After Apple rolled out E2EE for iCloud drive, I started syncing my Documents folder to iCloud.
Obsidian Mobile is able to open an existing vault as long as it is inside Obsidian’s iCloud app folder (ie, iCloud → Obsidian → ).
I would like to select a subfolder of my Documents folder instead.
Is this possible?
Moving my Obsidian vaults into iCloud->Obsidian is not an option. I have divided my entire Documents folder into six Obsidian vaults. The vaults contain Obsidian and non-Obsidian data. Other apps would lose track of their files.
It’s not possible, unfortunately. Obsidian on iOS needs to use its app folder to get all the file-managing permissions it needs.
Possibly you could move your vaults and put aliases in Documents (offhand I don’t know if aliases behave in all the ways your apps need). If that doesn’t work you might be able to use a symlink if those are allowed in iCloud, tho that’s kind of a technical last last resort.
Too bad. I hope Apple will eventually open up their minds and their filesystem API.
I will try your suggested workaround with a test vault. I am reluctant to try this with subfolders of Documents/, because I don‘t know how symlinks might break other apps, tools, or functionalities that ignore symlinks.
Usually the problem with iOS’s filesystem API is that cloud providers have neglected to use all of it, not that the API is deficient (or maybe it’s deficient by being hard to use? I don’t know why this problem exists). I’m less sure what’s up with the iCloud restriction; I think it’s related to Obsidian’s need to have all the files available all the time for indexing and stuff, but it seems strange to me. It’s come up in discussion here before.
Yeah, I don’t like to recommend symlinks for anything.
