I made a fresh install of Ubuntu 26.04 beta and I had Obsidian snap.
The first time, Obsidian starts and works like usual. But it’s the first and last time.
After that, it doesn’t want to start anymore ! I tried several time with a new test user : same issue.
On GitHub, I found the .deb package and this one works once installed.
So a problem with the snap ! (I tried as well with the AppImage : same problem, it doesn’t start)
Thanks.
Could you launch obsidian from the terminal and paste the output?
As for the AppImage, some of them still rely on the libfuse2 package which doesn’t ship by default as it is deprecated. That might be why it doesn’t launch.
I’m also experiencing this issue with the Obsidian snap.
Oddly running it from the command line gives no logs at all and there are no denials in the journal I can see.
What does always seem to work is running it with /snap/obsidian/current/obsidian to get around the confinement, but the lack of denials in the logs is then even more confusing.
This was working fine on 24.04 and 25.10.
(The AppImage does work for me…)
In case helpful; with the help of ChatGPT, I narrowed down a reproducible bypass and a small test matrix to explore the Ubuntu 26.04 Obsidian snap launch failure.
It shows that it is possible to launch the snap of Obsidian in Ubuntu 26.04, and what seems to be preventing this.
I would emphasise that the below is meant to provide diagnostic info; and is not in itself a fix.
The key result is:
- normal snap launch fails
- manually running the snap desktop helper chain fails
- the Obsidian binary is functional when invoked directly inside a snap run --shell inspection shell ( again ; this is a diagnostic finding, not a workaround).
Using `snap run --shell` drops one into an interactive debug shell inside the snap environment — it's not a launch path one would or should use normally. The point of tests B and C is to prove the binary is healthy, which by elimination points the finger at the launcher/helper chain as the broken component.
A — clean shell + normal snap launch: fails
bash --noprofile --norc <<'EOF'
snap run obsidian
echo "exit=$?"
EOF
B — clean shell + snap shell + direct executable + no sandbox: works
bash --noprofile --norc <<'EOF'
snap run --shell obsidian <<'SNAPEOF'
exec "$SNAP/obsidian" \
--no-sandbox \
--enable-logging
SNAPEOF
EOF
C — clean shell + snap shell + direct executable + sandbox enabled + clean profile: works
bash --noprofile --norc <<'EOF'
snap run --shell obsidian <<'SNAPEOF'
tmp_profile="$(mktemp -d -t obsidian-snap-profile.XXXXXX)"
echo "Using temporary profile: $tmp_profile" >&2
exec "$SNAP/obsidian" \
--enable-logging \
--user-data-dir="$tmp_profile"
SNAPEOF
EOF
D — clean shell + full snap desktop helper chain + clean profile + no sandbox: fails
bash --noprofile --norc <<'EOF'
snap run --shell obsidian <<'SNAPEOF'
tmp_profile="$(mktemp -d -t obsidian-snap-profile.XXXXXX)"
echo "Using temporary profile: $tmp_profile" >&2
bash -x "$SNAP/desktop-init.sh" \
"$SNAP/desktop-common.sh" \
"$SNAP/desktop-gnome-specific.sh" \
"$SNAP/obsidian" \
--no-sandbox \
--enable-logging \
--user-data-dir="$tmp_profile"
echo "exit=$?"
SNAPEOF
EOF
The important comparison is B/C versus A/D.
B and C bypass the desktop helper chain and work.
A and D use the desktop helper/launcher chain and fail.
This suggests that the fault lies in the setup scripts that the snap runs automatically before it ever reaches the Obsidian binary — these scripts prepare the desktop environment (fonts, themes, display settings) and are what breaks on Ubuntu 26.04, not Obsidian itself.
That said as a temporary (per-session, via shell): workaround while waiting for the issue to be resolved properly: tests B and C above show you can launch Obsidian by entering the snap shell and calling the binary directly. This works but must be repeated every time — it is not a persistent fix.
About Appimage, install libfuse2 has no effect.
If I launch the appimage in a terminal, I get:
jpaul@VBox-26:~$ ‘/home/jpaul/Téléchargements/Obsidian-1.12.7.AppImage’ [5980:0504/174139.997374:FATAL:sandbox/linux/suid/client/setuid_sandbox_host.cc:166] The SUID sandbox helper binary was found, but is not configured correctly. Rather than run without sandboxing I’m aborting now. You need to make sure that /tmp/.mount_Obsidipcce9A/chrome-sandbox is owned by root and has mode 4755. Trappe pour point d’arrêt et de trace (core dumped) ‘/home/jpaul/Téléchargements/Obsidian-1.12.7.AppImage’
If it can help…
@seb128 kindly dug into this and I posted the results over on the Obsidian Discourse:
https://forum.obsidian.md/t/obsidian-snap-doesnt-start-open-with-ubuntu-26-04/113569/28?u=jnsgruk