14 ms·

Show HN: Open-source obsidian.md sync server

416 points by _k2vp 3y ago

https://github.com/acheong08/obsidian-sync https://github.com/acheong08/obsidian-sync Hello HN, I'm a recent high school graduate and can't afford $8 per month for the official sync service, so I tried my hand at replicating the server. It's still missing a few features, such as file recovery and history, but the basic sync is working. To the creators of Obsidian.md: I'm probably violating the TOS, and I'm sorry. I'll take down the repository if asked. It's not ready for production and is highly inefficient; Not competition, so I hope you'll be lenient.

threatofrain 3y ago
What's wrong with using Dropbox or Github?
- bitvoid 3y ago
  I can't speak for OP's motives, but one reason one might do this is because you can't sync via Dropbox or Github on iOS. You can only use iCloud or Obsidian Sync.
  - rg111 3y ago
    What about MEGA? Been using this way for years.
    - euazOn 3y ago
      Please would you care to share your workflow? I, too, would love to sync my Obsidian vault via MEGA, but I have only recently switched to an iPhone. On Android, it works perfectly with the 3rd party Autosync for MEGA app (paid, I believe).
  - timrichard 3y ago
    I use Obsidian on MacOS, iOS and Android, and keep my Vault on GitHub. I use Working Copy on iOS and PocketGit on Android to pull and commit/push changes.
    - themadturk 3y ago
      GitHub works ok on iOS with Working Copy, but it seems a little more error prone than Sync, which Just Works. I use Sync for primary syncing, and Obsidian Git for secondary.
  - _lvbh 3y ago
    You’re right! It now works on all platforms natively via the plugin (which does nothing except for replace API endpoints.) works perfectly for me without any third party servers
- oktwtf 3y ago
  I had to shell out for another app[0] on the iPhone to allow for a fairly seamless GitHub workflow. Not sure if it’s changed in recent times. It works great, but I’d imagine something more tightly coupled with obsidian.md would eliminate that need? 0: https://workingcopy.app/ https://workingcopy.app/
  - cjwoodall 3y ago
    I did out together this blog post a while for doing this for free using ashell https://cwoodall.com/posts/2022-01-02-obsidian-ios-sync/ https://cwoodall.com/posts/2022-01-02-obsidian-ios-sync/
- princevegeta89 3y ago
  They are still 3rd parties - only good if you're using E2E encryption. Additionally, Dropbox free version has a 3-device limit at any time. On Android you have to use something like DropSync to enable background syncing which may not be ideal. Git(hub) may be an okay choice though. But there would be issues like no SSH support for Git on Mobile clients.
- msm_ 3y ago
  What's wrong with getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem?
  - threatofrain 3y ago
    Dropbox is a consumer product, while Github is a nerd's product. I put them both to indicate the range of options. Dropbox or iCloud are solutions you could put on a blog for folks who have no interest in learning how to use a CLI.
- lucw 3y ago
  Character by character sync. You type one letter on your desktop, it appears on the mobile app maybe a second later. Dropbox sync can't do that.
aae42 3y ago
i use https://github.com/vrtmrz/obsidian-livesync https://github.com/vrtmrz/obsidian-livesync and self-host a couchdb instance for it... this looks like it might be a bit cleaner once it's all fleshed out...
- codetrotter 3y ago
  CouchDB is pretty nice, and gets less attention on HN than it deserves I think. First time I heard about CouchDB was many years ago. I bought an O’Reilly book about it, even. At the time MongoDB was gaining a lot of traction, and I think because of that many people overlooked CouchDB. I recently remembered CouchDB because I have some projects that could potentially benefit from replication between multiple machines. And in the case of my projects I think the database level would be an appropriate place to do replication. Hence CouchDB is an interesting proposition for my projects. I installed CouchDB on my laptop for the first time in ages, and started inserting documents into it with a third party library for Rust. So far it is working nicely.
  - dzogchen 3y ago
    And CouchDB is still FOSS! I have been obsessed by it the past months. Coming from MongoDB the querying is a bit more limited, but I'd use it over MongoDB in a heartbeat. Very simple to host and even to set up multiple instances. Also CouchDB was embracing serverless before it was cool with their HTTP API.
- fold3 3y ago
  I use this as a docker instance running on my old laptop. It just took a minute to set up and works really well. The sync is as good as apple notes or whatever commercial software there is. Only issue is i could not sync with an old iphone running iOS 12.
surge 3y ago
You're prob not violating ToS since you're not doing it for commercial use, and you're actually reinventing the wheel as a couple of options for that are already available as community plugins. I've been using Remote-save for a while with a almost free private S3 bucket and encryption to sync between my computers and phone for a while. https://github.com/remotely-save/remotely-save https://github.com/remotely-save/remotely-save It supports more than just S3 (as is listed in the README), its just what I use. That said, what you made is pretty cool. I guess you're trying to replace the API/backend similar to Vaultwarden does with BitWarden paid service. For me, its not that I can't afford $8 a month, its just that $8 is to me fairly steep for basic file storage and sync I get for free from some services. $12 a year would be a fair price to me. I get some of it goes to support Obsidian development, but still seems steep, $2-3 a month would be something I'd subscribe for.
- nsteel 3y ago
  Remotely save is excellent. I use it with WebDAV to work between my computers, phone and tablet.
- echelon 3y ago
  If Obsidian stops acheong08, I'm done with Obsidian. I want a durable way to edit, sync, and preserve my notes, not just a pretty interface. I'm happy to pay Obsidian for sync, but if they PM this to only one distribution channel and subsequently enshittify it, I don't want it. Stopping acheong08 would be a bad signal forewarning what's to come.
  - Xeophon 3y ago
