Stuck Task Loading... in the presence of specific markdown file, only on mobile

[ballantony]

Please check that this issue hasn't been reported before.

• [X] I searched previous Bug Reports didn't find any similar reports.

Expected Behavior

```tasks
not done
```

should produce a list of tasks not done on the iOS and iPad clients, just like it does on the Windows, Linux and MacOs clients

Current behaviour

Tasks Loading... appears and doesn't go away.

Steps to reproduce

This bug is specific to one specific vault of mine. I couldn't reproduce it on other vaults. I could on copies of this vault.

Which Operating Systems are you using?

• [ ] Android
• [X] iPhone/iPad
• [ ] Linux
• [ ] macOS
• [ ] Windows

Obsidian Version

1.4.6

Tasks Plugin Version

3.10.0

Checks

• [X] I have tried it with all other plugins disabled and the error still occurs

Possible solution

The bug seems to occur when a large PowerPoint file exists in a folder. When the file is removed everything works fine. Sorry, I can't attach the file as it contains confidential material.

[claremacrae]

Thanks for logging this.

I totally understand that you cannot attach the file.

But an indication of the size of the file would really help, so we know how you define Large.

Also, please could you try to give us a way that reproduces the issue for you and that you can share:

• try to create a similarly sized PowerPoint file with non-private data
• Confirm that it still reproduces the problem in your vault - or better still, I a new vault with only this file and Tasks enabled
• Then compress that file and attach it here?

[claremacrae]

Have you tried the problem vault on Desktop? What happens?

[claremacrae]

For the record, this is a related post from the same author: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/tasks-loading/61521

[ballantony]

It works fine on Desktop. It's only on mobile it doesn't work.

On 13 Jun 2023, at 21:49, Clare Macrae @.***> wrote:

Have you tried the problem vault on Desktop? What happens?

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[claremacrae]

Please:

• run the Show Debug Info command in Obsidian on the device that has the problem
• Click the Copy button
• paste the info in here as plain text with ~~~ lines before and after, to format as plain text.

[ballantony]

Please:

run the Show Debug Info command in Obsidian on the device that has the problem
Click the Copy button
paste the info in here as plain text with ~~~ lines before and after, to format as plain text.


—Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[claremacrae]

Thanks, but unfortunately the email client (or something) has wrapped all the lines, making it unreadable.

Please instead paste it directly in here, so the line endings are preserved.

[ballantony]

Good news! It wasn't the PowerPoint file as I suspected. The problem is with the file 6 29th March 2023.md. I suspect it's the non printing characters you'll see in the attached zip.

I've recently moved a lot of files from Evernote to Obsidian, mainly using Yarle, and I've cleaned them up with some elisp on emacs. There are a few strange characters knocking about still.

Anyway, the zip file has a minimal vault with only Task enabled. It works fine on the desktop, it can't be viewed on my iPhone.

taskbug.zip

[claremacrae]

Hi @ballantony That is excellent news. Thank you. I thought I had fixed all cases of problem cases - having a file to experiment with is really valuable.

[claremacrae]

Do I understand correctly that this file works on Desktop and not on mobile? That's really odd.

[ballantony]

Yes, Desktop not mobile.

Desktop

[ballantony]

Mobile

[maksim77]

It's weird. I downloaded the vault (archive above) and everything opened correctly on my phone (iCloud sync). But my personal vault still doesn't load tasks.

[ballantony]

iCloud Sync? Interesting. I'm using Obsidian. I wonder if that's a factor. Sent from my iPhoneOn 16 Jun 2023, at 09:29, Maksim Syomochkin @.***> wrote: It's weird. I downloaded the vault (archive above) and everything opened correctly on my phone (iCloud sync). But my personal vault still doesn't load tasks.

—Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: @.***>

[maksim77]

iCloud Sync?

i mean sync over icloud. I dont use obsidian sync

[claremacrae]

Good news! It wasn't the PowerPoint file as I suspected. The problem is with the file 6 29th March 2023.md. I suspect it's the non printing characters you'll see in the attached zip.

I've recently moved a lot of files from Evernote to Obsidian, mainly using Yarle, and I've cleaned them up with some elisp on emacs. There are a few strange characters knocking about still.

