Obsidian Sync - Sync does not sync all Configuration folders on all devices, only on source device

Help
1

Bug: My custom configuration folder is not synchronized to all my devices, even though it’s synced to ‘Sync’.

How I tested:

  • I already have my vault synced between my windows and android devices, with all features enabled
  • I created a new configuration folder (.obsidian-android) on my mobile and changed some settings
  • I checked on my mobile that the files are synced, in the Sync settings menu, and it is

Expectation:
The folder .obsidian-android appears on my laptop.

Actual:
The folder .obsidian-android is missing from my laptop.

Background:
I am using my vault differently between my phone and my laptops. I have different plugins, different plugin settings, different appearances, etc.
My usage is so different that I thought having 2 separate configurations would make sense — one for laptops (.obsidian) and another for my mobile (.obsidian-android).
This was easily achieved by following the help at Configuration folder - Obsidian Help.

What I wanted was to be able to backup both my configurations via the Git plugin which i run from my laptops. This is impossible right now as the android configuration folder is not synced to my desktop.

I tried to figure this out on my own so i looked over multiple links. Here are my findings, and why I believe this is a bug:

Forum links:

A hunch about the problem and solution
I believe the reason for this not-syncing to my laptops is due to the mention in the help website:

Folders that begin with a . (e.g., .obsidian-android) are treated as hidden folders and are not synced.

This leads me to believe obsidian has the following rules:

  1. obsidian by default does not sync any .folder, either device → server or server → device
  2. obsidian has a hardcoded rule to sync everywhere the .obsidian folder
  3. obsidian has a hardcoded rule to sync only in upload direction the .configuration folder

Combining rules 1-3 gets me to my current situation: a custom configuration folder is synced to Sync, but is not synced to my other devices. Correct from the perspective of obsidian rules, incorrect from my perspective (the rule of least astonishment?).

Maybe a solution to this bug would be for obsidian to do things transparently:

  • automatically add all .folders to sync ignore (a list which the user can already see and modify), and sync that list between all devices, outside of vault
  • allow the user to remove any .folder from sync ignore, such that the folder is either uploaded OR downloaded
  • set up sync to always remove from sync ignore the current .configuration folder
  • remove the hardcoded rules to sync .configuration folder (whether .obsidian which syncs both ways, or .configuration folder which syncs only one way)

Environment

SYSTEM INFO:
	Operating system: android 15 (asus ASUS_AI2302)
	Obsidian version: 1.8.9 (195)
	API version: v1.8.9
	Login status: logged in
	Language: en
	Catalyst license: none
	Live preview: on
	Base theme: light
	Community theme: none
	Snippets enabled: 0
	Restricted mode: off
	Plugins installed: 2
	Plugins enabled: 2
		1: Omnisearch v1.26.1
		2: Text Extractor v0.5.2

RECOMMENDATIONS:
	Community plugins: for bugs, please first try updating all your plugins to latest. If still not fixed, please try to make the issue happen in the Sandbox Vault or disable community plugins.
1 Like
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Hello. You have the incorrect expectations.

Obsidian Sync only syncs whatever config folder you set up on a device. It does not sync all possible config folders to all devices.

If you had multiple android devices all configured to use .obsidian-android, those would be kept in sync.

1 Like
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Thanks for the explanation.

4

WhiteNoise, do you know why the limitation? And, is there an official way to clone a config folder so that I don’t have to start my iPhone Obsidian configuration from scratch, and then again in my iPad?

This was all mindlessly simple when I synced through iCloud because the dotfolders got synced just like any other folder. But now that I use Obsidian Sync this is a mess without apparent solution. Which is terribly ironic!

2 Likes
5

You are never getting this behavior with Obsidian Sync, it’s the main reason I got offf sync and also use iCloud now… I didn’t know this when I was using sync, you will always be tuning config along the way, I thought it was normal to make any change on all my 4 devices (“hm I was pretty sure I fixed this already”, I’ve even had occasions where I had to install a whole plugin I configured hours before on another device). Sometimes sync got it, but for many many plugins and core config things are just not or very badly synced.

You’d expect native sync to keep the whole obsidian vault in sync no matter what type of file. It’s like if you want a proper multi device experience you have to figure out your own sync method. Which I did, iCloud with git as a second layer of sync/backup (iCloud has it’s issues, git allows you to easily mitigate the terrible iCloud syncing behavior; if you see any weird changes, just force pull to HEAD before you start working on a device).

2 Likes
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Yep, I’m cozying up to the idea of just moving back to iCloud. Even, turns out that since last September there’s functionality to pin down files so that they stay on-device, which should make it even better than it was.

@Kaleo , how frequently have you seen problems needing of mitigation through git? I was pretty happy with plain iCloud during the months I used it.

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Too frequent to be honest, especially if a device has been “offline” for a while (macbook, few days at office and home desktop turned off) you will often see so much changes in your worktree.

It’s now kind of a habit to commit before closing obsidian/ending my day.

Me too, it was when I missed a file I was 100% sure I should’ve had I became sus about relying on iCloud (it was literally sitting in iCloud on one device “Waiting to upload”. The scary thing is that you don’t really know the iCloud fuckups until it’s too late (or if you use git)

For example, my desktop iMac was turned off for 3 days, after iCloud indicated it was synced, I open Obsidian and saw over 200+ changes in my worktree after a git pull, where in a perfect scenario, you ideally should only see 0 changes, at the worst a workspace.json or some silly data.json file that adjusted while opening Obsidian.

I must say, it’s only that I rely on Obsidian so much that it became worth it to “finetune/configure” my Sync solution. That being said, once you use git for notes, it’s hard to leave, it gives a certain peace of mind to see what’s happening in your vault. It’s also very convenient when u’re doing mass edits, search/replace etc.

Don’t get me wrong though, ideally an enduser shouldn’t be bothered with keeping devices in sync at all, it should just work, especially if you’re paying for it, both OBS Sync and iCloud are performing poorly here. (we can blame Apple for this, it’s not an OBS issue, however it’s the only build-in solution next to sync. It would be nice if I can just stop worrying about the sync state one day.