I have two W11 computers linked to a shared drive … I am running Obsidian on both. Because software configuration is different on each machine sometimes I use Obsidian on machine 1 and sometimes on machine 2.
However, I am finding the ‘filing’ model very confusing All I want to do is access the same vault from two instances of Obsidian but that doesn’t look as if it is possible.
Can vaults be shared? I want to access a the same document from two machines (at different times). I can’t work out how to do that …
In relation to this, the current design of Obsidian does not make it easy to identify the physical location of a vault … though again, as a newbie I may just be using an old-style folders and files mental model that doesn’t apply to vaults … (e.g. I can’t use File Exploer to copy/move Obsid files from one part of the vault to another …)
Any guidance appreciated … (assuming that what I have written makes any sense!)
!!! Just noticed that as I was writing a whole bunch of similar posts have popped up. My use case is similar to several of those but not quite. Clearly this is an issue that affects a fair few users. Perhaps deveopers will be looking at this?
PS I love the approach to writing that Obsidian offers. I can live with insular vaults since the benefits are larger than switching between machines but …
I don’t know what your shared drive configuration is like. But that should definitely be possible. What leads you to think it isn’t possible?
Vaults don’t have to be “shared”. They can just be opened. In Obsidian, Open another vault → Open folder as vault and choose the folder of your vault. The folder of your vault is the folder that contains the hidden .obsidian settings folder.
How so? What makes you say this?
You chose the location, did you not?
In your vault switcher, it should show the path under the name of the vault.
In any note, you can run Reveal... The command is different depending on OS. It is Reveal in Finder in MacOS.
In the vault switcher, there is a hamburger menu beside each vault, and the “Reveal…” command is available there too.
You certainly can. Or you should be able to. Again, this might be a limitation of the shared drive you are using. Perhaps Obsidian is getting read/write problems.
What do you experience when you try?
If you open up the developer console in Obsidian, you might be able to spot some errors. (Ctrl-Shift-i depending on your OS.)
It’s my understanding that obsidian does not support real time changes to the same file from to different machines unless you are using obsidian sync or some kind of plug-in like github. I’m pretty sure the OP is talking about modifying a live file from two different machines.
