Obsidian Sync: Self-Hosted Server

At the moment, vault sharing is on the short-term roadmap, self-hosted sync server is not.

Thank you for your quick response!

Is there an estimate of what short-term means?

Is there a way to increase the position of self-hosted sync on the roadmap? Do users with commercial licenses have some voting rights on road map prioritization?

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There is a roadmap of things that will happen https://trello.com/b/Psqfqp7I/obsidian-roadmap

There are no time estimates attached. To show support for a FR you can hearth the relative thread on the forum and comment on it.

Especially for people who host many services themselves, this would be a really nice feature. I hope this could be done at some point in the future.

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I’m using CloudRon for home/small-office business apps and there are not that many nice Notion open source alternatives with self-hosted service available, and Obsidian is clearly the one (I’m a newbie who fall in love and migrating to Notion everything, after a long history of trials and errors) - having self-hosted app for a small / personal use that I could easily spin off on my CloudRon would be an absolute killer for me, as I would be able to move it’s use outside of Mac <-> iOS to my Linux and hopefully Web platforms.

Having my brain accessible from anywhere is like a dream.

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Use case or problem

Obsidian sync currently limits the maximum file size for sync and total storage. I often document certain processes with screen captures and mp4 videos, which would exceed the limits of Obsidian sync.

Proposed solution

Allow to set an on-premise/private cloud location of their choice as their storage location. This would reduce the overall load from your back end to. An other possibility would be to split up the plain .md files and sync them over the existing back end and allow “media/big file/lfs” sync with a second method. (SSH, S3 URL, …). The split approach would also allow to implement large file sync on request, since mobile devices usually do not have that much storage available offline.

An other approach would be, to fully support OneDrive or similar on all platforms, which support the concept of online and offline file storage.

I would personally even do not care, when this would be a paid feature.

Current workaround (optional)

Syncing with other methods like OneDrive, Dropbox, etc. (Currently not always working seamless).

Related feature requests (optional)

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Self Hosting would surely be a great way to alleviate Obsidian-side server load and also allow for complete freedom on the users side.
+5 for this FR as I know quite a few active users who are not on this forum …

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I’m wondering whether the Self-hosted LiveSync community plugin makes this feature request unnecessary.

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I am not familiar with that plugin. There are several features that were implemented as third party plugins and then reimplemented in core. So let’s keep this open.

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Still wishing this feature actually gets implemented into obsidian

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I have a compromise solution that would require minimal work on your end.

The first step would be publishing the current Sync API definition, the bare minimum that would allow one to implement their own - I’d argue that a standard OpenAPI schema would be more than enough (and I want to presume that you use OpenAPI internally, since it’s an awesome tool).

Then, the only thing needed to be done is to add an option for a custom endpoint when you set Sync up. Maybe even throw in a “you’re connecting to an untrusted server, please make sure your data is safe, we’re not responsible if your cat turns your microwave into a nuclear bomb, etc.” disclaimer for good measure.

This way, people who really want to host their own Sync server can write their own implementation of it, but most will still use the officially recommended service.

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I would also appreciate a native solution for syncing with a server of choice via Webdav.
Specially for iOS.

Also due to the Data Protection Law in germany (BDSG) we are not allowed to store personal information of other people on servers that are not fulfilling the requirements of the DSGV-regulation of the BDSG. Meaning für businesses it would be illegal to manage confidential data with Obsidian Sync or Sync via iCloud if they don’t fulfill the DSGV.
iCloud does as far as I know not fulfill it, servers where I know that they fulfill it are hosted in germany. Dropbox fulfills it, maybe by hosting on servers located in germany.
So by having the possibility to sync to a self chosen server, also this could be solved.

Thank you for reading and kind regards

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Personally I would be more interested in a solution that involved using a self configured solution like S3 or an EFS equivalent.

My use case is an obsidian service deployed in kubernetes (EKS) that I want to be accessible from mobile devices & a web-browser, and can be simultaneously accessed/edited by multiple users.

I am imagining that this can be accomplished by implementing an S3 compatible storage API (that way something like minio could be used too) or still using the desktop like file storage but assuming/requiring that a storage volume like EFS will be used, and making sure that simultaneous access from separate processes can occur. Perhaps both?

Self-hosted LiveSync plugin

  1. vrtmrz/obsidian-livesync
    GitHub - vrtmrz/obsidian-livesync

Self-hosted LiveSync is a community-implemented synchronization plugin.

Features

  • Visual conflict resolver included.
  • Bidirectional synchronization between devices nearly in real-time
  • You can use CouchDB or its compatibles like IBM Cloudant.
  • End-to-End encryption is supported.

How to use

  1. Setup IBM Cloudant
  2. (Fly.io)
  3. Setup your CouchDB
  1. obsidian-livesync/setup_own_server.md at main · vrtmrz/obsidian-livesync
    obsidian-livesync/docs/setup_own_server.md at main · vrtmrz/obsidian-livesync · GitHub

Setup CouchDB to your server

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Could Obsidian at least add support for file system browsing on IOS? I have a NAS mapped through the Files app that I keep my vaults on and would love to access that through the app

It’s not possible

It’s not that easy Full File System Access For The iOS App (Open Existing Vault/Folder)

I don’t know if this is what you are after…I’m a newbie at this. But…
I have an Obsidian vault that I sync to a local server with FE File Explorer app. I think it’s called Owlfiles now. I can sync the Obsidian folders to my iPhone with FE File Explorer app on my phone and even edit the basic markdown files and resync and the changes will show up on my computer.

There isn’t much of an issue with trust because the notes are end-to-end encrypted. That is, the notes are stored on server encrypted and you have the key.

For personal use this is fine and in fact reassuring, but if the encryption is not at least auditable then there is still an issue of trust that makes this insufficient for many business environments.

You can use Nextcloud with WebDAV to remotely mount your files on android, use DAVx^5 to do that.

This might be a good use case for something like Amazon Machine Images.

This would let the obsidian developers charge a fee (perhaps $5/month) while allowing Obsidian to be run for users who want more storage, different availability profiles, or even on-prem capabilities with AWS Outposts, government cloud, or other private AWS cloud options.