    CEO Reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37253639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37253639
  - rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 3y ago
    Dude, just pay the $8, no reason to cluch your pearls like that.
    - 3y ago
dmje 3y ago
FWIW - the sync service provided by Obsidian is really worth paying for. Dropbox / Github just aren't as slick and integrated. The mobile app doesn't work without sync (not without some really nasty workarounds), the option to "view sync version history", the fact that it's rock solid... all worth paying for IMO.
- xmprt 3y ago
  I haven't tried Dropbox or Github or Syncthing like others have suggested but having tried Obsidian Sync I'm not as impressed as everyone else seems to be. Maybe I need to set my bar lower but especially on my phone, background sync doesn't work well and it usually takes a few seconds to load and a few more seconds to sync the data which feels like ages considering all the data required to load it is already on my phone and the diff is a few paragraphs at most.
- _lvbh 3y ago
  > view sync version history Actively working on that. It’s a feature I’ll need since I mess up *very often*
- ytechie 3y ago
  It works great for me just using iCloud Drive.
  - iamdamian 3y ago
    I tried iCloud Drive and didn't mind it. I ended up moving to Sync, though, because 1) it's end-to-end encrypted and 2) I can sync any directory, not just subdirectories of iCloud Drive.
- input_sh 3y ago
  Yeah I can think of 30 different ways to make the sync work, but I can't be bothered to, Sync works really well, and I feel like financially supporting the Obsidian team in some way. $8/month is a bit steep, but I snatched $5/month early bird pricing and I consider that to be a lot more acceptable of a price. Edit: worth pointing out there's a 40% discount for non-profits and students: https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Education+and+non-profit+discount https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Education+and+...
lijok 3y ago
Does anyone know whether Obsidian can do this with some plugin, or whether there's another tool that can: I'm looking for a documentation tool with a decent GUI for editing documentation in, which is backed by git for tracking changes, without having to have git configured locally (for non-engineers).
- _lvbh 3y ago
  I think there are a few plugins via git etc. Syncthing also seems to be recommended but doesn’t work on IOS
- _lvbh 3y ago
  Oh sorry. I misread. Ignore my other comment. I forgot my password and can’t edit using the site. Using third party app for HN
- jazzyjackson 3y ago
  https://www.gitbook.com/ https://www.gitbook.com/
solarkraft 3y ago
Syncthing actually works pretty well when you have a tool that automatically resolves sync conflicts: https://discuss.logseq.com/t/automatically-merge-syncthing-conflicts/13781 https://discuss.logseq.com/t/automatically-merge-syncthing-c...
- karpour 3y ago
  I'm using syncthing with Obsidian but of course i have regular conflicts which i just deal with manually. Thanks for pointing me to this!
  - runjake 3y ago
    FWIW, I get sync conflicts with Obsidian Sync pretty regularly. They're always pretty minor and not worth complaining about, but they happen nonetheless, and it may not be entirely SyncThing's fault.
- freedomben 3y ago
  I'm using Syncthing to keep in sync between a desktop and two Android phones over tailscale, and it works pretty good, but I have to occasionally open the Syncthing app on Android to "bump" it and get it to sync. It's in a git repo (which syncthing handles great even though there are some older posts online telling you not to do that), and on the desktop I can review and "sanity check" stuff and then commit it to ensure it is safe. Overall a good solution.
  - UltimateEdge 3y ago
    Why not exclude the .git directory from being synced, if you're not going to be committing on your mobile devices? This is what I do.
  - ephbit 3y ago
    > .. I have to occasionally open the Syncthing app on Android to "bump" it and get it to sync. Almost the same with me. Turning WIFI off and on again is easier on my Android, it triggers syncthing to sync. But that might also require you to have set the run conditions of syncthing accordingly.
packetlost 3y ago
I wish Obsidian had a better outliner mode/plugin so I could switch to it from Logseq, but I just love the outliner/block mode too much.
- malnourish 3y ago
  Yep; I switched from Obsidian to Logseq because Logseq works the way I always wanted to take notes. They are both great tools, even if Logseq lacks some in the polish department (and honestly, it's pretty good).
  - packetlost 3y ago
    I really wish Logseq had better/more plugins, a less janky sync option, and publish. Maybe it'll get there, but I kinda doubt it. I've toyed with creating a plugin for neovim that parses Logseq formatted markdown and gives me a similar experience, but it would be a lot of work.
    - shanusmagnus 3y ago
      Their text editor is shit, their UI is shit (see e.g., their new right pane), and they keep going off and spending all their energy developing features that nobody is asking for, e.g., whiteboards. I assume most of this is bc they're trying to differentiate somehow after having taken VC funding. Frustrating. Unfortunately, I expect Obsidian to have a serviceable outline mode before I expect Logseq to turn out a polished product. For god's sake, take on that Neovim project, and post about it!
    - istjohn 3y ago
      I was suprised at how smooth Obsidian's vim-mode is.
MH15 3y ago
I've been using the main Obsidian git extension, https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git. Took some work to set it up ergnonomically but it works great now. I enabled auto-commit and push on save, and auto-pull when you start the editor. No merge conflicts yet between two machines. Should note I use Obsidian for a journal, so it's pretty much append-only.
- microflash 3y ago
  Obsidian Git has been working great for me too. I use different configuration directories for each device to avoid configuration conflicts. It works very seamlessly once set up.
kergonath 3y ago
> I'm probably violating the TOS, and I'm sorry. Reverse engineering is fine. It certainly is from a moral point of view, and also from a legal one in a lot of jurisdictions. TOS depend more on the fact that you’ll behave than on whether they can actually be enforced (most have unenforceable clauses).
