Sync Settings & Hotkeys Between Multiple Computers

[blairfrandeen]

I’m able to sync my vault files between two computers using my institution’s synced folder. However, I don’t understand how to get settings to sync. I read some other topics that pointed me to the \Appdata\Roaming\obsidian\ObsidianCache\ folder. I copied the .json files from this folder on my main computer to the same folder on my secondary computer, but opening the vault in Obsidian on a secondary computer just generates a new .json file. I don’t want to have manually to go through all of my hotkeys and other settings in order to have the same interfaces on the secondary computer.

Can someone please point me to where this settings file lives, and how to get Obsidian to recognize it?

Thanks

[ryanjamurphy]

Hm. Settings should be per-vault, I think. So as long as you’re opening the exact same vault on both computers, it should be the same settings.

Inside your vault, there should be a hidden .obsidian folder at the root that contains the vault’s settings.

I may not have that right, though, or maybe it’s only that certain settings are per-vault…

[blairfrandeen]

Yeah, the .obsidian folder is definitely there, and it has what looks like settings files, but it doesn’t seem to register them. I have a lot of custom hotkeys, templates, and command sequences I use daily that will be a pain to re-integrate.

[ryanjamurphy]

Interesting. No settings are picked up at all? No theme, workspace, or plugins?

How are you syncing the two folders?

How did you initially set up “both” vaults?

[blairfrandeen]

The custom .css theme got picked up, but I had to enable the custom CSS option before that happened. Workspaces, plugins, hotkeys, etc. all have to be set manually.

I have a folder on my hard drive that automatically gets synced using Druva InSync. I copied my entire vault folder there (including the .obsidian folder), and then had Obsidian open the vault in that location from my primary computer. My secondary folder has a similar shared folder, and once the vault folder populated there, I had obsidian open the vault in that folder.

I may try uninstalling obsidian from the secondary computer and trying again, maybe it got confused since I may have had the vault open before the .obsidian folder got copied over. Other than that I’m not sure how to proceed.

[ryanjamurphy]

No, it sounds like I’m wrong about sync sharing settings between vaults. Sorry! I’ll have to try a few things when I get back to my desktop, or maybe someone else has some suggestions as to application support files to copy between computers…

Edit: see Sam’s comment below. Something fishy’s going on here!

[sam.baron]

I’m not following your sync setup, but all app settings are definitely in the .obsidian folder of the vault. The core app settings are in .obsidian/config and then each plugin has their own json file. There’s also a .obsidian/workspace file for the active workspace.

Does your sync software provide a log or sync history that you can review?

[blairfrandeen]

Ok, I started over and it’s working now. I uninstalled Obsidian from the secondary computer, deleted the \Appdata\Roaming\obsidian\ObsidianCache\ folder, copied my vault to the shared location again, re-installed Obsidian, and it works fine. All hotkeys and CSS and settings came over this time.

My theory is that the first time I did it, I opened the vault before the .obsidian folder had been copied over, and Obsidian made it’s own version of that which conflicted with the version that I wanted.

Thank you for looking into this with me!

[Dor]

There’s a potential problem with all sync solutions if files change during sync. Avoiding any of these issues with Obsidian ought to be one of the advantages of Sync when it arrives.
Not that I’ve had any issues with the much simpler Dropbox solution.

[kldx]

I’m having the exactly same challenge here - at least these:

• Core/community plugins and their settings don’t work across devices
• Hotkey settings don’t work across devices

Additionally:

• Daily notes setting doesn’t detect already created note on another device and daily note template is re-applied to an existing note’ s beginning

I’m having two Macs and two IOS devices that I’m using the vault with. I had a look at .obsidian folder:

• on one of my Macs (where I have just recently defined settings in the app) I can see plugin folders, settings, hotkey definition file etc. ok
• although, I can’t find file named ‘config’ there - if that should still exist to store core configuration parameters… ?
• on another computer settings don’t sync and there is a possibility (high probability to accidentally) define different settings per vault

[kldx]

Argh… Just noticed sync configuration settings in the client on the newer version… :-/ All is working just great as far as you just know how to use the software I really shouldn’t be reading and replying this old threads in the forum. Case closed.