I just wanted to share how thrilled I am that after switching my Obsidian sync method from iCloud to WebDAV, the startup time on my iPhone dropped to about 3 seconds.
That’s incredible for me, since it used to take around 5–10 seconds. I’m guessing my iCloud sync was painfully slow because I’m still using a 10-year-old MacBook Air as my daily driver. It often takes half a day just to upload even a few modified files. Maybe that’s also why my iPhone couldn’t fetch all the data from iCloud, even though I had Keep Downloaded turned on.
Anyway, I really appreciate the author and contributors of the Remotely Save plugin — you honestly saved my life!
BTW, I hadn’t even thought about using WebDAV for Obsidian before. It only came to mind when I remembered that my Zotero has been syncing through WebDAV for the past year — and it’s been super fast the whole time, including all my annotations and handwritten notes. That made me realize WebDAV might work just as well for Obsidian too.
Switching my Obsidian sync method from iCloud to WebDAV has been a game-changer — my iPhone now starts up in just about three seconds, compared to the 5–10 seconds it used to take. I suspect the sluggish performance came from my 10-year-old MacBook Air, which often needs half a day to upload even a few modified files to iCloud. That probably kept my iPhone from fetching data properly, even with Keep Downloaded enabled. Thanks to the Remotely Save plugin, everything runs smoothly now — genuinely life-saving! I hadn’t even considered using WebDAV for Obsidian until I remembered how fast and reliable it has been for syncing my Zotero library, including annotations and handwritten notes, over the past year. That realization made me try it for Obsidian too, and the results have been incredible.