Hi, I am trying to figure out how to use one Obsidian vault with two user accounts on one Mac, can you please help?
This is a screenshot that occurs in the top right corner of the window every time that I try to type something on some obsidian files:
I did some research into permissions on Mac and now understand how to avoid this error and seamlessly sync between users is most scenarios, but there is one big issue that I am trying to figure out how to resolve. The issue is that I haven’t been able to figure out how to share Obsidian documents across Mac user accounts without needing to manually update permissions whenever I create a new document
Here’s what I did and where I’m at now:
First, I moved an Obsidian vault to the “Shared” folder that exists by default on Mac OS.
(I expected that the Mac would automatically change the sharing and permissions of each file and folder that I move into the “Shared” folder to have the same permissions settings as the “Shared” folder, but it does not seem to do this for some reason. Instead, it requires me to click “Get Info” on each file or folder in the “Shared” folder and manually change the permission for each file or folder individually in the “Get Info” window for each file and folder.)
Next, I manually changed the permission of the folder for the Obsidian vault to allow both users to “Read & Write.”
When I change the permission of the folder for the Obsidian vault, it also requires me to individually change the permission for each file within the folder (or each document within the vault, in Obsidian’s terminology) by going into the “Get Info” window for each file.
I figured out that I could click the gear icon in the bottom of the “Get Info” window and click “Apply to enclosed items” to apply the permissions settings of the vault folder to all of the existing files (or documents) within the vault folder. I did this and it works perfectly to allow me to work on existing documents within a vault from multiple users without receiving any errors.
However, the only issue is that it does not work for new documents that were created after I changed the permissions for the folder. Whenever I create a new document in the vault, it requires me to go back into the finder to manually update the permissions for the note (or re-apply the permission settings to enclosed items for the vault folder). I can do this and it works fine, but it is time consuming and I would much prefer to be able to seamlessly share notes between users without needing to go into finder to update permissions whenever I create a new document.
It doesn’t make sense to me why the Mac permissions system is working in this way. When I put a file or folder into my Shared folder, I want it to automatically inherit the permissions of the Shared folder - I want it to be “Shared.” I don’t understand what the purpose of the Shared folder is if it requires me to manually update the permissions for each file or folder after adding it to the Shared folder.
Similarly, I want all of the files in a folder to automatically inherit the permissions of the parent folder. I don’t understand why Mac OS would require me to manually click “Apply to all enclosed items” and not give me any option to automatically do this for all newly created files in the folder.
There is also a “Shared folder” checkbox in the “Get Info” window (and an associated File Sharing tab in Mac System Preferences) and I thought that this might be the solution that I’m looking for. However, it appears that this is only useful for sharing files on a local network using SMB or AFP protocols, but I want to just share the files locally on my own hard drive without using a network.
This issue doesn’t seem to be specific to Obsidian, so maybe it would be best to ask a more general Mac forum, but I’m hoping that someone here will know how to fix this because I’m planning on using it with Obsidian and I’m not sure if Obisidian might have any specific settings or tricks to make this work better.
Can anyone please advise on how to share Obsidian documents across Mac user accounts without needing to manually update permissions whenever I create a new document?
Also (more generally), is there any way to make files and folders that are added to the Shared folder (or any other folder) on Mac automatically inherit their parent folder’s permissions settings?
Is there anything that I’m missing or misunderstanding to make this work correctly?
It seems like it should be so simple but I haven’t yet been able to figure out how to make it work with Obsidian and Mac OS. I am using Mac OS Catalina 10.15.7, by the way.
Thank you.