Android Markdown Editor no longer allowing edits

Support
1

Operating system

Android

Joplin version

3.5.8

Editor

Markdown Editor

What issue do you have?

This feels like something that absolutely must be my fault but I can't figure out why.

The Markdown Editor no longer allows edits of any kind. If I open a note and try to edit it, I get a keyboard and a cursor; if I push buttons on the keyboard, the phone does its standard mini keyboard vibrate, but nothing is entered in the note. All notes appear to be read-only for some reason, including a new note I made just to test this.

If I switch to the Rich Text Editor, I can edit things . . . but then the "back" button doesn't work, so there's no longer any way to leave the note, even if I switch back to Markdown. Actually, I can't get the back button to work at all anymore even if I don't mess with editor settings. I think that's new.

Also, this is all on my wife's phone. My phone, which is also Android 3.5.8, works fine. I cannot tell what's different about my wife's phone.

Any idea what to test?

2

What version of Android is your wife’s phone? It potentially may be an issue on an older version of Android

3

“System is up to date”, Android 16. Kept up to date pretty reliably.

Still happening, unfortunately.

4

Does she use any apps which use an accessibility service / device administrator access? Sometimes such apps can draw over other apps and cause issues, but that’s a longshot.

What is the phone model and is it stock Android with google play, or some other Android derivative like LineageOS?

5

Are there any Markdown editor-related error messages in configuration > tools > logs? To check:

  1. Open the logs screen (configuration > tools > logs).
  2. Click "Errors Only".
  3. Click the "search" button and type "MarkdownEditor".

For example, for me, the screen looks like this:

log screen: The search button is included in the header, near the kebab menu, the errors only button is near the bottom of the screen
log screen: The search button is included in the header, near the kebab menu, the errors only button is near the bottom of the screen1505Ă—1512 425 KB

Also helpful would be the WebView information listed in configuration > more information (near the bottom of the screen).

6

Alright, might have been a bit of a mistake on my part originally; it’s the Markdown Editor that does work, it’s the plain text editor that doesn’t work. However, both of them make it impossible to hit the “back” button, so I can’t actually get to “configuration” after triggering the issue. Thankfully it seems like at least some logs are persisted for a time:

Screenshot_20260207-113654
Screenshot_20260207-113654720Ă—1600 411 KB

As far as I can tell these aren’t marked read-only in any way; also, entirely new notes have the same behavior (meaning you can’t write anything at all). I can edit the same notes on my account.

Sorry I’m taking a while to respond, I obviously need my wife’s phone in order to do stuff and we’re both busy. But thanks for the help so far :slight_smile:

7

Screenshot_20260207-113719
Screenshot_20260207-113719720Ă—1600 150 KB

Forum limits me to one embedded item per post so here’s the second.

8

I take it you’re using Joplin Cloud or Joplin Server as the sync target? Those errors should only occur for a shared notebook, unless you’re somehow able to go to edit mode for a note or notebook which is in the trash

All notes appear to be read-only for some reason, including a new note I made just to test this.

When you say you created a note to test this, did you create the note on your wifes phone directly, or on your phone via a shares notebook and then sync it with hers?

Also, if you create a new notebook directly on your wife’s phone, and then create a new note within that notebook, does the issue still occur?

9

(this may be solved; skip to bottom)

Joplin Server, sorry, should’ve made that more clear. When I say “it works on my phone” I mean my account connected to the same Joplin Server still lets me edit stuff.

I meant “create note on my wife’s phone”, but just to test:

  • Created a note on my phone with text, synced, sycned on wife’s phone, verified note and text showed up, still can’t edit it (although . . . weirdly, the back button worked this time? Same backtrace in the logs though.)
  • Trying to create a new notebook says “Cannot add an item as a child of a read-only item”.
  • Tried to make a new note in the base folder, just in case that was the issue, and it wouldn’t even accept the “new note” buttonpress. I think this is just a Joplin bug that you can’t make notes in the base folder and there’s no good UI feedback if you try.
  • I was able to make a new base folder on my wife’s phone, then make a note in that, and edit it. So for whatever reason it’s just treating the shared folder as read-only, and providing no useful diagnosis when editing, and also breaking the back button for some reason. But I can’t figure out why it would be doing that; it’s shared from my account, but I don’t seem to have an option for whether it’s shared read-only or not.

That said . . . that gives me enough info to track it down to Shared notes not editable on Joplin Desktop 3.5.11 · Issue #14085 · laurent22/joplin · GitHub . And it looks like the server is out of date. So, updated server, and now it’s fine.

I do feel like there’s still multiple bugs here, which is that this needs vastly better feedback and the UI is still weirdly broken.

  • Trying to edit a read-only note should give you an error message, not just ignore you
  • Read-only notes should arguably have an indicator of some kind
  • Whatever was going on with the back button no longer working was an actual bug
  • The client should be able to say “server is out of date, go update” in some way

I can go file these as bugs/feature requests if there’s a reasonable place to do so.

But, works for me for now.

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