I had this happen a bunch when I was using iCloud sync on multiple devices. I think it was mostly solved by setting the directory to “keep downloaded” (right click on it in finder and it’s the second option).

That said, I’ve switched one vault to git and have had no issues there.

You can use this to sync changes in (near) realtime and then either commit them to git, or use some other mechanism to increase retention.

It also won't replace Postgres, because that is also a different thing.

I know this is headless but is there any other reason I should use this over the official Synology drive app?

Do you have a good starting point or explanation to share about using obsidian for a team, where we all change/sync files?

Wanted to say thanks. We were literally talking about the lack of a cli sync at work last week and I had moved to Syncthing because of that gap.

Definitely will be looking at the official Obsidian sync plan now.

I've been using Synology Drive to sync Obsidian between different machines and my android phone and it works great. I've never seen a need to use the official sync.

Then you have two solutions to maintain when one would suffice.

The official Sync is focused on providing a more integrated experience in the Obsidian app

- Built-in version history

- Cross-platform support, especially on mobile

- Fine-grained control (e.g. different theme/plugins/settings per device)

- Sharing your vaults with other users

That will never happen; their only money-making method is to limit the iOS app to sell their cloud. Otherwise, the desktop is already free with your own vault folder.

They are trying their hardest to prevent users from using Google Drive or other services natively. While it is just a small option to add, it will make everyone drop their $4 cloud subscription.

Synology Drive is a file and folder syncing system.

Obsidian is a note and wiki syncing system.

You should use an obsidian syncing system if you want to sync notes and wikis. You should use a file syncing system if you want to sync files.

What do you mean? Version history is explicitly a feature of Obsidian Sync: https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian+Sync/Version+history

No questions, just thanks for helping with a great product.

I’m using a couchdb instance to sync a bunch of local obsidian installs and use an obsidian plugin to keep them synced- would this change that or make it easier?

No question. Just wanted to drop by and say Obsidian is actually pretty cool. An absolute joy to use, and I only wish I learned about it earlier than I did.

How are sync conflicts handled in the filesystem? Say I write to a file and another client's edit wins and mine is rejected.

Are there plans to support scoped token permissions (specific folders or even specific notes)? I'd love to try setting up something that automatically updates a specific Obsidian note on a state change or cronjob, but I'd want to avoid giving access to the rest of the vault.

also, thanks for the great product, bought the vip catalyst as a show of support.

It would be nice if one could sync dot files in the vault. For example, the .claude or .pi folder containing skills and whatnot.

If that were true Obsidian would not allow third-party sync plugins in the official directory, and wouldn't mention third-party options in the official docs:

https://help.obsidian.md/sync-notes

The goal for Obsidian Sync is to be the best option, not the only option.

This reply does not address parents question at all.

A key feature of Obsidian is that it stores your notes in an open folder structure on your file system.

A very valid question is whether there are benefits to using a special note sync application rather than a standard file system sync application, and if so, what those benefits are.

To enjoy the native ease of use and security of Obsidian Sync as a human user on your devices; while being able to automate things on a server.

I just use Dropbox with dropsync on my phone. I never use the knowledge graph anyway

If you have automation that dumps things int your vault, that you built with their new CLI (which lets you create/tag docs etc. without running the full electron app), I guess this lets you sync those changes and propagate them to all of your obsidian sync clients also without having to open aforementioned full electron app.

Quoting[1] kepano (CEO of Obsidian) - Why you might use Obsidian Sync headless:

- Automate remote backups

- Automate publishing a website

- Give agentic tools access to a vault without access to your full computer

- Sync a shared team vault to a server that feeds other tools

- Run scheduled automations e.g. aggregate daily notes into weekly summaries, auto-tag, etc

...all while having the speed, privacy, customizability, end-to-end encryption of Obsidian Sync.

[1]: https://x.com/kepano/status/2027485552451432936

Oh snap! Thanks for that, I can really make good use of this!

Yes, but just because it has version history doesn't mean it is closer to git than to Postgres. You can also do versioning in Postgres. You can even search more easily in the history.

iOS makes it painful to use third-party sync protocols and servers, like syncthing can't run in the background, a git sync service can't run in the background, only iCloud gets to run in the background.... and whatever sync protocol the app itself has blessed so it can run immediately on opening the app.