- w10-1 3y ago
  I think we should be careful when advising young or inexperienced people hacking for the joy of it, lest they make mistakes that are hard to recover. Time is precious -- better to choose wisely than learn from experience. > Reverse engineering is fine...from a legal [perspective] in a lot of jurisdictions Sorry, what jurisdiction permits one to violate a contract against reverse-engineering? This is a pretty big problem that can't be hand-waved away. Companies everywhere have mere copyright on some materials that they make available if you agree e.g., not to reverse-engineer the interface or distribute the materials, essentially hoisting copyright to contract. This is how Java has worked for decades. > Reverse engineering is fine. It certainly is from a moral point of view In this case, the server is how Obsidian funds their work, offering free and paid parts. They're clear about it up front; they don't entice you and switch terms after you're committed. So how is it morally justifiable in this case? > most have unenforceable clauses The "enforcement" is not that they win their case, but the threat that they can take you to court and force you to pay a lot of money to escape the contract, especially in cases where you have significant investments or income. Unless you're dedicated to being so irrelevantly small that no one cares, why waste time building IP you can't benefit from, or telling the world that you don't care? For people starting out, I would recommend picking viable projects, i.e., relevant to others, not illegal, not on dying technologies. They can exemplify not only your skills but also your judgment, and introduce you to the whole lifecycle of OS development if they have any legs. And it may be best to find an unoccupied niche; in this case, there are alternatives already (better to invent than re-invent). (Unless you aspire to being a giant-killer :) That's in part why the standard young-entrepreneur pattern is to pick new applications of emerging technologies, particularly those that irreversibly disrupt old industries or build new markets. In this case there are many note-taking applications with syncing server. The unique project today e.g., might be to update an existing sync alternative to maintain a semantic model and then publish semantic cross-references, or publish a results of AI queries over the evolving set of highly-trafficked semantic topics.
JSavageOne 3y ago
What is it that people love about Obsidian? (not trying to throw shade, genuine question as I never understood the hype) Obsidian is not able to open a local folder on my machine stored in Windows Subsystem for Linux, which for me makes it a non-starter (my personal knowledge base is stored there). I personally prefer the Notion UI but hate being locked into their cloud, so I created an offline-first Notion alternative [1]. Offline mode is totally free (no user registration required), and aiming to add cloud syncing tomorrow or so. Still in active dev so needs a lot of work, but wondering whether others might find this useful. Goal is to make it be able to seamlessly sync across multiple data sources, and also easily to publish files/folders (eg. can currently turn folders into APIs when synced to cloud). [1] https://mindgarden.app https://mindgarden.app
- EspressoGPT 3y ago
  > What is it that people love about Obsidian? (not trying to throw shade, genuine question as I never understood the hype) Tribalism.
- noahmasur 3y ago
  > What is it that people love about Obsidian? When Obsidian launched, there was already a lot of hype building in the note-taking community around Zettelkasten and Roam Research. With Roam, basically any word in your note could immediately link to another note, and you could see backlinks in your notes prominently. However, Roam was both expensive and online-only, so when Obsidian came out and it was: a) polished, b) provided most of the functionality of Roam, and c) was offline and plain-text (also unlike Notion), it was an immediate hit. The other special feature Obsidian offered was easy and powerful customization. The major settings are actually core plugins that can be enabled or disabled (like daily journal, tagging, or slideshows). Plugins and themes are easily discovered and installed from inside the app, which has led to a vibrant and popular plugin community. All you need is one plugin to be indispensable for users to never leave.
- llimllib 3y ago
  - it's simple - (it's also customizable so it doesn't _have_ to be, but I happen to like pretty much the default features) - it's free if you don't need their sync - I just save my vault on an iCloud drive, which is convenient to me, and publish to the web with my own tool - it allows me to keep my files where I want them - it's available on every platform I use - the UI is not distracting, and is Good Enough™
kepano 3y ago
(Obsidian CEO here) Impressive! It's fun to see the diversity of ways people sync/backup their Obsidian files. The nice thing about storing all your notes on your device is that it makes it possible to move and edit your Markdown files in many different ways. That diversity of solutions is what makes the ecosystem of Markdown tools resilient over the long term. There are already a handful of tools that allow you to sync your notes for free, including Git, Syncthing, and some other options more specialized for Obsidian (see community plugins). Obsidian is a small company, we're not VC backed (100% user-supported), so the Sync pricing helps us stay in business and keep the lights on. We also have a 40% educational discount on all our services[1] so you could be paying $4.80 instead of $8 :) Reverse engineering things is a fun technical challenge, and also helps us find potential holes in our system. The main problems I see with your solution: 1. it could easily break in a future update to the app, 2. "Obsidian Sync" is a trademark, so you should consider renaming the repo otherwise it can be confused for an official tool — that would be my only request [1]: https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Education+and+non-profit+discount https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Education+and+...
- dabeeeenster 3y ago
