Android actually sandboxes app data nicely, see Android Security Blog: Application Sandbox:
In Android 10 apps have a limited raw view of the filesystem, with no direct access to paths like /sdcard/DCIM. However, apps retain full raw access to their package-specific paths, as returned by any applicable methods, such as Context.getExternalFilesDir.
However my current recommendation would be to not keep sensitive data in Obsidian but use other tools for that (such as Bitwarden) and also be judicious in which apps you install.
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FWIW, I’m back nearly 6 months later to report that I hold little hope that the state of file syncing on iOS will get any better, so I’ve given up my resistance to iCloud. It is no longer a pleasant experience to go your own way, so I’ve been using it here and there as required. So the barrier to shifting my Obsidian vault from Box to iCloud is now lower. My residual reservations include:
- Pure file access. One of the crucial killer features of Obsidian is that the documents are plain vanilla text files, which means I can do everything I can do with any other text file - copy to USB, parse with a Perl script, compress and archive, send via morse code, index with Spotlight, grep from the command line, analyse and update with Python, and recover the contents from the spinning platter of the last hard drive on the planet with a carefully held magnet. I am worried that iCloud will turn my files into virtual figments that merely provide the appearance of being on my computer, like it does with Photos or Pages documents. So far it seems iCloud’s integration into the OS has become a little more first-class. There actually seems to be real files, at the weird, non-obvious location of
/Users/me/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~md~obsidian/Documents/MyVault/.
- Cross-platform support. Similarly, I want the fact I’m on a Raspberry Pi with a dial-up modem to be irrelevant when accessing my files. Again, iCloud seems to just sneak over the line on that measure because they have the fallback of website access.
Despite those reservations, today I downloaded the beautiful and glorious iOS app and installed it on an iPad and an iPhone. The instructions for iCloud sync worked perfectly, and I appreciate all the detail that has been put into them. Online, bi-directional syncing between mobile device and desktop happens within a couple of seconds. Note that I found that to set up a second mobile device I didn’t have to do anything, except force quit the app (or whatever the swipe-up gesture from the app switcher does) and re-open it. My vault then just appeared and started syncing/indexing.
Great job Obsidian team!
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