today I wanted to share with you an idea I had when reviewing my workflow with Obsidian and Nextcloud. Since I am currently syncing and using Obsidian over Nextcloud and Nextcloud Notes, which I already wrote about here. I recommend you to check it out, so you get the picture.
Thinking further in this direction, I tought to myself: Why not have a Nextcloud-Plugin, which works like Nextcloud-Notes. You could have your Obsidian Vault as normal, but additionally you would have a webinterface in your nextcloud-instance (since Nextcloud Notes is already doing that with markdown files)?
The cool thing is, you could then have an app on your phone, which syncs with your nextcloud-server (like the NC Notes App). You could even do that with the obsidian-app itself, create a configuration option for Nextcloud instances. Which is kind of a buzzkill for Obsidian Sync, I am aware of that. But I think there lies great potential in self-hosted solutions and I think they could be very well integrated into obsidian.
Thinging even further ahead: Why not develop a self-hosted solution for obsidian and have a server-based licence (I would pay for that).
Please let me know what you think! And also let me know, if you would be up for developing something like that (the NC Plugin, not a Server-based Obsidian - that would be insane as a hobby project).
Hi @fschober ,
That would be so great to have Obsidian as a native NC App. I you have the chance to develop this it would be a great gift to the community.
Let me add my two cents here. Your idea is way overkill, and let me tell you why: First of all, what are the advantages of having a 3rd party Nextcloud app instead of using one of the core apps? Which features would this app actually provide you with, which are not met by Nextcloud Notes?
You are possibly not aware of the complexity of such an app, as you have to deal with a ton of hooks, APIs; just think of “sharing” or “user permissions”. The Notes app is a convenient, yet very complex web interface for collaborative editing. Where does Obsidian come in here? Replicating the power of Obsidian’s desktop functionality in a webUI? Good luck with that.
Nextcloud has very fast development iteration cycles. Maintaining this app would be a nightmare, since they offer a lot of backward compatibility but also upgrade libraries frequently. Lest not forget the sheer number of Nextcloud developers, who drive these iterations. You would need a solid team to maintain the compatibility of an Obisidian app within the Nextcloud realm. That’s not something like “hey, we could raise 2,000 bucks and pay a smart dude for building this” - it is rather “we have to come up with a solid budget of 30,000 bucks to keep that going over the next 6 months”.
You also would need to run client-side development, as the Obisidan desktop and phone apps need to connect to this service.
There are no benefits of a standalone Obsidian app, since the webUI of Nextcloud Notes mostly is about providing users with a convenient edit from anywhere option, whereas most people I have talked to mostly use desktop editors (QOwnNotes, Joplin, also Obsidian) for managing their content and using Nextcloud as their to-go sync service.
Our company is (among many other things) in the field of professional Nextcloud implementation, so we have to make many workflow design decisions for our clients. I honestly would never recommend a setup with an Obisidan-Nextcloud workflow that relies on a 3rd party Obsidian app to our clients.
There is a reasonable alternative though: The Grauphel Nextcloud app basically establishes a WebDAV sync service over Nextcloud for Tomboy and Gnote. I had used Tomboy for many years since I always found it very convenient, before I dropped it in favour of Obsidian.
Also the QOwnNotes API does a wonderful job concerning sync and integration. The developer is fully committed to maintaining both the desktop software and the Nextcloud app. In my opinion it is a much more feasible way to fork this app and adapt it to the Obsidian environment. There is the community plugin Remotely Save which might solve the client-side requirement issues, but I haven’t checked the codebase yet. In my humble opinion it just makes more sense to fork an existing tool and having it hook into the given Nextcloud apps than reinventing the wheel.
I am highly interested in such a plugin, since I am trying to find a workflow design with Obisidan-Nextcloud in a collaborative environment, which is another topic…