As such, on iOS the native sync is the only one that works cleanly and seamlessly, and so you're incentivized to pay for it.

There was a little while, when dropbox was big, where it seemed like the future of computing would be "your data is in the cloud, and every app you use can share that data, and those two things are independent integrated through some common filesystem layer".

And then it ended up that no, your data's in a cloud-per-service, where your emails live in googles cloud, your documents in microsoft 365's cloud, your images in "adobe creative cloud"'s cloud, your photos in Apple's cloud, your passwords in 1Password's cloud, and your knowledgebase in Obsidian's cloud.

The dream of the filesystem API being able to expand to clouds, of being able to choose dropbox or google or apple as the owner of your data, and other applications seamlessly integrating with any of them, it died with apple making it impossible to offer any sort of generic filesystem API or even background sync.

And so, that's why you'd use obsidian sync over git, because you're cursed with using a phone.

Unless you're saying "why not pay for obsidian sync, but then sync it into a git repo in CI and commit there to see the diffs", not "why not use git as the underlying sync protocol", in which case ignore everything I wrote, you totally could do that.

Yeah we'll add that at some point.

It's a bit trickier than it seems because a lot of Obsidian configuration and app functionality is vault-specific. E.g. what theme should be used? What plugins should be available? Does autocomplete for [[links]] or properties do anything? Etc.

It's not super useful yet- you can't really view notes in the CLI but you can can trigger features like search.

I love that CLIs are getting a second wind.

I've been using iCloud to sync Obsidian, and have consistently run into the problem that iCloud file container access needs full disk permissions that I don't want to give the agent (or Ghostty). Does everybody use Obsidian's paid sync instead or what? Or SyncThing?

Does the knowledge graph have a function other than to show off how big your vault is?

I assume they meant "it will never replace Git for syncing Obsidian".

The headless Obsidian Sync client works the same way as desktop and mobile clients, see:

https://help.obsidian.md/sync/troubleshoot

- Markdown files: Obsidian Sync merges the changes using Google's diff-match-patch algorithm.

- Other file types: For all other files, including canvases, Obsidian uses a "last modified wins" approach. The most recently modified version replaces earlier versions.

For conflicts in Obsidian settings, such as plugin settings, Obsidian Sync merges the JSON files. It applies keys from the local JSON on top of the remote JSON.

Related tangent: "Relay" (https://relay.md") lets you sync / share files based on directory (vs. the whole vault). That enables things like "my private vault contains a subdir for work, and my work machine syncs to only that child subdir".

Thanks for your support! Sync is end-to-end encrypted so the server doesn't know about specific paths in your vault. You would have to set those permissions at the filesystem level, or with the tool you're using.

Yes, we're looking into that!

> it died with apple making it impossible to offer any sort of generic filesystem API or even background sync

Apple's cloud storage remained WebDAV a very very long time.

Apple's iOS has a pluggable Files system. Use Working Copy to give other apps access to folders sync'd with git: https://workingcopy.app

Or a dedicated app like GitSync: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gitsync/id6744980427

Gotcha, thanks. I just use git but don’t sync to my iPhone, this helps give context on the value prop there.

maybe you're overthinking it a little. You could make it of a default setup like the one you use for the sandbox, or some curated fast-loading one

You can view notes with Obsidian CLI. See the "read" commands. But also you can do that with your built-in command line tools.

https://help.obsidian.md/cli

VSCode opens single files outside of projects. What do they do? Personally I wouldn’t mind if it just defaulted to the settings of the last-used vault.

Notes are stored in Markdown files. Why do you need Obsidian CLI to view notes when `cat` will do?

> I love that CLIs are getting a second wind.

I just wish there were more solutions to add simple things like copy and paste to them.

As though they were more a derivative of the text box I type in right now. And less to MS-DOS I grew up with.

Outside of that, agreed. Eliminate GUI as a blocker.

I just pay for the sync.

I like that I can have some vaults that sync to both my personal and work laptops and other vaults that only sync to one or the other.

