Setup: Existing vault created and used daily on Obsidian for Mac, stored in iCloud Drive at iCloud Drive/Obsidian/DansVault/. Trying to add the same vault on iPhone (Obsidian iOS) via the “Use existing vault → iCloud” option. It consistently returns “Your iCloud vault was not detected”, listing the usual two causes (different iCloud account / vault not in the top-level Obsidian folder) — neither applies here.
What I’ve already checked and ruled out:
- Folder location: vault sits directly at
iCloud Drive/Obsidian/DansVault/— confirmed via Finder “Get Info” path, not nested any deeper, not a sibling folder. - iCloud account: identical Apple ID/email confirmed on both Mac and iPhone (checked in System Settings on both devices side by side).
- App permission: Settings → [name] → iCloud → Apps Using iCloud shows Obsidian toggled on.
- Sync status: confirmed via Files app that the full folder tree (all subfolders, correct item counts) has synced down to the phone — not just the top-level placeholder.
- Vault integrity:
.obsidianconfig folder contains all standard files (app.json, appearance.json, community-plugins.json, core-plugins.json, graph.json, templates.json, workspace.json, plugins/) — no corruption, opens fine on Mac. - Special characters: vault was originally named “Dan’s Vault” (with an apostrophe and a space) — renamed to
DansVaultto rule out a parsing issue. No change in behaviour. - Force download: long-pressed the folder in Files → “Download Now” to eliminate cloud-placeholder files before retrying.
- Reinstalled the app multiple times, retrying the “Use existing vault → iCloud” flow fresh each time — same result every time.
- “Create New Vault” flow: only offers a name field + “Store in iCloud” toggle, no way to browse to or select an existing folder — using it creates a genuinely new, separate vault rather than reusing the existing one (confirmed empty, 0 files/0 folders).
- “Manage vaults” screen: no “Open folder as vault” option appears here on iOS, despite this being referenced in older documentation/threads as the standard manual workaround.
- Files app share sheet: opened a
.mdfile from inside the vault folder directly in Files, tapped Share → Obsidian — this just relaunches the app to the same “Create a Vault / Use existing vault” screen rather than opening the containing vault.
Current state: the vault is fully intact, correctly placed, and working normally on the Mac app. The iPhone app simply cannot detect or open it through any in-app route I’ve found.
Device/version details:
- Device: iPhone 14
- iOS version: 26.5
- Obsidian version: 1.12.7
Question: is there a known fix, a different manual “open this exact folder” method I’m missing on iOS, or is this a currently open bug? Happy to provide further logs if useful.
(and that’s the one in which your vault should live if you want to sync it across devices through iCloud).