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People who use Obsidian, or other research apps, what service do you use to sync between devices?
Basically the title. What do you use and what does it cost? The official syncing service for obsidian seems expensive but I'm not sure what else to try.
Obsidian just uses files and directories. I personally use syncthing, but any file synchronization system should work.
I also use Syncthing. Works great!
@boxer_dogs_dance I actually just set up Syncthing on my own computer literally last night and it works like a charm, very easy to set up honestly.
Thank you!
I have two methods. I use github to sync obsidian between my desktop and my iPhone. I also back up my desktop files to Proton Drive, just as an extra place to save my notes. I would like to find a way to remove github from the loop, but currently this is the best setup for me. And since github is free, it’s hard to beat.
If you've got a server, gittea is fairly easy to get up and running.
Worth mentioning that Forgejo is a recent community-developed fork established in reaction to the maintainer of Gitea (gitea.com -- gittea.dev is just some person's instance) pivoting towards commercialization.
Also for the sake of just syncing notes via git, a software forge like Gitea/Forgejo is a bit overkill to self-host. A git server can run on its own without a web frontend, or with a minimal one such as gitweb or cgit.
That's true. Having a web front end helps avoid needing to expose ssh though.
And will-fix link...i forgot that.
I’m just paying for an Obsidian subscription at the moment because I use a variety of platforms and didn’t want to tinker with it too much. Could potentially use iCloud but that might not work so well if e.g. I decide I want access to my notes on Linux.
I’d do Syncthing but that doesn’t play nice with iOS since for that to work well a background daemon has to be always running. I might look into to self-hosting an Obsidian server as mentioned in a sibling comment, that seems like a decent option.
Ditto, and I don't mind supporting obsidian as I want it to stick around. Granted I totally get just using a different program and saving the money.
I'm paying for an Obsidian subscription as well and have been really happy. Syncthing seems like a solid alternative, but I wanted instant syncing between all my devices even when I'm not on my home network. Maybe a bit pricey, but it's convenient, works perfectly, and I haven't had to think about it once.
I save my obsidian files on iCloud Drive, that works fine.
Syncthing is free and easy to set up. I host it on my desktop and sync files between there and my phone. By default it will work between any two Internet connected devices, but for security I have mine set to sync on my home network only.
Self hosted Obsidian Live Sync, it uses Couchdb which requires a bit of setup, but wasn't bad on my Unraid server with their Docker community apps. It's instant sync per character typed pretty much just like Obsidians paid sync service
Really curious about this. Do you host in the cloud or run the server locally? How has it worked for you so far? Any data loss?
I am not @Goodtoknow, but I also have this setup. It's great! My unraid server lives in my basement. I even use this to collaboratively edit notes with my wife, and haven't had any issues (or thought about the setup at all, really) since I set it up.
One note: the process for setting up a new device with self hosted live sync is pretty clunky. You have to install Obsidian, create the vault(s), and then for each vault, copy the settings URI from an already-setup device and send it to the new one. It's fine, takes maybe three minutes, but it's something that I have to walk my wife (who is a professional software engineer) through every time. It's just not the most user friendly experience, is what I'm saying, I guess, haha.
I just copy my .obsidian directory around instead. Keeps it easy
I'm a light Obsidian user but I use iCloud Drive. I even have the iCloud Drive Windows client running if I need to open Obsidian on my Windows laptop.
I'm an android user, but thank you.
Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive should work just as well.
Try out Anytype. It's more like Notion, but it offers sync with E2E Encryption for free.
If you want to keep to Obsidian, I guess any cloud service would do (if you use Apple devices, icloud is a good option)
Anytype looks like everything I've ever wanted, especially when starting Obsidian recently. Are there any catches? Looks like they're an actual company but I struggle to see how they make money, the nice thing about Obsidian is that you can just move your vault if they get too expensive.
I was curious about this as well, and they address it in their FAQ: https://anytype.io/faq
Looks like right now, their only monetization is backups over 1GB. It will eventually be a freemium model that they're disguising as a co-op.
Hm, yeah it looks interesting and I kinda like the ease of the syncing for free. it looks like it does support exporting everything to markdown though so maybe it'll be easy to move your vault over to another one if they start charging a lot or something. Not sure how much I want to move over from Obsidian though, even though I've only been using Obsidian for a month.
Yeah, that's definitely an advantage over Notion.
I had to stay away from Obsidian because their licensing. Their free version prohibits commercial use, which seemed to include taking work-related notes.
I'm waffling between trying out Anytype at the moment, the most I'm using my Obsidian vault is for daily journals and lists at the moment so I guess there's no harm
One catch is that it uses its own file format rather than markdown. Even though the files are local, you're dependent on their export to migrate.
This is why I moved away from Joplin.
