I don’t believe you can change the location of those files whether in a normal install or portable install, so it will just be the default location.
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My experience is that this still writes to %APPDATA%.
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+1 for this.
I was able to install obsidian on a work computer in the past when I had admin permissions, but I no longer have them. I’m concerned I’ll lose access if my installer can no longer update the app, the computer has an issue requiring a rebuild, or I get a new machine. I really love what I’ve set up with obsidian, but this limitation makes me question if I should continue investing time into it.
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Hi - have you chosen not to make a portable for 1.03?
Not at all, I just didn’t know if there was any demand (for this build as opposed to an official one).
Here you go: Obsidian Portable 1.0.3
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I do hope a portable install will be available soon. It just makes sense.
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Thanks boss. When you have time, 1.1?
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the greatest, you are… thanks! have you taken a look at the latest v10 of enigma? did you use that for this? do you notice and changes in features/portable performance? /ease of portable creation?
I’m adding my support for a portable version. Hopefully the devs will consider it at some point!
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CAUTION - WORD TO THE UNWISE…
First off, thank you very much AlanG. This is super helpful. But I did experience a serious problem…
WARNING TO ANYONE TRYING THIS: BACKUP all your vaults and settings within Vaults folder(s) and AppData location(s) for obsidian BEFORE trying this!!
Stupid me, I assumed the portable install/tryout would leave my old very carefully customized install the way it was, but its totally destroyed now, and I have to rebuild it …seemingly from scratch.
Not sure where the interference is (happened); I will probably figure it out after I rebuild it. What a freakin’ nightmare.
================
Quick Update Here:
Well ::whew::, I happened to have a backup and fortunately was able to restore my old setup.
Unfortunately, during the restore I had some trouble, so now I am uncertain exactly what/where the problem resides (in order to share it with you all).
I suspect its in one of the “.obsidian” folders either in the Vault folders themselves OR the AppData (Windows) folder -obviously-, but until I fully retest I wont know.
I think THE QUESTION is going to be …is there a way to assign unique “.obsidian” folders by use of different versions of Obsidian (Portable and/or the prime install).
The reason I would want to use different versions is to test out features, and possibly to rebuild a new/alternate workscape for one or more vaults that I can switch to for taking advantage of features I may want that only exist in one or the other of the versions.
Example: The only version of Andy Matuschak Mode that works with all the features I use/need is an old one, and it only works in an older version of Obsidian. The newer Obsidian with Stacked Tabs is too limited but has other features I would take advantage of during certain editing sessions.
Anyway. I will post back here when I have more info, but its going to be a while before I can circle back to this.
Hi @HTHawks, yes the portable version still writes to the normal %appdata% location, which cannot be changed. This is mentioned above in the thread here, and in the posts above and below it.
As the portable version was created for people who cannot install the normal Obsidian, this doesn’t seem to be much of an issue.
If you’re wanting to run it alongside an installed Obsidian, it might not be the right solution, as the same %appdata% folder and settings will be shared (and impacted) by all the installed Obsidians.
I have updated the Github readme with this same information.
Thanks Alan.
Maybe it goes without saying, but .obsidian will also be read/written to when opening a vault (with any Obsidian version). You could try using the override config folder setting to have .obsidian-119, .obsidian-0159, etc, config folders, but I’m not sure if that setting persists when opening and closing multiple Obsidian versions.
Thanks …yeah, I just noticed that feature. I will be looking into it.
thank you, appreciate your taking the time to do this - regarding the appdata aspect, i think there are some virtualization apps, probably the leading ones, that allow for the moving of all folders to one single folder, so that you can yank out a USB and continue work on another machine like nothing happened. program folder, cache, working directory, data directory, all of it. I havent used enigma yet, but I will. Am I to infer that enigma does not provide that facility at all in its current development iteration, or that perhaps it does, but there’s some sort of difficulty in handling that with obs? question my aside, again, thank you AlanG
+1(000) to this, please implement this.
The existing solutions above are not really passable. The main point of a portable app is not just that it doesn’t need an install - an installed Obsidian program folder can already be just copied and it would work - but that everything the app needs, all the stored user data (/AppData/Roaming/) can reside in the same folder (or even better, at a path of the user choosing).
This wouldn’t require much effort. Most popular community Electron apps offer portable versions.
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