Sync settings between vaults (special case)

What I’m trying to do

  1. Set real-time sync between vault, index, where vault and index are different vaults
  2. Sync vault theme and appearance settings between desktop and android client, while having all other configurations and settings distinct between them.

Things I have tried

I tried to use hard links and symlinks to sync the directories across different paths. I don’t think it’s productive to go into details of why this didn’t work, but:

  • Hard links don’t work on directories.
  • Symlink is a file, so if the file points to a directory on a different path, it’s still (1) a file so obsidian won’t read it as a proper directory to read settings from. (2) the app cannot read settings from another location by definition.

I kinda hoped for (1) to not be true, sync GPT spouted:

When you access the symlink (e.g., via cd Obsidian/Index/.obsidian/themes or by using it in a program), it will effectively take you to the original directory.

Which I tested not to be true (correct me if I’m wrong). In an article from howtogeek it worked the way GPT described. Maybe it’s because I’m on a Mac. Everything in the shell looks fine, but in finder it shows a file…

Maybe it could work, but even though I’m on a Mac, I’m not a fan of simplistic user-facing software that does the job for you without much freedom to customise…