Global search becomes unusable with large number of encrypted notes on mobile

[Vlod-github]

Hello,

I’m experiencing a serious performance issue when using obsidian-gpgCrypt with a large number of encrypted notes, especially on mobile devices.

Context

• I have 2000+ notes, all encrypted using gpgCrypt
• Obsidian version: 1.9.12
• gpgCrypt version: 0.6.0
• Platform: mobile (Android)

Problem

After encrypting all notes, the global search across the vault becomes practically unusable on mobile.

When I start a search:

• Search takes more than 5 minutes
• I stopped waiting before it finished
• Effectively, built-in search over all notes does not work anymore

Expected behavior

Search should either:

• Work in a reasonable amount of time, or
• Have some optimization, limitation, or configuration options for encrypted notes (especially on mobile)

Is this a known limitation of the plugin?

[Vlod-github]

To encrypt my vault, I used a custom Bash script that recursively encrypts all .md files in place using gpg --armor

Example usage

./encrypt_vault.sh 6E633C41B58AFEBCC38712D4F9350B8324AA8D51 /path/to/vault

#!/bin/bash

# Check arguments
if [ $# -lt 1 ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 <KEYID> [FOLDER]"
    echo "  <KEYID>     : GPG key ID used for encryption (required)"
    echo "  [FOLDER]    : Path to the vault folder (default: current directory)"
    exit 1
fi

KEYID="$1"
FOLDER="${2:-.}"

# Check if folder exists
if [ ! -d "$FOLDER" ]; then
    echo "Error: Folder '$FOLDER' does not exist."
    exit 1
fi

echo "Using KEYID: $KEYID"
echo "Folder to encrypt: $FOLDER"
echo "Starting recursive encryption of all .md files..."

# Function to encrypt a single file
encrypt_file() {
    local file="$1"
    local tmpfile="${file}.tmp.gpg"
    
    # Check if the file is already encrypted
    if grep -q -- "-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----" "$file" 2>/dev/null; then
        echo "File $file is already encrypted, skipping."
        return
    fi
    
    # echo "Encrypting $file..."
    
    # Encrypt in armored format
    if gpg --armor --encrypt --recipient "$KEYID" --output "$tmpfile" "$file"; then
        mv "$tmpfile" "$file"
        echo "✓ $file encrypted."
    else
        echo "✗ Encryption failed for $file. Removing tmp file."
        rm -f "$tmpfile"
    fi
}

# Change to the target folder
cd "$FOLDER" || { echo "Error: Failed to change directory to $FOLDER"; exit 1; }

# Recursively find all .md files and encrypt them
export -f encrypt_file
export KEYID

find . -name "*.md" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} bash -c 'encrypt_file "$@"' _ {}

echo "Done! Check files in $FOLDER for '-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----'."

[tejado]

@Vlod-github
thanks a lot - I never tested this with so many encrypted files. Thats a great case to optimize the plugin.
Is only the search impacted or also other functions? Can you confirm that the search works wellon so many files, when they are unencrypted?
Do you experience the same issue on desktop?

I will need to reproduce that case.
If you have the possibility to attach an debugger to Obsidian on mobile, I would appreciate if you can provide the debug log.

[Vlod-github]

@tejado
I prepared a reproducible test case.

Reproduction

• Generated 2000 markdown files
• Created two mirror vaults:
  • Plain (unencrypted)
  • Fully GPG-encrypted (all .md files)
• GPG passphrase: 123
• Structure and content are identical

Results

• Search query: week
• Plain vault: completes in a few seconds
• Encrypted vault: does not finish within 2 minutes
• Issue is reproducible on both desktop and mobile (not mobile-only)

Other impacted functionality

I also tested obsidian-full-calendar as an example — it does not work with encrypted notes at all.

This suggests that plugins which read note contents directly break when notes are encrypted.

TestObs_v2.zip