#1

I have a desktop PC I use as my “server” for notes and such. They are synced across my Macbook and iOS devices using Resilio Sync.

On iOS, Resilio Sync stores the folders I sync in its own folder of “On My iPhone” (in the “Files” app). However, the Obsidian iOS app can only interact with folders in its own iOS “Files” folder, and can’t open a vault from another folder on the device.

PC and Mac versions of Obsidian let you choose a folder on your filesystem to open an existing vault. I feel like iOS could (technically) support this too.

As an example Readdle’s “Documents” and “PDF Expert” iOS apps can access any folders/files (even if in a different folder) on the device that the user gives them access to (via an alert prompt). The following two screenshots are both taken from the Readdle “Documents” app:

  1. I can easily see the iOS “Files” and navigate into it.

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  2. I can navigate to any other folder on my iOS device, not just in the “Documents” app folder.

    photo_2022-03-10_14-16-15
    photo_2022-03-10_14-16-15645×1280 37.4 KB

Also: I checked for any duplicates of this before posting, and all of the previous ones that did exist are now closed and I can’t comment on them.

#2

Read this fully:

https://help.obsidian.md/Getting+started/Sync+your+notes+across+devices#Why+can’t+I+sync+using+X

1 Like
#3

Awesome, thanks for that link!

I acknowledge that the iOS filesystem sucks and is hard to work with, especially for developers trying to interact with it. I will try to come up with a better way of doing this.

Thanks for everything. :heart:

#4

for iOS, the options are Obsidian Sync, Working Copy or iClould.

#5

I’m currently trying out Working Copy as well as GitJournal, which is open-source and meant purely for Markdown editing with git. Thanks @WhiteNoise for the help!

#6

would be nice to hear about your experiences with these two tools.

#7

So, what I ended up going with (after trying several things)

  1. Set up Obsidian vault on my iOS device.
  2. On my Macbook, tell Resilio Sync to sync the iCloud Drive folder for Obsidian.
  3. On my PC, I now have the folder synced via Resilio Sync.

iOS <—> Macbook <—> PC

I know iCloud Drive can be fiddly and get out of sync amongst multiple devices, but I don’t intend to do lost of simultaneous edits.

The only problem I anticipate is if my Macbook remains powered off for an extended period of time. In that case, edits from iOS wouldn’t get synced to the PC and vice versa.

I did actually recently find out that you can supposedly sync iCloud to a Windows PC., but I haven’t tried it. I’d like iCloud to be involved as little as possible.