Anyway, the zip file has a minimal vault with only Task enabled. It works fine on the desktop, it can't be viewed on my iPhone.

taskbug.zip

• I got the test vault to my iPad via Obsidian Sync, and could then see the problem (stuck Loading Tasks...)
• On Mac I then edited the characters in question out of the Mar 29 file
• And the search worked on iPad
• I then did Undo on Mac to bring the characters
• And from that point on, I was unable to get the search to fail on iPad

I've spent more than an hour on this (as figuring out getting the vault open on iPad took a while) and made no progress. I will pick it up again when I have more time.

[bartwronski]

Hi, I am a new Obsidian and Tasks user and I believe I have the same bug. I get stuck on "Loading Tasks ...", on iOS only. :( On desktop it works. Since I am a new user, I have literally only a single task added.

I imported my data from Evernote (~thousand notes). Do you have some suggestions how to find the offending file?

[ballantony]

Hi Bart

The way I did it was to make a copy of the vault, then did a sort of binary search. As I keep things in folders, I deleted half the folders and checked if the task was working. I repeated that until I found the culprit.

It was a pain, but it didn't take me that long, about twenty minutes. I had about 2500 notes at the time

Good luck!

Tony

On 5 Aug 2023, at 00:25, Bart Wronski @.***> wrote:

Hi, I am a new Obsidian and Tasks user and I believe I have the same bug. I get stuck on "Loading Tasks ...", on iOS only. :( On desktop it works. Since I am a new user, I have literally only a single task added.

I imported my data from Evernote (~thousand notes). Do you have some suggestions how to find the offending file?

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/obsidian-tasks-group/obsidian-tasks/issues/2042#issuecomment-1666270009, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAVU6BB2AAXBCK5QXV6BWMDXTWAGRANCNFSM6AAAAAAZFNET3A. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.

[ballantony]

Hi, I am a new Obsidian and Tasks user and I believe I have the same bug. I get stuck on "Loading Tasks ...", on iOS only. :( On desktop it works. Since I am a new user, I have literally only a single task added.

I imported my data from Evernote (~thousand notes). Do you have some suggestions how to find the offending file?

Hi @bartwronski ... just occurred to me that a quick way might to be search for the character which I believe was causing me the problem:

Char: Â (194, #o302, #xc2, file #xC2)

I imported my files from Evernote too, via Yarle. If you search for those characters and delete them it might be a workaround. It might help @claremacrae if it does turn out to be the case

Tony

[claremacrae]

Hi, I am a new Obsidian and Tasks user and I believe I have the same bug. I get stuck on "Loading Tasks ...", on iOS only. :( On desktop it works. Since I am a new user, I have literally only a single task added.

I imported my data from Evernote (~thousand notes). Do you have some suggestions how to find the offending file?

@bartwronski

Can you try:

1. closing the file that contains the query that gets stuck at loading
2. Force-quit Obsidian
3. Restart Obidian
4. Give it a few minutes and then try opening that note again?

[bartwronski]

I was able to find the offending file through bisection - it was some snipped HTML that got weirdly converted by Evernote and contained a ton of weird characters. I was trying to read it with Python as UTF-8 failed on the wrong escape sentences.

However, the problem persisted despite many attempts of restarting and was iOS only (not occurring on desktop), suggesting some problem with the Tasks implementations.

[claremacrae]

I'm glad you found the answer @bartwronski - I'm not sure what I can do with that information though.

[bartwronski]

I think from the user's perspective, the desirable outcome would be either:

• Do not stop parsing tasks across the whole Vault on a single misformatted note,
• If not possible due to technical reasons, then simply inform the user in which note the error occurred instead of hanging on "Tasks Loading..."; maybe even with a timeout.

I don't know anything about the code internals of Obsidian and its plug-ins, so I don't know how easy/feasible those are.

[claremacrae]

I think from the user's perspective, the desirable outcome would be either:

• Do not stop parsing tasks across the whole Vault on a single misformatted note,
• If not possible due to technical reasons, then simply inform the user in which note the error occurred instead of hanging on "Tasks Loading..."; maybe even with a timeout.

