Comment by hu3

4 months ago

Can you use something like iCloud, Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive to get sync for free? Does it work well?

Many do that with Joplin.

You can use iCloud but it's quite slow.

There are different solutions really, some people use Git and treat the whole vault as a repo. Though I find it quite annoying to manage, also cause not every platform supports git.

That's also why I started writing a plugin to sync with any GitHub repo, it uses the GH REST APIs so it can be used on any platform. https://github.com/silvanocerza/obsidian-github-sync

I'm still actively developing it but the core features work nicely.

I synced using Google Drive on the desktop, and a third party app to pull and sync a local directory on my phone for mobile. Took a little bit of setup but it worked mostly fine. Now I run the paid sync subscription, and the main difference to me is that there's basically zero wait between replication across copies (unless your computer has been off for a while and it has to fetch a bunch at once). Eliminating merge issues and having everything "just work" was worth it to me.

  • I plan to pay if I migrate from Joplin for sure.

    Easier sync and supporting developer = Win win.

    • Especially in these times I think it's important to support any software that is simply doing a good job for a reasonable fee. Rarer and rarer unfortunately.

I’m using github to sync 3 instances (iPhone, desktop and one web-based instance). It needs some upfront set up and configuration, and I had to buy a git client app for my iPhone (one time purchase), but it’s been working with near 0 maintenance for 3+ years now. I have versioning, and full auto sync (automatic commit, push and pulls).

Yes, but I ended up going with Obsidian Sync for file history and "it just works."

I tried Obsidian Git for automatic pulls, but frequently had file conflicts even if I wasn't working on files at the same time. Is there another sync tool designed for text that has file version history?

Works okay with iCloud but follow their iCloud setup though; it’s important for a sync related issue.

you can use onedrive to sync the files, and there's also community-made plugins for onedrive and git