It’s awfully convenient without any vendor lock in since I can just take my plain markdown files and leave anytime.

Definitely one of the biggest ROI is to pay for the sync. I regret all years I tried git-based alternatives (it's still useful to have it in git for backup, but not as the main syncing mechanism).

I use both and I prefer their builtin sync, since I also code on Linux.

I've had good luck with syncthing. But I only sync between laptop and desktop.. the mobile story with syncthing isn't ideal.

Im just running a Nextcloud on a raspberry pi to sync everything. Works flawlessly for multiple years now.

I used iCloud in the past, but found that syncing between a few devices sometimes left my notes in a weird state - sometimes overwritten, missing, etc. I switched some time ago to https://github.com/remotely-save/remotely-save with backblaze and I periodically sync to a git repo for a second backup. No issues since then.

Only in 2nd-brain mythology, which holds that you'll discover connections between your notes that you didn't realize was there. I think it started as eye candy to confuse prospective users considering Roam Notes. They later did something similar with their "Canvas" feature. So, these are features you get with their lack of coherent vision, rather than basic usability and a safe plugin ecosystem, neither of which Obsidian plans to deliver..

Just pay for the sync. I used to juggle with git, rsync, inotify etc and other tools

Its one of the few subscriptions where it actually feels like money well spent

I used to use SyncThing, then Dropbox, then iCloud. But then I just caved and paid for Obsidian Sync and it is the best money spent aside from Claude. I don't have to tinker with weird settings anymore or deal with sync issues, it just works.

I use Syncthing (with Synctrain client on iOS) and it works great.

I have been using remotely save and a free bucket from backblaze. It as a s3 compatible api so works using the s3 feature.

If you don't have a window open, then VSCode opens with no active workspace. There are no workspace settings at all, and there is no file tree. But since VSCode has user level settings, these are what is used, including theming/etc.

If you have a window open, the file is opened to the workspace for that window. You can see this in action because the "Trust" dialog specifically says that you're trying to open untrusted files into a trusted workspace.

Okay, so my command line fu is not what it perhaps should be, but if I could use obsidian without the bloated app, I'd be even more in love.

How would I be able to search obsidian links from the command line?

Like, to travel between notes in the app of course I can just click on connecting links or search, but I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to do that in a cli.

Is there some handy way to search the current folder and subfolders for text in a file with regex? Like some kind of >find term for all of my [[term]] entries in markdown files ?

Hackernews is accessed using http. Why do you need a web browser when curl exists?

I was using SyncThing, and it worked, but any time you have an Obsidian vault open on two devices, or shortly after another, you're always thinking about if you're going to have to clean up a bunch of sync conflict files later. And that mental overhead is not worth saving $4/mo.

The conflicts are never hard: it's like a git merge conflict where you just take the latest of every conflict block.

Same

protip: You can make synctrain sync with an iOS shortcut, with the shortcut being triggered when Obsidian is opened or closed. This means you're always in sync, even if iOS hasn't allowed synctrain to run in the background.

I can't wonder if that's by design to make it hard for a plugin to have it's own sync mechanism. Definitely not proof of this that I know of, but a thought.

I'm doing the same since this is the only method I found I can let my bot access the files, something I couldn't achieve with Obsidian Sync.. until now!

What is obsidian beyond a pile of markdown files without the app?

ripgrep?

Not gp, but because the way hackernews would render in a web browser versus curl is dramatically different, of course. There's a clear separation of presentation and content, and curl shows you presentation.

Notes being plain text files means that what you get by showing via a CLI is essentially the same as just `cat whatever-it-is.md`. Viewing a note via the CLI interface could have its merits (it could apply its own flavor of presentation), but come on now. Your example doesn't hold.

Obsidian is plain Markdown and JSON files.

There can't be a will from the devs to make it hard to sync.

It's just that unlike git or Dropbox or whatever, that are just generic "syncing" tools, Obsidian Sync has been built to provide the best experience with Obsidian.

I'm talking more about the plugin architecture not about the file format or third-party applications. sync plugins seems to be pretty limited compared to what's offered for a subscription.