Don’t use this much right now, but if it became portable I think I’d use it a TON for work.
+1 for portable mode.
Cheers and great job so far!
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+1 for portable
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I also think it would be great to have Portable Mode of Obsidian (No registry, saving data to the local folder).
Even if it is set by a flag to the launcher.
In the meantime I created my own launcher:
@echo off
:: Creating Folders
if not exist "%~dp0User\ProgramData" mkdir "%~dp0User\ProgramData"
if not exist "%~dp0User\Public" mkdir "%~dp0User\Public"
if not exist "%~dp0User\AppData\Roaming" mkdir "%~dp0User\AppData\Roaming"
if not exist "%~dp0User\Documents" mkdir "%~dp0User\Documents"
if not exist "%~dp0User\AppData\Local\Temp" mkdir "%~dp0User\AppData\Local\Temp"
:: Setting Env Variables
set ALLUSERSPROFILE=%~dp0User\ProgramData\Roaming
set APPDATA=%~dp0User\AppData
set LOCALAPPDATA=%~dp0User\AppData\Local
set HOMEPATH=%~dp0User
set ProgramData=%~dp0User\ProgramData
set Public=%~dp0User\Public
set TEMP=%~dp0User\AppData\Local\Temp
set TMP=%~dp0User\AppData\Local\Temp
set USERPROFILE=%~dp0User
:: if not exist "%dp0User\Documents\Obsidian" goto message
goto message
goto start
:message
echo PORTABLE Obsidian
echo -------------------------------
pause
:start
start Obsidian.exe
Save is as ObsidianLauncher.bat in the folder of Obsidian after extracting it using 7-Zip.
It won’t handle registry cleanup but it will keep what’s saved in files in the application folder.
By the way, I’d suggest the developers to create a PortableApps variant.
If there application doesn’t use registry and it will add a flag for local storage of data (Or at least choosing the path for storage) I don’t mind creating it on my own.
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Yeah, in my Windows days PortableApps was a great way of carrying things around.
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Thanks @Royi for your workaround am going to try it.
Has there been any more work on the “portable mode”
Thanks for any help
Have a great day and a better weekend…
Having an HDD with your notes, files and thoughts its an amazing experience that I do recommend, but when traveling we find ourselves either are working on a computer that has Obsidian installed, or out of luck.
I do understand some security problems like having our credentials being moved around might not be the ideal, yet a lightweight client that could be opened on the fly from any computer is a very big selling point.
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Joplin has a portable version on Windows. That’s really helpful. A portable version on Windows should be a standard to any note taking app. As much as I enjoy using Obsidian, I am feeling disappointed by this limitation 
.
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+1 for portable
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Agreed. I switched to Joplin for exactly this reason. It is also FREE, Open-Source, and can sync between devices for 1/4 the price of Obsidian’s $100/yr!!
Notes in Joplin are also not stored in plain text, but in a SQLite database (last I checked). I think it’s important to mention this trade off
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For non-technical users, what (if any) consequences are there for not having registry cleanup handled by your workaround? If there are consequences, is there a way to mitigate them somehow? My use case includes multiple installs with third-party syncing. And thanks for sharing your workaround!
+1 for PortableApp version. This would be truly awesome, if possible
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+1 for portable version, please
I haven’t watched Registry to see if Obsidian use it or not.
Have you tracked it? Anyone knows if it uses or not?
+1 for portable version.
I recently had to reinstall my OS and have 90% of my software in portable version.
So right after the OS installation I was back to where I was before by just using the same folder with all the portable software again.
This is much better than any package management (winget, chocolatey…) or even worse, installing software manually.
Only Obisidian sticks out like a sore thumb with all the main programs I use 
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I looked and on quick inspection it doesn’t seem to. It does store app stuff (versus vault stuff) in the AppData directory. If they had this, as an option, stored in a sub-directory of the directory where you place Obsidian, and handled vaults just like today, you’d have a portable version. you could have the vault on your USB or on a PC or a mix.
Seems like it wouldn’t be a big change to make.
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How could one contact the developers in order to have their agreement to create a PortableApps pack for Obsidian?
It will expose Obsidian to many more users at once.
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Please don’t send email regarding Feature Requests. This is the place for feature requests.
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OK. So how could one make a progress in the direction I have mentioned?
How can I get a written agreement from the developers to publish Obsidian in a PortableApps package?
I sent you a PM.
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