  What a wonderful reply. Thank you and kudos!
- ilyin 3y ago
  Time and again I keep being impressed with your selfless commitment to building and sharing things in the most humane and long-term way. A beautiful example to set, thanks.
  - LorenDB 3y ago
    > Time and again I keep being impressed with your selfless commitment to building and sharing things in the most humane and long-term way. And yet they haven't open sourced the app. That would be truly humane and long-term. As it is, it's just another proprietary app that, if it dies, can't be continued by the community. I don't think monetary issues should be a concern with open sourcing the app - companies like Bitwarden, Gitlab, and New Vector (the company behind Matrix) are doing just fine with their open source products.
dnxx 3y ago
I'm still looking for a way to securely store and sync my Obsidian or Logseq notes with iOS. By "securely" I mean data encrypted at rest on the device, but also encrypted on an external server. It seems impossible.
rodja_ 3y ago
> I'm a recent high school graduate and can't afford $8 per month for the official sync service What happened to the $47000 you got from Apple [1]? [1]: https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/how-i-earned-47000-usd-as-a-high-school-student-a9a68896b3a3 https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/how-i-earned-47000-usd-a...
- Arch485 3y ago
  That's about 1 year of tuition in NA; OP is probably saving it for that
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Dang, if money isn't plentiful, there are way cheaper options in NA than that. A good school can definitely help you network with future successful people and to some orgs the name on the diploma can help open some doors, but the degree is less needed nowadays than it's ever been.
    - _lvbh 3y ago
      It covers 2 years of tuition and a bit of living costs in UK. However, I’ve now lost financial support from my parents since I can “just earn it yourself” and I’m in no hurry to go into debt. Will probably work part time during the first two years to cover whatever is missing.
      - freedomben 3y ago
        that's smart. Working while going to school sucks (that's what I did), but not only is graduating without debt a fantastic feeling and great economic position to be in, but it also made me optimize the monetary consequence of my choices a lot more. When you don't have to pay it off for years, it's very easy for your mind to convince you that you need a new laptop, or a new car, or a generous nightlife budget, etc. Even just new vs. used books makes a big difference in cost.
- vGPU 3y ago
aftbit 3y ago
Nice work, keep scratching itches and you'll go far, whether you take this as a career or just a hobby.
fnfontana 3y ago
I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I've been using and following Obsidian's development since 2020 and I really appreciate the way your company supports the open source community!
AlphaWeaver 3y ago
What I've long been looking for is a sync service that handles syncing these directories of markdown, but then provides value added HTTP APIs on top of them. I can sync my markdown files from place to place with ease, but what I really want is the ability to POST myserver.com/newpage and have it artificially inject a new Markdown file at the path I request. This could be system agnostic, Obsidian, Logseq, and tons of other local markdown knowledge bases could benefit from this.
- icedchai 3y ago
  So you want WebDAV support?
  - stephenr 3y ago
    This would be quite good if it also used SVN's autoversioning mode (essentially a webdav client can create new versions of a document in svn without knowledge of svn).
gettodachoppa 3y ago
> To the creators of Obsidian.md: I'm probably violating the TOS, and I'm sorry. I'll take down the repository if asked. It's not ready for production and is highly inefficient; Not competition, so I hope you'll be lenient. Brother, don't be a wimp. You're giving people an open-source plan B to a closed-source product. Do this with your head and middle fingers raised high. Do you think Richard Stallman apologized to HP for reverse-engineering their printer driver? No, he started the whole open-source movement. If you're worried about legal consequences, learn what people used to do 20 years ago, which is use pseudonyms instead of their real names. Create a burner email, burner identity, new Github account, and give American tech corps the finger as you write what you want.
- _lvbh 3y ago
  FWIW that’s the approach I took with OpenAI. However, Obsidian is a genuinely cool product especially considering that the client app is free. It’s not 100% justifiable to affect the business of a non-VC-backed company.
mwilding 3y ago
I work behind a firewall, Between the canvas and the kanban plugin, I have been able to manage some fairly complex software development coordination.
gandalfthepink 3y ago
OP This is not addressed to you but to other folks in the comments. The two obsidian itself is very open and it's free for use. Those making demands to reduce price or make the project open source are just thankless. How do you plan to make the business sustainable? Someone has to pay developer salaries, right? You want open source? Use MarkText, Zettlr. The company is generous enough to offer the main product for free.
jeffmcneill 3y ago
Why nother, just use Syncthing.
jeffmcneill 3y ago
Why bother, just use Syncthing
sandeep1998 3y ago
I sync my obsidian notes in a git repo!
dns 3y ago
I just used with git plugin. So that enough.
bettyfrank526 3y ago
[dead]
t3chguy 3y ago
Whilst the reply from the CEO seems sound, their team promptly closed the path the plugin used to make self-hosted full-featured Sync & Publish work. "For Security" - ignoring the handful of other gaping security holes as less important I guess? Anyway, I decided to fork and make it work with v1.4.5. Enjoy https://github.com/acheong08/obi-sync/issues/19#issuecomment-1705701868 https://github.com/acheong08/obi-sync/issues/19#issuecomment...
bobmilli 3y ago
This answer of the Obsidian CEO just convinced me that it was time to subscribe to a Obsidian sync licence and I must admit that I'm more than happy with it. This software is really a gem for note taking !
beverlscott 3y ago
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416 points by _k2vp 3y ago