Also the plugin community for Obsidian is just bonkers, people are doing the weirdest crap with it and I love it =)
yeah, that's what I'm most worried about. I might keep using obsidian for now, just for that reason, and just set up a syncthing or something lol
Just would like to point out that you have the option to export the files in markdown. Even if they decide one day to remove the export function, the software is open source so someone is bound to create an export tool
I saw that! I used all the energy I saw with Anytype and ended up revamping Obsidian, but maybe i'll go back and try Anytype next time I feel motivated enough haha.
Does Anytype offer tags and links or equivalent like Obsidian does? I really like the way obsidian allows you to create the equivalent of an index of everything you want to save by using tags and links.
It looks like it does do some form of linking and tagging, not quite the same as Obsidian but very similar
Not like Obsidian, but it offers ways to do that
Is it storing files in plaintext/markdown like obsidian is?
I was trying obsidian because so many people here recommend it but it just kind of doesn't vibe with me. I'm also trying to get my wife onto a good note taking/knowledge base type of system for her small business... this looks a little more flashy in a way I think she would like.
I had to find very introductory videos on Youtube and articles on Medium to make Obsidian work for me but now I really like it.
I don't think so, it's an encrypted file. However there's an option to export in markdown files
Ehhh... I used it for about 10 minutes. As much as Obsidian has some things I don't like, its way closer to what I want. I think I'll just bounce between Obsidian and Simplenote.
I currently use Notion, but prior to that used Joplin (still use this as a Markdown editor, just not for notes anymore). Notion is cloud-based, but for Joplin, I just used Google Drive to sync the files. I pay the $20 a year for some extra storage, but if you're able to keep everything under 15gb, then it would be free.
I've tried all manner of different ways on this, my latest is syncthing between my devices, with a once a week automated git commit to a repository from my desktop.
I use the remotely save plugin for obsidian to backup to my fastmail drive over webdav, but you could use something else like dropbox as your file backup. I prefer this because its self contained in the obsidian app, so there is nothing external to configure.
It also works on mobile, which is what sold me on it.
The company that develops Obsidian is pretty small (I think only around 12 people) and although it does seem like the cost to use their sync service is higher than other services, I would suggest paying for it if you have the means. I have for years as I LOVE Obsidian and hope it continues to be successful.
I hear you but it's more than I can afford at this time.
For a while now I've been using foam a roam clone built as a VS Code extension. This means my notes take the form of a git repository that I store on my personal gogs git server. This has been working really well for me, but I admit it doesn't really have a good way to view the notes on mobile. My git repo is accessible on mobile and I've used it in a pinch to view notes, but then if I find myself needing to take notes on the go, I'll just use Keep and then transcribe them into my foam notes when I get back to my computer.
Since I generally use my notes as a sort of lab notebook, this works well as I'm generally always at the computer when I want to take notes.
I just have my Obsidian vault in my Nextcloud directory
I used to use git on desktop and Working Copy on iOS with some Shortcuts. It worked well for quite awhile but the more I started using Obsidian, the more it felt like a chore to do it with git so I just started paying for the Sync. I have an early bird discount for both Sync and Publish (half the price for both), so I don't think it's a bad deal. The full price would've made it hard to swallow given that I only sync text and no attachments but it's such a good product.
Whichever method you decide to use, keep in mind that there's a chance they might lower their prices on Sync. They've done that with Publish not too long ago.
When I was on Android, I used Dropbox. Standard desktop app on Windows, macOS (and at one point, Linux and ChromeOS via Crostini). On Android, I used Dropsync, which effectively does Dropbox Sync, but places the files on your file system (including just a subset in my case), making Obsidian seamless.
Now I'm on iOS. I either have to use iCloud Drive, or Obsidian Sync. iCloud Drive is fine, and I'm not using Linux, so no concerns there. Obsidian Sync is far too expensive for what it is (and I literally pay for a Pro license for Obsidian to use it at work).
I tried using remotely-save, but one thing I really wanted to keep in sync was my config, and it was awful at doing so. Frequently toggled vim mode off on my desktops, which annoyed me to no end. Also hasn't had any active development in a year.
I used to use Dropbox, but now I just go with iCloud. It works well enough.
Their own sync + publish offerings are a wee bit too expensive for me compared to what I can get from generic cloud drives.
Resilio Sync. The UI is more user-friendly than Syncthing's, and I already used Resilio to share documents between my wife and I.
I also have an instance running on my VPS, which is always up-to-date.
I actually don't sync. But I do use Obsidian Git to back up my vault to my GitLab account, so I could easily do so by just pulling the repo. One issue with that being that I couldn't figure out how to do so on Android.
Nextcloud here!
I use git. It's pretty easy to use if you're just looking for basic mirroring of files between devices.
I have a handy script with a couple of git commands on the $PATH on my laptop that backs up my notes to GitHub, and a script with a couple of git commands on my Android phone that I can tap with Termux Widget to sync if I want to browse them on my phone.