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MawKKe/obsidian-stuck-blank-screen-at-startup.md

Created June 14, 2025 21:21
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Obsidian stuck on blank screen at startup
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obsidian-stuck-blank-screen-at-startup.md

Topic

Problem launching Obsidian.md note taking app

2025-06-15

Problem / observation

Start Obsidian, but instead of getting the usual app view, the window gets stuck in blank screen.

Nothing else happens, no errors or anything.

Investigation

Googling the issue, people in various forums suggest the problem is in one or more buggy community plugins.

So: I need to disable community plugin(s) somehow.

Fix

I stumbled upon this "fix" accidentally:

  • Close Obsidian
  • Find the following file: <vault-folder>/.obsidian/community-plugins.json
  • Open it in a text editor. You should see a JSON array on with tokens, like ["plugin-name1", "plugin-name2", ...]
  • Remove all of the elements in the JSON object. You should be be left with []
  • Save the file.
  • Re-open Obsidian

now the app should open normally.

Closing thoughts

The edit above merely disabled the plugins. You can re-enable them from the settings. But you problably want to upgrade all of the versions and try to relaunch. If you hit problems, you know how to disable the plugins again. And through process of elimination, perhaps you can isolate the problematic plugin and get rid of it completely.

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