Advanced Debug Mode

An error thrown inside a callback or an await arrives in the console with most of its stack already gone: you get the frame that threw and almost nothing about who called it. Debugging a plugin in Obsidian then means guessing, or littering the code with logging until the path becomes obvious.

This plugin restores those frames. It keeps long stack traces across callback and async boundaries, turns off the timeouts that fire while you sit on a breakpoint, brings DevTools to the mobile app, and gives the debug namespaces a UI instead of hand-edited localStorage.

Demo vault

The documentation is a demo vault. Every feature has a note that explains what it does and why you would want it, with buttons that throw real errors so you can watch the traces yourself.

Start reading here — it is plain markdown, so it works on GitHub with nothing installed.

A copy of the vault ships with every release. You can access it via any of the following:

1. Running the Advanced Debug Mode: Open demo vault command.
2. Downloading advanced-debug-mode-demo-vault-<version>.zip (<version> is the release version) from the Releases.
3. Browsing its source in demo-vault/ in this repository.

What it does

• Obsidian's own debug mode, toggled from a command instead of the console. 01 Debug mode
• Long stack traces — the frames behind a callback boundary, kept rather than discarded. 02 Long stack traces
• Async long stack traces — the same across await, opt-in because it is desktop-only and costs DevTools console autocompletion while enabled. 03 Async long stack traces
• Timeouts that do not fire while you are on a breakpoint, so a slow debugging session does not trip Obsidian's own long-running-task limits. 04 Long running tasks
• DevTools on mobile, where the app has none, plus a UI for the debug library's namespaces. 05 More debug tools
• Every setting, by the key it is stored under. 06 Settings

Installation

The plugin is available in the official Community Plugins repository.

Beta versions

To install the latest beta release of this plugin (regardless if it is available in the official Community Plugins repository or not), follow these steps:

1. Ensure you have the BRAT plugin installed and enabled.
2. Click Install via BRAT.
3. An Obsidian pop-up window should appear. In the window, click the Add plugin button once and wait a few seconds for the plugin to install.

Debugging

Every other plugin documents a console command here. This one does not need to: turning debug namespaces on and off is what it does. Open Settings -> Community plugins -> Advanced Debug Mode, find the debug-namespaces section, and switch on advanced-debug-mode — or any other plugin's namespace — without touching the console or localStorage. See 05 More debug tools.

The console form still works, and is the one to use if this plugin is not loaded yet, which is exactly when you would need it:

window.DEBUG.enable('advanced-debug-mode');

For more details, refer to the documentation.

Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in the CHANGELOG.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING to get set up.

Support

My other Obsidian resources

See my other Obsidian resources.

License

© Michael Naumov