threatofrain 3y ago

What's wrong with using Dropbox or Github?

bitvoid 3y ago
I can't speak for OP's motives, but one reason one might do this is because you can't sync via Dropbox or Github on iOS. You can only use iCloud or Obsidian Sync.
- rg111 3y ago
  What about MEGA? Been using this way for years.
  - euazOn 3y ago
    Please would you care to share your workflow? I, too, would love to sync my Obsidian vault via MEGA, but I have only recently switched to an iPhone. On Android, it works perfectly with the 3rd party Autosync for MEGA app (paid, I believe).
- timrichard 3y ago
  I use Obsidian on MacOS, iOS and Android, and keep my Vault on GitHub. I use Working Copy on iOS and PocketGit on Android to pull and commit/push changes.
  - themadturk 3y ago
    GitHub works ok on iOS with Working Copy, but it seems a little more error prone than Sync, which Just Works. I use Sync for primary syncing, and Obsidian Git for secondary.
- _lvbh 3y ago
  You’re right! It now works on all platforms natively via the plugin (which does nothing except for replace API endpoints.) works perfectly for me without any third party servers
oktwtf 3y ago
I had to shell out for another app[0] on the iPhone to allow for a fairly seamless GitHub workflow. Not sure if it’s changed in recent times. It works great, but I’d imagine something more tightly coupled with obsidian.md would eliminate that need? 0: https://workingcopy.app/ https://workingcopy.app/
- cjwoodall 3y ago
  I did out together this blog post a while for doing this for free using ashell https://cwoodall.com/posts/2022-01-02-obsidian-ios-sync/ https://cwoodall.com/posts/2022-01-02-obsidian-ios-sync/
princevegeta89 3y ago
They are still 3rd parties - only good if you're using E2E encryption. Additionally, Dropbox free version has a 3-device limit at any time. On Android you have to use something like DropSync to enable background syncing which may not be ideal. Git(hub) may be an okay choice though. But there would be issues like no SSH support for Git on Mobile clients.
msm_ 3y ago
What's wrong with getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem?
- threatofrain 3y ago
  Dropbox is a consumer product, while Github is a nerd's product. I put them both to indicate the range of options. Dropbox or iCloud are solutions you could put on a blog for folks who have no interest in learning how to use a CLI.
lucw 3y ago
Character by character sync. You type one letter on your desktop, it appears on the mobile app maybe a second later. Dropbox sync can't do that.

aae42 3y ago

i use https://github.com/vrtmrz/obsidian-livesync https://github.com/vrtmrz/obsidian-livesync and self-host a couchdb instance for it... this looks like it might be a bit cleaner once it's all fleshed out...

codetrotter 3y ago
CouchDB is pretty nice, and gets less attention on HN than it deserves I think. First time I heard about CouchDB was many years ago. I bought an O’Reilly book about it, even. At the time MongoDB was gaining a lot of traction, and I think because of that many people overlooked CouchDB. I recently remembered CouchDB because I have some projects that could potentially benefit from replication between multiple machines. And in the case of my projects I think the database level would be an appropriate place to do replication. Hence CouchDB is an interesting proposition for my projects. I installed CouchDB on my laptop for the first time in ages, and started inserting documents into it with a third party library for Rust. So far it is working nicely.
- dzogchen 3y ago
  And CouchDB is still FOSS! I have been obsessed by it the past months. Coming from MongoDB the querying is a bit more limited, but I'd use it over MongoDB in a heartbeat. Very simple to host and even to set up multiple instances. Also CouchDB was embracing serverless before it was cool with their HTTP API.
fold3 3y ago
I use this as a docker instance running on my old laptop. It just took a minute to set up and works really well. The sync is as good as apple notes or whatever commercial software there is. Only issue is i could not sync with an old iphone running iOS 12.

surge 3y ago

You're prob not violating ToS since you're not doing it for commercial use, and you're actually reinventing the wheel as a couple of options for that are already available as community plugins. I've been using Remote-save for a while with a almost free private S3 bucket and encryption to sync between my computers and phone for a while. https://github.com/remotely-save/remotely-save https://github.com/remotely-save/remotely-save It supports more than just S3 (as is listed in the README), its just what I use. That said, what you made is pretty cool. I guess you're trying to replace the API/backend similar to Vaultwarden does with BitWarden paid service. For me, its not that I can't afford $8 a month, its just that $8 is to me fairly steep for basic file storage and sync I get for free from some services. $12 a year would be a fair price to me. I get some of it goes to support Obsidian development, but still seems steep, $2-3 a month would be something I'd subscribe for.

