Obsidian Git Sync

Introduction

As an Obsidian user managing notes for various aspects of life (work, studying, personal), I needed a synchronization solution that offered:

1. Sync notes across multiple devices
2. Separate notes into different areas (e.g., work, personal, study)
3. Control which notes are synced to which devices
4. Choose where your data is stored (e.g., company server, private server)
5. Optionally share specific notes with others

All of this will be achieved while maintaining a single Obsidian vault, allowing for interconnected notes across all areas of your life.

This setup, using Git and Obsidian, fulfills all these requirements.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, ensure you have:

• Git installed on your computer
• A GitHub account
• Obsidian installed with your new vault created

Step-by-Step Guide

1. Setup new git repositories and folder structure
2. Setup the git configuration
3. Setup of the git hooks
4. Setup the Obsidian configuration

In general, we will manage the root level Obsidian configuration in a main git repo. All the actual notes for each area will be in separate folders which are, again, git repos. This way we can sync the root level configuration and the notes separately. On commit, push and pull of the main repo, which can be executed by an Obsidian plugin periodically, the notes repos will also be pulled and pushed to the respective remote repositories.

We will setup the following areas:

• work
• learning
• private

Step 1: Setup new git repositories and folder structure

Lets start with the setup on the first device. From the root of the new Obsidian vault, create the folders you want to have on that device, we will do it for the work laptop here. The setup can be repeated for other devices and areas.

work/
learning/

Then run git init in the root folder and each of the area folders to create new git repositories.

Create a .gitignore in the root folder and add the following content. We will ignore all the area notes and all top level files as the notes there should not be stored but moved into an area.

/learning/
/work/
/*

If you want to include top level files, like a vimrc file, you can do so by adding the following to the gitignore: !.obsidian.vimrc

Step 2: Setup the git configuration

As all of the repos could be stored on different git instances, for each repository you can set then config. So in each repo, you can set the user email and name to the one you want to use for that repo.

git config --local user.email "[email protected]"

git config --local user.name "Usename"

Also setup the origin for each repo as usual with git remote add origin <url>

Step 3: Setup of the git hooks

We will use git hooks to automatically pull and push the area notes when the root repository is updated. This way we can ensure that the notes are always up to date on all devices.

Create the following files in the .git/hooks folder of the root repository.

.git/hooks/pre-commit

 #!/bin/sh
commit_subrepo() {
    subrepo_path=$1
    commit_message=$2

    cd "$subrepo_path"
    if [ -n "$(git status --porcelain)" ]; then
    git add .
    git commit -m "$commit_message"
    else
    echo "No changes to commit in $subrepo_path"
    fi
    cd - > /dev/null
}

commit_subrepo "learning" "Auto-commit from main repo"
commit_subrepo "work" "Auto-commit from main repo"

exit 0

.git/hooks/pre-push

#!/bin/sh

push_subrepo() {
    subrepo_path=$1

    cd "$subrepo_path"
    git push
    cd - > /dev/null
}

push_subrepo "learning"
push_subrepo "work"

exit 0

Set the hooks to be executable with chmod +x .git/hooks/pre-commit and chmod +x .git/hooks/pre-push.

With that configuration, each time you commit or push the root repository, the area repositories will also be updated.

There is no hook provided by git for pulling, so that needs to be done manually with a command. You can also use a plugin for Obsidian to execute that command from Obsidian.

git pull && cd learning && git pull && cd ../work && git pull

Step 4: Setup the Obsidian configuration

Manual Commit, Pull and Push

Install the Shell Commands plugin in Obsidian. This plugin allows you to execute shell commands from within Obsidian.

Setup the following command:

1. Pull Command:

git pull && cd learning && git pull && cd ../work && git pull

2. Push Command:

git push

3. Commit Command:

git add . && git commit -m "Automatic vault update"

4. (Optional) Update Command:

git add . && git commit -m "Automatic vault update" && git push

You can execute these commands from the command palette in Obsidian.

Automatic Commit, Pull und Push:

For automatic pull and startup, in the settings of the Shell Commands plugin, go the settings of your pull command and go to events. Enbable Obsidian starts

For periodic commits, in the settings of the Shell Commands plugin, go the settings of your commit command and go to events. Enbable Every n seconds and set the interval to your liking, 1800 seconds would be 30 minutes.

Adding more devices

If you want to add more devices, you can do so by following the same steps as for the work laptop. Clone the root repository and then select which area repos you want to have on that device. Setup the git configuration and the hooks as described above, as they are not stored in the root repository. You may need to add a new Pull command in the Obsidian Shell Commands plugin for the new device, as the path to the area repos may be different. In example, I have a pull work and pull private, to pull the repos on the respective devices.

Adding more subfolders

If you want to add more subfolders, you can do so by following the same steps as for the work and learning folders. Just create a new folder, run git init in it, add it to the .gitignore and add the folder to the pre-commit and pre-push hooks. Also update the commands in the Obsidian Shell Commands plugin.

With this, you can also share notes with others by adding a shared folder and sharing the git repository with them. They can use the same setup as you do and pull the shared notes into their vault.

Known Issues

If you regurarly add attachments to your notes, this may lead to problems that they are not added to the correct area folder. In Obsidian, you can setup a default attachment folder that lives in the root repository, but this is not synced with the notes. Then you can move the attachments to the repspective area folder manually.