Background syncing from remote vault

Help
1

I would like to open obsidian on any one device and start typing without worrying about my sentence spanning across every file I added on a different device as it’s synced to the one I’m working on.

I use Obsidian for creative work. I need fast and responsive. Getting an idea and needing to wait even ten seconds for the app to process the twenty notes I added earlier in the day is starting to screw up not just the note I want to make, but all the notes that I then have to review and remove the random letters placed by the sudden crash of cascading text and files meeting.

If this is just my ineptitude with the app, please educate me. Because I am legitimately confused why this doesn’t seem to be an issue for anyone else.

2

There is already a feature request for this: Make Obsidian Sync work in background (on Mobile). And happily, the team is working on it: Obsidian Roadmap - Obsidian. Since you didn’t follow the feature request template and you have a problem people might be able to help with, I’ll move this thread to Help.

If you change a file on 1 device and then change it on another before the changes from the first device have been pulled on, you get a sync conflict. By default Obsidian tries to merges the separate sets of changes. Sometimes it works perfectly and you don’t even know anything happened. Other times it makes a mess. There is an option to have Sync create a conflict file instead of trying to merge. https://obsidian.md/help/sync/troubleshoot#Conflict+resolution

I use the conflict file option (and embed a search for conflict files in my weekly note so I know if one appears).

I also use a CSS snippet to make the Sync status icon always visible on mobile instead of hidden in the sidebar. That way when I open the app on my phone I can watch it and wait until I know I’m not going to cause a conflict. (This still leaves you with the friction of waiting, and it would be better if it could tell whether the current file is safe to edit.) [Mobile] Make Sync icon always visible

If you’re typing new text and not editing, a way to avoid waiting up front is to make a new note to write in. Then afterward you can merge the text into the note you want it in.

If you’re saying that parts of the sentence you’re typing end up in various files, that is a problem I haven’t heard of before. I imagine maybe it could happen if you have done a lot of renaming and/or splitting/merging of files? Or perhaps you’re using a plugin that interacts badly with this situation?