nsteel 3y ago
Remotely save is excellent. I use it with WebDAV to work between my computers, phone and tablet.
echelon 3y ago
If Obsidian stops acheong08, I'm done with Obsidian. I want a durable way to edit, sync, and preserve my notes, not just a pretty interface. I'm happy to pay Obsidian for sync, but if they PM this to only one distribution channel and subsequently enshittify it, I don't want it. Stopping acheong08 would be a bad signal forewarning what's to come.
- Xeophon 3y ago
  CEO Reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37253639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37253639
- rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 3y ago
  Dude, just pay the $8, no reason to cluch your pearls like that.
  - 3y ago

dmje 3y ago

FWIW - the sync service provided by Obsidian is really worth paying for. Dropbox / Github just aren't as slick and integrated. The mobile app doesn't work without sync (not without some really nasty workarounds), the option to "view sync version history", the fact that it's rock solid... all worth paying for IMO.

xmprt 3y ago
I haven't tried Dropbox or Github or Syncthing like others have suggested but having tried Obsidian Sync I'm not as impressed as everyone else seems to be. Maybe I need to set my bar lower but especially on my phone, background sync doesn't work well and it usually takes a few seconds to load and a few more seconds to sync the data which feels like ages considering all the data required to load it is already on my phone and the diff is a few paragraphs at most.
_lvbh 3y ago
> view sync version history Actively working on that. It’s a feature I’ll need since I mess up *very often*
ytechie 3y ago
It works great for me just using iCloud Drive.
- iamdamian 3y ago
  I tried iCloud Drive and didn't mind it. I ended up moving to Sync, though, because 1) it's end-to-end encrypted and 2) I can sync any directory, not just subdirectories of iCloud Drive.
input_sh 3y ago
Yeah I can think of 30 different ways to make the sync work, but I can't be bothered to, Sync works really well, and I feel like financially supporting the Obsidian team in some way. $8/month is a bit steep, but I snatched $5/month early bird pricing and I consider that to be a lot more acceptable of a price. Edit: worth pointing out there's a 40% discount for non-profits and students: https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Education+and+non-profit+discount https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Education+and+...

lijok 3y ago

Does anyone know whether Obsidian can do this with some plugin, or whether there's another tool that can: I'm looking for a documentation tool with a decent GUI for editing documentation in, which is backed by git for tracking changes, without having to have git configured locally (for non-engineers).

_lvbh 3y ago
I think there are a few plugins via git etc. Syncthing also seems to be recommended but doesn’t work on IOS
_lvbh 3y ago
Oh sorry. I misread. Ignore my other comment. I forgot my password and can’t edit using the site. Using third party app for HN
jazzyjackson 3y ago
https://www.gitbook.com/ https://www.gitbook.com/

solarkraft 3y ago

Syncthing actually works pretty well when you have a tool that automatically resolves sync conflicts: https://discuss.logseq.com/t/automatically-merge-syncthing-conflicts/13781 https://discuss.logseq.com/t/automatically-merge-syncthing-c...

karpour 3y ago
I'm using syncthing with Obsidian but of course i have regular conflicts which i just deal with manually. Thanks for pointing me to this!
- runjake 3y ago
  FWIW, I get sync conflicts with Obsidian Sync pretty regularly. They're always pretty minor and not worth complaining about, but they happen nonetheless, and it may not be entirely SyncThing's fault.
freedomben 3y ago
I'm using Syncthing to keep in sync between a desktop and two Android phones over tailscale, and it works pretty good, but I have to occasionally open the Syncthing app on Android to "bump" it and get it to sync. It's in a git repo (which syncthing handles great even though there are some older posts online telling you not to do that), and on the desktop I can review and "sanity check" stuff and then commit it to ensure it is safe. Overall a good solution.
- UltimateEdge 3y ago
  Why not exclude the .git directory from being synced, if you're not going to be committing on your mobile devices? This is what I do.
- ephbit 3y ago
  > .. I have to occasionally open the Syncthing app on Android to "bump" it and get it to sync. Almost the same with me. Turning WIFI off and on again is easier on my Android, it triggers syncthing to sync. But that might also require you to have set the run conditions of syncthing accordingly.

packetlost 3y ago

I wish Obsidian had a better outliner mode/plugin so I could switch to it from Logseq, but I just love the outliner/block mode too much.

malnourish 3y ago
Yep; I switched from Obsidian to Logseq because Logseq works the way I always wanted to take notes. They are both great tools, even if Logseq lacks some in the polish department (and honestly, it's pretty good).
- packetlost 3y ago
  I really wish Logseq had better/more plugins, a less janky sync option, and publish. Maybe it'll get there, but I kinda doubt it. I've toyed with creating a plugin for neovim that parses Logseq formatted markdown and gives me a similar experience, but it would be a lot of work.
  - shanusmagnus 3y ago
    Their text editor is shit, their UI is shit (see e.g., their new right pane), and they keep going off and spending all their energy developing features that nobody is asking for, e.g., whiteboards. I assume most of this is bc they're trying to differentiate somehow after having taken VC funding. Frustrating. Unfortunately, I expect Obsidian to have a serviceable outline mode before I expect Logseq to turn out a polished product. For god's sake, take on that Neovim project, and post about it!
  - istjohn 3y ago
    I was suprised at how smooth Obsidian's vim-mode is.

