How to Sync Your Obsidian Vault Across Multiple Devices for Free
Obsidian is a wonderful knowledge base with tons of free features. Despite this, using Obsidian’s native sync feature is going to cost you money. You need to purchase a subscription for it.
If you’ve been using Obsidian for free and want to keep it that way, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we’ll go through an easy method to sync your Obsidian vault across all your devices without spending a dime.
What Is Obsidian Sync?
Obsidian is a powerful note-taking tool, and although it is free to use on all platforms, syncing your vaults requires a paid subscription. Obsidian’s solution is called Obsidian Sync, and it costs 10 USD per month. Once you purchase Obsidian Sync, you can seamlessly sync your vault across multiple devices.
Obsidian Sync also comes with a version history feature. This stores the changes you’ve made to your vault for a year. it’s possible to revert to a previous version of any note at any time. One of the best ways to sync your Obsidian vault is, of course, to purchase Obsidian Sync. But as mentioned earlier, Obsidian Sync isn’t free.
However, given that Obsidian notes are stored in your device as MD files, syncing your vault is only a matter of syncing these files. As a result, it’s possible to use any other cloud service to sync your Obsidian vaults. Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox are all great options for this task.
How to Sync Your Obsidian Vault for Free
Syncing an Obsidian vault is merely a matter of syncing the vault’s files. If you already use a cloud service to back up your files, you can also use that service to sync your Obsidian vault. You can use any popular cloud service, but we’re going to use Google Drive. Google provides you with 15GB of free storage, which is more than enough for the Obsidian vaults.
Google Drive’s desktop app has a feature to create local copies of your cloud files. it’s possible to have Google Drive sync the files into a local folder that you can open with Obsidian. This way, your Obsidian desktop vault will always be up-to-date.
The phone app lacks this feature. You can’t create a local copy of the vault, and hence, you can’t open the cloud-based vault on your phone. The solution to this is a third-party app called Autosync. This app creates a local copy of your cloud vault so that you can open it with Obsidian on your phone. Autosync supports Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and more.
Once you have set up Google Drive on your computer and phone, the final step is to enable Autosync for your vault folder. With this, your vault will sync between both platforms for free. Any changes that you make on one platform will reflect on the other, and vice versa.
1. Install the Cloud Service on Your Computer
The first step is to install your cloud service’s app on your computer. Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox all have desktop apps. We’re going touse Google Drive on Windows.
Download:Google Drive(Free)
Once you’ve installed Google Drive, launch it and log in with your Google account. Note that you should use the same Google Account on both your PC and your phone.
2. Copy Your Obsidian Vault to the Cloud
Now it’s time to copy your Obsidian vault to your Google Drive. First, you need to enable theMirror filesfeature on Google Drive. This will make a local copy of the files on your computer.
This will also add My Drive to Quick Access in Windows Explorer. Now let’s make a cloud version of your vault.
Any changes that you make to the vault will now automatically upload to Google Drive.
3. Install Autosync on Your Phone
The next step is to install Autosync on your phone to create a local copy of your vault.
Download:Autosync for Google Drive(Free)
Once you’ve installed Autosync, launch it and set it up.
Autosync is not the only option for this purpose. You can alsouse FolderSync to sync your cloud files.
4. Create a Folder Pair in Autosync
A folder pair consists of two folders: one stored in the Google Drive cloud, and one stored locally on your phone. Once you set up a folder pair in Autosync, these two folders will sync back and forth. New changes from your computer will show up on your phone, and vice versa.
That’s it! With the sync method set to two-way, the folder pair will seamlessly sync. You can change your battery optimization settings so that Autosync can work in the background.
You can also disable the automatic sync entirely. This way, the changes you make won’t instantly move to the cloud—giving you a choice to sync your vault after you’ve finished working on it.
5. Open the Synced Obsidian Vault on Your Phone
Now the moment of truth. Let’s see whether your Obsidian vault has been successfully synced or not.
Your Obsidian vault should now show up! If you have enabled automatic two-way sync in Autosync, the changes you make to your vault on your computer and your phone will automatically sync together.
One Vault, Multiple Devices: Sync Your Obsidian Vault for Free
Syncing your Obsidian Vault across multiple devices is a great way to make sure you always have access to your notes and ideas, no matter where you are. Obsidian’s built-in sync feature requires a paid subscription, but if you don’t want to spend money, then now you know what to do.
By using a cloud storage service like Google Drive, you can easily sync your Obsidian Vault across multiple devices for free. It’s a simple and efficient process, and it will help you make the most out of your Obsidian Vault.
With the help of this guide, you can now take full advantage of Obsidian’s powerful capabilities and enjoy the peace of mind that comes with having your data backed up and accessible anywhere.
Even if you have no idea what “Kanban” is, it’s easy to set it up in Obsidian and boost your productivity to the next level.
My foolproof plan is to use Windows 10 until 2030, with the latest security updates.
Not Linux, not Windows. Something better.
When your rival has to bail out your assistant.
Flagship price, mid-range phone.
Free AI tools are legitimately powerful; you just need to know how to stack them.
