’t recommended / safe) ?
Oh, wow. This started happening a week or so ago for me. When Obsidian starts, it’d say
Plugin “fix-require-modules” is taking long to load.
With nothing to say why in the DevTools console… So, I was stressing about it potentially happening due to one of my CodeScript Toolkit scripts, doing a bunch of changes to try and make it better…
Well, I just added my Obsidian folder to Windows Defender’s exclusions and it no longer happens. I’m not going to leave it like that, but it at least puts my mind at ease that it’s Windows shenanigans and not an issue with my Obsidian setup itself.