MH15 3y ago

I've been using the main Obsidian git extension, https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git. Took some work to set it up ergnonomically but it works great now. I enabled auto-commit and push on save, and auto-pull when you start the editor. No merge conflicts yet between two machines. Should note I use Obsidian for a journal, so it's pretty much append-only.

microflash 3y ago
Obsidian Git has been working great for me too. I use different configuration directories for each device to avoid configuration conflicts. It works very seamlessly once set up.

kergonath 3y ago

> I'm probably violating the TOS, and I'm sorry. Reverse engineering is fine. It certainly is from a moral point of view, and also from a legal one in a lot of jurisdictions. TOS depend more on the fact that you’ll behave than on whether they can actually be enforced (most have unenforceable clauses).

w10-1 3y ago
I think we should be careful when advising young or inexperienced people hacking for the joy of it, lest they make mistakes that are hard to recover. Time is precious -- better to choose wisely than learn from experience. > Reverse engineering is fine...from a legal [perspective] in a lot of jurisdictions Sorry, what jurisdiction permits one to violate a contract against reverse-engineering? This is a pretty big problem that can't be hand-waved away. Companies everywhere have mere copyright on some materials that they make available if you agree e.g., not to reverse-engineer the interface or distribute the materials, essentially hoisting copyright to contract. This is how Java has worked for decades. > Reverse engineering is fine. It certainly is from a moral point of view In this case, the server is how Obsidian funds their work, offering free and paid parts. They're clear about it up front; they don't entice you and switch terms after you're committed. So how is it morally justifiable in this case? > most have unenforceable clauses The "enforcement" is not that they win their case, but the threat that they can take you to court and force you to pay a lot of money to escape the contract, especially in cases where you have significant investments or income. Unless you're dedicated to being so irrelevantly small that no one cares, why waste time building IP you can't benefit from, or telling the world that you don't care? For people starting out, I would recommend picking viable projects, i.e., relevant to others, not illegal, not on dying technologies. They can exemplify not only your skills but also your judgment, and introduce you to the whole lifecycle of OS development if they have any legs. And it may be best to find an unoccupied niche; in this case, there are alternatives already (better to invent than re-invent). (Unless you aspire to being a giant-killer :) That's in part why the standard young-entrepreneur pattern is to pick new applications of emerging technologies, particularly those that irreversibly disrupt old industries or build new markets. In this case there are many note-taking applications with syncing server. The unique project today e.g., might be to update an existing sync alternative to maintain a semantic model and then publish semantic cross-references, or publish a results of AI queries over the evolving set of highly-trafficked semantic topics.

JSavageOne 3y ago

What is it that people love about Obsidian? (not trying to throw shade, genuine question as I never understood the hype) Obsidian is not able to open a local folder on my machine stored in Windows Subsystem for Linux, which for me makes it a non-starter (my personal knowledge base is stored there). I personally prefer the Notion UI but hate being locked into their cloud, so I created an offline-first Notion alternative [1]. Offline mode is totally free (no user registration required), and aiming to add cloud syncing tomorrow or so. Still in active dev so needs a lot of work, but wondering whether others might find this useful. Goal is to make it be able to seamlessly sync across multiple data sources, and also easily to publish files/folders (eg. can currently turn folders into APIs when synced to cloud). [1] https://mindgarden.app https://mindgarden.app

EspressoGPT 3y ago
> What is it that people love about Obsidian? (not trying to throw shade, genuine question as I never understood the hype) Tribalism.
noahmasur 3y ago
> What is it that people love about Obsidian? When Obsidian launched, there was already a lot of hype building in the note-taking community around Zettelkasten and Roam Research. With Roam, basically any word in your note could immediately link to another note, and you could see backlinks in your notes prominently. However, Roam was both expensive and online-only, so when Obsidian came out and it was: a) polished, b) provided most of the functionality of Roam, and c) was offline and plain-text (also unlike Notion), it was an immediate hit. The other special feature Obsidian offered was easy and powerful customization. The major settings are actually core plugins that can be enabled or disabled (like daily journal, tagging, or slideshows). Plugins and themes are easily discovered and installed from inside the app, which has led to a vibrant and popular plugin community. All you need is one plugin to be indispensable for users to never leave.
llimllib 3y ago
- it's simple - (it's also customizable so it doesn't _have_ to be, but I happen to like pretty much the default features) - it's free if you don't need their sync - I just save my vault on an iCloud drive, which is convenient to me, and publish to the web with my own tool - it allows me to keep my files where I want them - it's available on every platform I use - the UI is not distracting, and is Good Enough™

kepano 3y ago

(Obsidian CEO here) Impressive! It's fun to see the diversity of ways people sync/backup their Obsidian files. The nice thing about storing all your notes on your device is that it makes it possible to move and edit your Markdown files in many different ways. That diversity of solutions is what makes the ecosystem of Markdown tools resilient over the long term. There are already a handful of tools that allow you to sync your notes for free, including Git, Syncthing, and some other options more specialized for Obsidian (see community plugins). Obsidian is a small company, we're not VC backed (100% user-supported), so the Sync pricing helps us stay in business and keep the lights on. We also have a 40% educational discount on all our services[1] so you could be paying $4.80 instead of $8 :) Reverse engineering things is a fun technical challenge, and also helps us find potential holes in our system. The main problems I see with your solution: 1. it could easily break in a future update to the app, 2. "Obsidian Sync" is a trademark, so you should consider renaming the repo otherwise it can be confused for an official tool — that would be my only request [1]: https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Education+and+non-profit+discount https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Education+and+...

