I’m not a software engineer, but afaik Electron isn’t applicable to mobile apps. Iirc, Obsidian mobile is based on Capacitor.
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I was really hoping this topic would get some attention as part of the effort to speed up mobile (and general) start-up. Without background sync, I don’t care much if the mobile app comes up in 2 seconds instead of 4, because I still have 20 seconds of a long sync before I can use my daily note or today’s tasks query…
To my understanding from this thread, the solution for Android is much simpler than iOS, so I hope that at least the team can prioritize the Android in the meantime until there’s a better way to do it in iOS.
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Just adding a plug to have the sync icon visible on the homescreen unless/until there’s background sync. Not knowing if things have been synced is an even bigger issue than the speed imo. I find myself constantly opening the right door to check.
There was a CSS snippet that did this but it stopped working recently.
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The snippet still works but requires an occasional restart to bring it back.
I think that you are right. I have a few apps that go to “sleep” when there are in the background too long. I might be watching a video , pause it, switch to another app, and when I switch back , the app loads the default screen as if I had just launched it.
I’m paying attention to background sync now because I recently imported 30 thousand-ish notes and moving them from the import folders into my inbox folder for later processing. Add 50k+ attachments to notes that started as web clippings or document scans in Evernote that I’m moving into my “attachments” folder in Obsidian, and there are lot of file moves to sync with my mobile device.
What I’m doing is:
- turning off display lock
- checking the “prevent sleep” setting in Obsidian
- doing my best to keep Obsidian in the foreground until my phone is caught up.
Sadly, when I start removing tens of thousands of notes that are duplicates or just content I don’t want in Obsidian ( I previously put my entire life into Evernote ) , I get to do the mobile sync dance again.
One day, my vault will be organized the way that I want it to be, but , as Aragorn would say, “but it is not this day.”
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I’m just considering Obsidian Sync - is there any update on this?
Also I couldn’t see any reason why Capacitor Background Runner couldn’t be used as the basis for at least a periodic sync?
iOS cannot sync Obsidian unless the app is open.
Sad.
This wrecks the usefulness of Obsi
https://forum.obsidian.md/t/obsi-app-to-manage-obsidian-tasks-on-mobile/
Several cloud services have background sync running on Android. Not sure why Obsidian Sync can’t do the same thing.
The way Obsidian is built is essentially a web app in a custom browser. That may affect its ability to do background tasks.
PLEASE finally implement this feature. It makes the mobile application 100% useless if you have to wait such a long time to update the changes you’ve made on the laptop.
please please. It’s such a wanted feature by many users. Unbelievable that this doesn’t exist already.
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I counted and even with the page open in obsidian sync in frontend of me it took like 30 seconds for page to update. And I had like 4 pages with simple text changes.
This lack of background sync is making me consider whether I should go back to Notion.
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Would it then be possible to create a new APK just for the sake of sync, like a helper APK?
I mentioned this a few weeks ago in Discord and Licat commented on it, so I’m just raising it here for continued awareness. iOS 26 includes a new API call for running tasks in the background: BGContinuedProcessingTaskRequest | Apple Developer Documentation
I currently don’t use Obsidian Sync because I have to wait for the sync to finish before I switch away from the app. Instead I use iCloud to store my vault, which providees the ability to take a note quickly and not have to worry about the sync occuring after I move on to something else. However, I would rather use Obsidian Sync for all the benefits it provides. Maybe this new API call would do the trick?
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As I mentioned on Discord, my impression from coverage of the new background processing feature is that Sync isn’t the kind of use case it is intended for (tho I’d love to be wrong about that). I believe it’s for handling explicit, bounded actions the user has taken (like rendering a video), and not things the app does on its own.
In fact, I just followed your link, and the first paragraph’s second sentence is, “Submission needs to occur as a result of a person’s action, such as tapping a button.”
The more detailed document linked from the one you linked (Performing long-running tasks on iOS and iPadOS | Apple Developer Documentation) gives these examples:
- Exporting video in a film-editing app, or audio in a digital audio workstation (DAW)
- Creating thumbnails for a new batch of photo uploads
- Applying visual filters (HDR, etc) or compressing images for social media posts
It also sounds like it expects to be able to produce a progress bar, which is something Sync doesn’t provide (feature request: Sync: Progress bar or other progress update).
When the system runs a continuous background task and a person backgrounds the app, the system keeps them informed of the task’s progress through a system interface. … Your app regularly reports progress of the task, which enables the system to make informed suggestions through the interface about possibly stuck tasks that a person can cancel.
The “Report progress” section later emphasizes, “It’s important to display accurate progress” and provides example code that seems to reinforce the idea of “progress” being something like a percentage of a known amount.
So it sounds to me like if Obsidian implemented “percent-of” progress reporting for Sync and a command to trigger a sync, manually triggered syncs could run in the background. That might be nice to have, but doesn’t satisfy the common desire to not have to think about Sync.
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Bump +1
Also would it be possible to have a cron job running, that starts and kills Obsidian in the Background every 60 m, without root? Could be a hacky workaround.
It’s unbelievable that this still isn’t working. It makes the mobile app nearly useless, since you need to access information quickly — and that’s just not possible right now.
PLEASE make background sync work properly.
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Hi Obsidian friends,
On iOS and iPadOS, it is common for me to quickly jot something down in Obsidian, and then either lock the device or swipe to another app or the home screen before Obsidian has a chance to finish syncing. This situation can lead to stale data on the device, and the occasional overwriting of changes made on mobile.
For iOS 26 and iPadOS 26, Apple have introduced a new BGContinuedProcessingTask API for background tasks that can continue running even after an app is no longer in the forefront. Would it be possible to consider using this new API for Obsidian Sync operations?
Thanks!
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I think Sync isn’t the kind of use case it is intended for (tho I’d love to be wrong about that). More details here if you’re curious: Make Obsidian Sync work in background (on Mobile) - #97 by CawlinTeffid.
Hello there!
Honnestly quite surprised this is not a top priority considering the way most people use a note app on mobile (opening the app, writing a few things, locking your phone).
There are some messages here saying the team is “aware of capacitor background runner”, but does that mean this has been tried / implemented?
Capacitor docs stipulates that the task can run for up to 30 seconds. That seems enough for a lot of sync use-cases, despite the lack of control of “when” this happens. I figure that iOS may let the task run during a night charging my phone, for example?
There is also the “Silent push” path, that would wake up the app enough to allow some background tasks to run now and then. But for a lot of Obsidian users that actively use the app (probably the ones interested in background sync in the first place), their usage should tell iOS to allow for background tasks now and then.
I have a link about the ENTE devs that are using the silent push technic to make background sync work, despite users not opening the app very often, but I can’t add links to posts .
The Omni Group have a help doc explaining how their push-based syncing works