Android access to Dropbox

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What I’m trying to do

I am trying, on Android, to access my vault which is in a Dropbox folder. No problem in Linux or Windows but in Android Obsidian only seems to access local memory and SD card.

Things I have tried

Dropbox

No hits

1 Like

I use an Android app called “Dropsync”. It synchronizes a Dropbox folder with one on your local storage.

There’s a little bit of a learning curve to get it set up, but once running it quietly syncs regularly in the background so your vault is kept up to date even when you’re not using Obsidian.

The pro version of the app is $7. I’ve been a pro user for so long I don’t remember what the differences are between the free and pro versions.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Craig

I used to use Dropsync to do the Autosync. However, with Android now “sandboxing” app data, it not longer works. This is similar to iOS. Works fine on Windows. I don’t remember which version of Android changed this. I think anything later than Android 10. It is supposed to keep data more secure from other apps. Not sure if this is your situation.

I’m using Android 14 on a Pixel 6a.

To work around the file system limitations, I created the vault folder as a subfolder of the shared Documents folder. Then I did the following:

I used DropSync to create the sync directory in the Documents folder in internal storage. Dropsync then synced the contents of the folder with DropBox.

Then I started Obsidian and opened the synced folder, granting Obsidian permission to open folders under Documents.

Obsidian loaded the vault and I was good to go.

I’m also using DropSync without issues in my setup. Never thought there was anything special about my setup…