dabeeeenster 3y ago
What a wonderful reply. Thank you and kudos!
ilyin 3y ago
Time and again I keep being impressed with your selfless commitment to building and sharing things in the most humane and long-term way. A beautiful example to set, thanks.
- LorenDB 3y ago
  > Time and again I keep being impressed with your selfless commitment to building and sharing things in the most humane and long-term way. And yet they haven't open sourced the app. That would be truly humane and long-term. As it is, it's just another proprietary app that, if it dies, can't be continued by the community. I don't think monetary issues should be a concern with open sourcing the app - companies like Bitwarden, Gitlab, and New Vector (the company behind Matrix) are doing just fine with their open source products.

dnxx 3y ago

I'm still looking for a way to securely store and sync my Obsidian or Logseq notes with iOS. By "securely" I mean data encrypted at rest on the device, but also encrypted on an external server. It seems impossible.

rodja_ 3y ago

> I'm a recent high school graduate and can't afford $8 per month for the official sync service What happened to the $47000 you got from Apple [1]? [1]: https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/how-i-earned-47000-usd-as-a-high-school-student-a9a68896b3a3 https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/how-i-earned-47000-usd-a...

Arch485 3y ago
That's about 1 year of tuition in NA; OP is probably saving it for that
- freedomben 3y ago
  Dang, if money isn't plentiful, there are way cheaper options in NA than that. A good school can definitely help you network with future successful people and to some orgs the name on the diploma can help open some doors, but the degree is less needed nowadays than it's ever been.
  - _lvbh 3y ago
    It covers 2 years of tuition and a bit of living costs in UK. However, I’ve now lost financial support from my parents since I can “just earn it yourself” and I’m in no hurry to go into debt. Will probably work part time during the first two years to cover whatever is missing.
    - freedomben 3y ago
      that's smart. Working while going to school sucks (that's what I did), but not only is graduating without debt a fantastic feeling and great economic position to be in, but it also made me optimize the monetary consequence of my choices a lot more. When you don't have to pay it off for years, it's very easy for your mind to convince you that you need a new laptop, or a new car, or a generous nightlife budget, etc. Even just new vs. used books makes a big difference in cost.
vGPU 3y ago

aftbit 3y ago

Nice work, keep scratching itches and you'll go far, whether you take this as a career or just a hobby.

fnfontana 3y ago

I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I've been using and following Obsidian's development since 2020 and I really appreciate the way your company supports the open source community!

AlphaWeaver 3y ago

What I've long been looking for is a sync service that handles syncing these directories of markdown, but then provides value added HTTP APIs on top of them. I can sync my markdown files from place to place with ease, but what I really want is the ability to POST myserver.com/newpage and have it artificially inject a new Markdown file at the path I request. This could be system agnostic, Obsidian, Logseq, and tons of other local markdown knowledge bases could benefit from this.

icedchai 3y ago
So you want WebDAV support?
- stephenr 3y ago
  This would be quite good if it also used SVN's autoversioning mode (essentially a webdav client can create new versions of a document in svn without knowledge of svn).

gettodachoppa 3y ago

> To the creators of Obsidian.md: I'm probably violating the TOS, and I'm sorry. I'll take down the repository if asked. It's not ready for production and is highly inefficient; Not competition, so I hope you'll be lenient. Brother, don't be a wimp. You're giving people an open-source plan B to a closed-source product. Do this with your head and middle fingers raised high. Do you think Richard Stallman apologized to HP for reverse-engineering their printer driver? No, he started the whole open-source movement. If you're worried about legal consequences, learn what people used to do 20 years ago, which is use pseudonyms instead of their real names. Create a burner email, burner identity, new Github account, and give American tech corps the finger as you write what you want.

_lvbh 3y ago
FWIW that’s the approach I took with OpenAI. However, Obsidian is a genuinely cool product especially considering that the client app is free. It’s not 100% justifiable to affect the business of a non-VC-backed company.

mwilding 3y ago

I work behind a firewall, Between the canvas and the kanban plugin, I have been able to manage some fairly complex software development coordination.

gandalfthepink 3y ago

OP This is not addressed to you but to other folks in the comments. The two obsidian itself is very open and it's free for use. Those making demands to reduce price or make the project open source are just thankless. How do you plan to make the business sustainable? Someone has to pay developer salaries, right? You want open source? Use MarkText, Zettlr. The company is generous enough to offer the main product for free.

jeffmcneill 3y ago

Why nother, just use Syncthing.

jeffmcneill 3y ago

Why bother, just use Syncthing

sandeep1998 3y ago

I sync my obsidian notes in a git repo!

dns 3y ago

I just used with git plugin. So that enough.

bettyfrank526 3y ago

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t3chguy 3y ago

Whilst the reply from the CEO seems sound, their team promptly closed the path the plugin used to make self-hosted full-featured Sync & Publish work. "For Security" - ignoring the handful of other gaping security holes as less important I guess? Anyway, I decided to fork and make it work with v1.4.5. Enjoy https://github.com/acheong08/obi-sync/issues/19#issuecomment-1705701868 https://github.com/acheong08/obi-sync/issues/19#issuecomment...

bobmilli 3y ago

This answer of the Obsidian CEO just convinced me that it was time to subscribe to a Obsidian sync licence and I must admit that I'm more than happy with it. This software is really a gem for note taking !

beverlscott 3y ago

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