Just a +1 from me on needing something better from Obsidian Sync on iOS. Any of these three things would help tremendously:
Hopefully we can see some improvements soon. Thanks!
For 1. see and upvote the feature request [Feature] Make Sync icon always visible which includes a snippet to enable that.
But it doesn’t sync when the app is not active even with Obsidian Sync, that is the issue at hand. The consensus seems to be, we’d love to have Obsidian sync in the background as well.
I believe we are saying the same thing.
+1 for me on this subject. A way to manually trigger a sync from a shortcut action would be tremendously useful!
Has there been any official update on background sync since this post in 2022? Has anything changed?
Background sync would solve a huge pain point for working with Obsidian on mobile (particularly when taking quick notes on something).
This should definitely be implemented!
I’d also love this - only just realised that it doesn’t background sync and that it’s a huge pain, especially as there’s no easy way to see whether synchronisation has completed or is out of date.
The Sync status icon is in the right sidebar. If that’s not convenient enough, there’s a feature request you can upvote and a CSS snippet to make it always visible. [Mobile] Make Sync icon always visible
How do I make the right sidebar visible on the iPhone?
Is there any hope that background sync will be added? That would solve the underlying issue.
Swipe from the right edge, or long-press the 3-dot menu button. Unfortunately there is no visible control.
There is not much hope that background sync will be added, as explained earlier in the thread. Make Obsidian Sync work in background (on Mobile) - #12 by ryanjamurphy
Ah, OK, that’s helpful to know at least in terms of background sync.
There is not much hope that background sync will be added, as explained earlier in the thread. Make Obsidian Sync work in background (on Mobile) - #12 by ryanjamurphy
Please, please reconsider this. I’m intimately acquainted with the limitations of iOS background operations. The few seconds and few kb it can sync in the background will be a game changer if it’s implemented, especially for people with executive function disabilities.
Judging from this thread, most of the changes people make are very small: adding a single line to a daily note, or checking something off. But to ensure sync completes, we have to hold the app open for several more seconds and watch the sync indicator until it turns green. Most of the time we spend on the change is waiting for sync. Even with iOS’s limitations, background sync will let us move on to our next task, and these tiny changes will still be synced consistently.
For those of us with ADHD, the lack of background sync means having to divert our full attention to the app for each small change, which comes at a high cost for us. But I’m sure everyone, ADHD or no, would love to have reliable sync for small changes without that extra step.
I’m not familiar with the details, but I think it has to do with what Apple allows apps to do in the background. AFAIK, since Obsidian uses Capacitor to build the mobile app, it would need to use web frameworks/services in the background in order to sync things in the background, and Apple currently disallows those frameworks from running in the background (and offers no way for the user to say “it’s cool I accept the risk/battery drain/whatever”).
It would be cool if Apple was less paternalistic about iOS. Alas.
Crap— of course. I knew Obsidian wasn’t native, but that implication didn’t occur to me. Thanks for the detail. I did a little digging just now, and it looks like there’s a plugin that might provide a way around that. It lets Capacitor apps run OS-native background tasks. Do you know if anyone at Obsidian has tried that?
I hope I’m not coming off as a backseat driver. 
Obsidian has been a game-changer for me, and this has been the only major hitch. If we know the Capacitor plugin won’t work, I need to see if I can find another creative solution. I have some ideas, but I don’t want to try something that the experts already know won’t work.
The team’s aware of Background Runner but it doesn’t solve all of the issues, regrettably. Open to other ideas as there’s always a chance we haven’t thought of it!
Thanks! That’s great to know. I’ll have to do some digging to see if my other idea has any merit. Cheers!
I think this isn’t really viable but just dropping it here in case it could be relevant:
My hacky solution of playing a 10 hour silent audio file still works (as long as I don’t play other audio (spotify, youtube…) in between.
Note: only if the note that contains the audio file is in live preview, not reading view.
If the audio file in Obsidian would continue playing after the other audio source stops, that would be great - but technically not possible I guess.
I’m not sure which kinds of background processes prevent an app from being killed, but audio is one, and I guess location (e.g. Google Maps navigation) is another. I wonder if a plug-in that does constant location tracking as in a google maps navigation would keep Obsidian backgrounded. That could be a community plugin for those of us that want Obs backgrounded all the time.
I want to support the obsidian team because I love the product, and sync works GREAT for syncing my vault between computers, but it is very jarring to open up the mobile app, wait a few seconds for everything to load, and then wait again for files to update to their latest version from the cloud sync. Especially jarring with the daily note that gets opened by default.
It’s unfortunate that I can get a better user experience on Android using a third party syncing tool like Dropbox which does sync in the background.
There’s been a lot of discussion here about iOS. I’m on Android, and I’d be very interested on whether there’s the same limitations there. As I understand it there’s some existing capacity to function in the background on Android (I’m assuming so, as Syncthing does it at the cost of a constant notification telling me that it’s running in the background). Is it at all possible to implement this for Android users? I love Obsidian and want to support it, but it’s disappointing to see that the third party Syncthing solution is actually far more usable in this area.
Please let me know if there’s a better spot to be asking this, or whether this should be fielded as a separate feature request. Thank you!