Obsidian Sync - Sync hidden files as well

Use case or problem

Obsidian sync is ignoring all hidden files and directories currently. Some plugins and tools use hidden files (starting with a dot) to store their settings, which excludes them from Obsidian sync.

Some plugins allow to change the settings file to a different one, but I still think it makes sense to allow syncing of hidden files, and have those still be hidden in the main obsidian window. There is no need to have settings file be visible and editable from withing Obsidian.

Allowing syncing of hidden files means the Obsidian vault across multiple machines is actually identical, instead of somewhat identical minus hidden files.

Proposed solution

Allow syncing of hidden files similar to how “all file types” sync is an option in the sync settings. It could be optional, or even manually specifying which files should be synced.

Current workaround (optional)

  • Copy the hidden file to a non-hidden one (replace . with _), copy back on the other machine after syncing is done
  • Use other software to sync hidden files only, or use other software to automatically do the copying roundtrip I described above
12 Likes

Wanted to bump this to see if there is interest

1 Like

This would be helpful for me. I have a plugin I’m working on that currently stores all data in the main plugin data.json file, but that file could get really big, and end up taking a lot of memory. It would be nice to be able to split up that data per file, and load it as needed, keeping the memory usage lower, and the time it takes to load smaller.

This would be helpful to me as well for storing configuration like .obsidian.vimrc for the vim plugin.

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Hey, this would be a really simple quality of life change for Obsidian Sync.
I find it really odd that hidden files are excluded, to be honest!

If I were using Git or Google Drive, I would have no problem syncing hidden files (or at least having the option to do so).

Arbitrarily not syncing files seems against the ethos of Obsidian.

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I would like to be able to sync my .editorconfig files and similar.

I’d also like to have this capability.
Smart Connections plugin uses .smart-connections/ directory to store embeddings information. This directory needs to be synced to use the plugin on multiple devices.
However, currently, Obsidian Sync does not sync this directory.

Having an option to synchronize such a directory would be very helpful.