The lack of this capability is why I stopped using Obsidian. The separation between work and personal vaults is a must for me. There are a lot of clever solutions in this thread, but I’m really not interested in adding a lot of technical overhead into my notes.
Watching this thread now, because this is the only feature I need to jump back in.
Very much needed.
My current workaround
FreeFileSync (or any other sync soft.)
Sync soft just lets me add to ignore by RBM once for all and syncs the rest.
Also automation is easy.
I don’t like the hard /soft links approach. Links are generally fine but they are to tedious for nitpicking what to sync and what not.
How can I manage same settings across different vaults without any sync conflicts in case of Syncthing ?
As Primarily a Mobile user, this is a particular (and constantly recurring) problem for me. I even tried the official Obsidian Sync, but sadly it can only sync settings, plugins, etc. between devices not between vaults. At this time there is not even a workaround for the mobile apps since you cannot access the .obsidian folder on iOS/Android. I’m not sure which of the 3 Options purposed would work best on mobile, but any of them would be an extremely welcome feature.
You can access hidden folders on iOS by using a third-party app. The easiest free option seems to be Taio, but there are other options too. [Mobile] IOS : App to work with hidden folder
If you’re thinking of automations, I think it may be possible to access them in Shortcuts, or at least point to files inside them.
I don’t know if anyone proposed this solution, but I currently have the .obsidian folder in a centralized location and I created Junction shortcuts in each vault, hence every vault shares the exact same settings, plugins, themes and is always up-to-date no matter the vault.
This is my #1 request. I’ve been using Obsidian for two days and just realized I have to repeat the customization.
Can’t stress how nice it would be to have a global setting we can configure. I can’t stand trying to reconfigure everything every time I add a new hotkey or plugin.
How is this still not a thing? There are multiple threads requesting this feature. Why are the developers so adamant about vault-specific settings they don’t give users the option to have global settings?
There are even well-thought out posts explaining ways that Obsidian could support both global and vault-specific settings.
I can’t tell if the team is ignoring this because ‘people can just make their own plugins or solutions’. But aren’t plugins vault-specific (meaning there is no plugin-based solution to this issue)? And all the DIY solutions involve things like symlinks or convoluted file-syncing methods that can backfire.
I’m eager for this global setting feature. I’ve been using Obsidian since its inception, and until now, I’ve simply used the copy-paste solution to work around this issue. 
But a global setting is very natural, just like in VSCode, based on user-specific and workspace-specific settings. 
New Obsidian user here who just created a couple of new vaults and immediately saw this problem.
I’m familiar with concepts of global vs specific settings. There are issues brought up by other posters about clashes with plugins and multiple devices that can complicate things.
With the current system I can easily clone the settings in one vault to another. But dealing with changes and vault-specific settings makes this intractible at scale.
I don’t know how widespread this issue is, but I would guess that for each user posting here there is a larger group that never bothers to post. I’ll add my voice to the folks who have this issue and would love a supported (and supportable) solution.
Yes, me too! I find it kind of jarring how different settings are. I’m just getting into Obsidian and learning things, and I have separate work and home vaults. And every time I discover a feature and hotkey it, I have to edit that twice. And every time I change an appearance, twice. And every time I add a mod, twice. It’s very disruptive having to do that. So instead, I do these things once and end up with two very different Obsidian experiences.
+1 for me too. I think I understand why this hasn’t been supported yet but I, for one, would find it incredibly helpful if we could sync some settings (i.e. hotkeys) at the global level, rather than at the Vault level. It’s going to take me some time to set all the hotkeys I ever want to configure so manually syncing them is time-consuming. Thanks!
Please, yes, add ths
There are a few things it would be better not to copy. Here is a proposed amendment to the copy line:
copytree(main, other, ignore=ignore_patterns('workspace*',
'starred.json',
'graph.json',
'backlink.json',
'cache'))
Also, the if other.exists() block of code needs to go. Deleting the old stuff is not necessary or desired when aiming to preserve the workspace of different vaults, as the amended copytree does.
I’ve noticed some folks mentioned workaround doesn’t exist.
So here is mine that works like a charm:
\.obsidian folder.\bookmarks.json , \graph.json, \workspace.json, etcDisclaimer:
WOuld also love this feature !
I have many sets of notes, for different purposes: Work General, Work Projects, Work Research, Hobbies Projects, Hobbies Research, Personal.
Tweaking settings across all is tedious as many are vault local settings. However Obsidian does have a default set for new vaults ( just don’t know where this is stored).
I propose a hierarchical settings model similar to what is implement in the *Nix world:
I understand this may or may not be possible on the architecture of the application code. But this is a fairly common overlay model used by many applications built using frameworks, and I am sure it is possible under the Electron framework.
Modified by package updates and/or manual editing of the skeleton file
Modified using the settings dialog, when a radio selector is activated.
In this mode the change settings become applicable on all vaults, not only the active vault.
Modified using the settings dialog, when a radio selector is deactivated.
In this mode the change settings become applicable only to the active vault.
https://forum.obsidian.md/t/allow-specifying-the-obsidian-folder-location/16452https://forum.obsidian.md/t/custom-default-vault-settings/6613https://forum.obsidian.md/t/copy-current-vault-settings-to-new-one/36134Scrolling through the many comments on this original topic (Global Settings / Same settings, themes, and plugins across multiple vaults) which prompted me to post the topic. I see a similar suggestion to what I am proposing was also made.
I reference that reply here to make this topic easier to read.