Phone not showing up in Obsidian’s ‘Open folder as vault’ picker (USB connected, visible in Explorer)

Help
1

What I’m trying to do

Hi everyone,

I’ve recently started a new job. It’s possible to install Obsidian on my work computer, but I don’t want to sync my entire personal vault to the work machine. Still, I’d like to have access to my private notes (from my main vault) on my smartphone.

:backhand_index_pointing_right: My question:
Is it possible to connect my smartphone via USB, use it as external storage, and have the Obsidian app on my desktop access the vault stored on the phone?

Things I’ve tried

I’ve already tried doing this directly, but when I attempt to open a new folder as a vault, my smartphone doesn’t show up at all in the file picker.

Has anyone managed to set something like this up, or is this not possible due to how Android/iOS handle USB connections?

Thanks in advance for your help! :folded_hands:

2

I don’t know about the smarphone, it may have some restrictions with accessing files.
I personally use flash USB drive at my work computer. I also use FreeFileSync to sync between my phone and this drive without internet (I have limited internet access at work). Maybe it can help with your use case.

3

so you have three devices? your work desktop, then your flash USB drive and your smartphone, and these 3 devices are connected via USB und synced with freefilesync?

4

Yes, I connect flash drive stick to the computer and the phone too and sync between them, so no files are kept directly on the computer.

1 Like
5

nice! I’ll try that! I guess you use something like veracrypt for data security of your flash drive, right?

6

Note that copies of some of your notes may end up cached on the work computer (not as obviously accessible as if you synced them, but still not something I would personally want; I would just use my phone directly). I assume you’ve checked that your workplace doesn’t mind you doing things like this, but if not, that’s something to make sure of too.

7

My main priority is to access the vault directly from my phone via a USB connection to my work computer (where I’m allowed to run Obsidian).
Using an external flash drive, as @reaty suggested, would be my second option — though I guess the files might still end up being cached on the work computer anyway, right @CawlinTeffid?

The problem: when I try to open the vault stored on my phone using “Open folder as vault” in Obsidian on my work computer, my phone doesn’t appear as a drive in the file picker.

What I find strange is that I can see and access the files on my phone just fine through Windows Explorer — but not in Obsidian’s folder picker.

:right_arrow: Does anyone know why the phone’s storage doesn’t appear in Obsidian’s folder picker, even though it’s accessible in Windows Explorer?
Is this a limitation of how Obsidian handles external devices, or something specific to Android’s USB file system?

8

Right. Obsidian is running on the computer, so it does its caching there.

9

As far as I understand Android does not allow you to edit any files on it from the computer. You can delete files or copy-paste them, but not modify existing files or create new ones. Because of this running Obsidian using the vault directly on Android would not be possible anyway.