We agree!

Yes, I totally agree! And where people have given concrete example files in the past, I've already made a couple of previous changes to Tasks already that have done the first of those.

These have made a difference, as the rate at which 'Stuck on loading tasks' bug reports come in has dropped significantly.

I also agree that there is still an issue in Tasks somewhere in the code, as there have been perhaps 2 or 3 reports since the last improvement.

I need data though...

it was some snipped HTML that got weirdly converted by Evernote and contained a ton of weird characters.

The above is not concrete enough for me to do anything with, to try to reproduce the problem.

Sorry, I should have been more specific. Perhaps reading these may help:

• https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Support+and+Help/Report+a+Bug#Give+us+text+to+copy
• https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Support+and+Help/Report+a+Bug#Give+us+your+minimal+vault

Please try to create a minimal vault that reproduces the problem reliably.

And then zip it, upload it here, and I will be able to find some time to make further improvements.

[bartwronski]

Ah, sorry, I see your point. Here is the offending note - it's enough for it to be present in the vault for the iOS version to get stuck - the Desktop/Windows version works fine.

The_LA_Bucket_List-34_Things_to_Do_Before_You_Die.md

[claremacrae]

Ah, sorry, I see your point. Here is the offending note ...

Thank you. In the iOS vault where you observe the problem, please also:

1. run the command Show debug info
2. Click the Copy to clipboard button
3. Paste the results here, as a text block.

[bartwronski]

> SYSTEM INFO:
	Operating system: ios 16.5.1 (Apple iPhone)
	Obsidian version: 1.4.6 (105)
	API version: v1.3.5
	Login status: logged in
	Catalyst license: none
	Live preview: on
	Legacy editor: off
	Base theme: light
	Community theme: none
	Snippets enabled: 0
	Restricted mode: off
	Plugins installed: 6
	Plugins enabled: 4
		1: Kanban v1.5.3
		2: Calendar v1.5.10
		3: Tasks v4.4.0
		4: Editor Syntax Highlight v0.1.3

[claremacrae]

@bartwronski

About force-quitting on your machine

When your vault is stuck and the query is showing Loading tasks..., what happens when:

• You force-quit Obsidian
• And then reload it

Does it then load OK?

What I have found

Asking because I have just twice been able to reproduce the problem, with just these two files in my vault:

Tasks.md

# Tasks

- [ ] Task 1
- [ ] Task 2
- [ ] Task 3
- [ ] Task 4
- [ ] Task 5

Tasks Search.md

# Tasks Search

```tasks
group by filename
group by heading
```

I was experimenting with copying this simple file in and out of the vault on another machine. In both cases, when I force-quit Obsidian on iPhone, and started again, the query loaded its results fine.

And I was then unable to reproduce the problem.

Are you syncing?

Also, are you using Obsidian Sync?

Using your file

Also, when adding your file, it once gave me stuck loading tasks...

And it also worked multiple times. So it doesn't look like there is anything specific about your file.

Still need a numbered set of repro steps that consistenly fails

This is the same situation as with other recent occurrences of this issue.

There is no stable reproduction, and force-quitting to restart Obsidian seems to fix the problem.

If I am to be able to anything with this, I will need a series of numbered steps that reliably reproduces the problem.

Workaround

Otherwise, the best I can suggest is to:

1. allow Obsidian Sync to finish syncing
2. force-quit Obsidian
3. Restart obsidian and the results will probably display fine.

[bartwronski]

Yes, I used Obsidian Sync, which has finished syncing. I tried force-quitting, I even have restarted my iPhone, and it hangs. One more note - to reproduce it, I don't need to have any tasks added! Just the presence of this file causes a note using Tasks (single line, "not done") to hang.

[claremacrae]

Yes, I used Obsidian Sync, which has finished syncing. I tried force-quitting, I even have restarted my iPhone, and it hangs.

Thanks.

One more note - to reproduce it, I don't need to have any tasks added! Just the presence of this file causes a note using Tasks (single line, "not done") to hang.

I don't doubt that at all. Unfortunately that's not currently the case for me.

Can you manage without that file loaded, or try simplifying it, as a workaround?