Obsidian notes modified on Android sometimes not updated to desktop - and can get destructively overwritten

[dipshit]

Pasting from my original github issue: github dot com/syncthing/syncthing-android/issues/1987

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I’ve googled for a while, and I’m not sure what to make of this, whether anyone else has had this issue, or what might be the cause. Android filesystem? Permissions? Ugh, help me out here!

https://i.imgur.com/Hzb9XOI.png

I have a desktop and two Android phones - one phone is always turned on at home, in order to sync stuff when either my desktop or real phone might be turned off. I set it up as a sort of “server”, mainly just to avoid syncthing conflicts.

However, it still didn’t help with this - if I’ve modified a markdown/Obsidian file on Android, sometimes it doesn’t get updated on desktop, until I modify it on android again later.

I think this might be happening because the file was modified while my desktop was off, and after turning my desktop on, the file would need yet another modification from Android in order for the desktop recognize it.

However, since I have an always-on phone “server”, shouldn’t it have detected the changes while the desktop was off? I’ll have to check since I’m not sure whether:

• such files gets updated between the two android phones, but are ignored by desktop
• such files are ignored by both the desktop and the always-on phone

The two times I noticed this happening, I tried restarting syncthing on all the devices, but this didn’t register/rescan the changed files.

I’ll also have to check whether making a change to the outdated unsynced desktop file would overwrite the phone file. Illustrating that might be easier than explaining:

https://i.imgur.com/jdevw7E.png

If this does happen, I hope I haven’t lost any Obsidian information because of it yet.

Edit: tested it out, and yes, it does happen - potentially destructive.

Version Information

App Version: v1.23.6
Syncthing Version: v1.23.6 (Android, Syncthing-Fork); v1.25.0 (Windows) (still an issue on v1.27.0)
Android Version: LineageOS 18.1, rooted with Magisk

[tomasz86]

Before anything else, please make sure you’re running the newest version of Syncthing everywhere, as currently yours seem quite outdated, especially the one on Android.

Whether the PC is on or off should have no impact on Syncthing which runs on the phone. Can you check whether the specific file’s modification date actually changes after you edit it in Obsidian? Also, after making the changes, please check in the Web GUI (available via the left slide-out menu in the Syncthing app) for the latest rescan date in the affected folder. It should be very recent if Syncthing has actually been able to detect the modifications, which by default takes place after 10s after modifying the files.

I assume here that you’re running Syncthing with all default settings, which means file watching enabled, etc. If not, please provide screenshots showing your configuration.