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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

I really love Obsidian, I still have some major blockers.

The git plugin is dangerously broken. I've had pushes from different computers overwrite one another. It doesn't show merge conflicts - it's happy to plow forward. I've reduced my usage since that happened. This is a huge problem. I need to have confidence the backups and merges aren't destroying notes.

There's no easy way to open multiple workspaces simultaneously. I want to start using Obsidian for work, but I'm not going to share or subset my private notebook. If I want to switch to the team workspace, I have to close my personal workspace. Only one can be open at a time, and that's awkward.

If these two problems get fixed, Obsidian will become my end-all, be-all organizational software.

I will pay a lot of money ($100/mo!) for this to work right.

(Final minor nit: I'd like to include multimedia, but use Git LFS or another cloud storage system. I don't want them in git.)

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Genuinely curious: what's the problem you're trying to solve with Git plugin that the official Obsidian Sync [1] doesn't solve natively (besides cost)?

I've been using Obsidian Sync for a year, and it works flawlessly for my use case. Is syncs not only notes, but also configuration, plugins, allows creation of multiple vaults, works on mobile, fine-grained control over which folders to sync in each device, and even allow controlled sharing with collaborators. Oh, and full encryption with user-provided key, which is a must. All for $96/year.

[1] https://obsidian.md/sync

great to hear that it works, but it is hilariously expensive for what it does.

When the price comes down to $3/month, I'll start paying for it. Until then, I'll use Syncthing for free.

I use syncthing. A lot. Best thing ever.

I used evernote a long while ago.

How can i bridge the divide between all devices between those too ? In a way that is cross-device and helps with notes/tags etc ?

I suspect you are keeping a specific folder of random files as your note taking location ?

yes, I use obsidian and I have several vaults, and each is its own directory that is synced independently using Syncthing to whichever devices need to be able to access each vault.

> hilariously expensive for what it does

What Sync does is not only "sync", it also helps Obsidian remain profitable and 100% user supported. Subsidizing costs in pursuit of growth is what got Evernote here.

> * it also helps Obsidian remain profitable and 100% user supported...*

100x this.

More than paying for a feature, subscribing to Obsidian Sync is a great way of sponsoring the project, and hoping that these folks are successfully enough to make a living and continue to pay their talented engineers for as long as possible, without going down the rabbit hole of VC funding and stock market.

I have obsidian on my iphone, ipad, and windows desktop all synced across devices to a single private github repo. You do not have to use the git plugin. I use Working Copy app on ios devices and the free github desktop on Windows 10.

If you want multiple workspaces, you can create a separate vault that is backed by a different private github repo.

Could you perhaps change something in .git to fail in case of conflict?

What do you mean by using git lfs but not wanting files in git? Generally you should be able to use git lfs with any note app that supports git as long as you are able to enable lfs on whatever server you are using and are able to edit .gitattributes. It's just git with a bit of logic to only download the needed revisions of binary files instead of the whole history. But as far as I can reason, there's no practical difference if you're not often editing the binary files which you add because there's usually only one copy/no patches for the binary files.

Vaults are workspaces and you can open multiple vaults simultaneously. You can also copy the .obsidian folder over so you don’t have to rebuild from scratch. But you do have to maintain manually.

Out of curiosity, what's the rationale for using git? Is it to get a history of notes or just for sync? If it's the latter, I believe obsidian has a paid offering for that, or one can MacGyver it with syncthing.

You don't even need to macguyver really. There may be some potential conflict issues, but you could probably put the obsidian vault directory inside of dropbox, apple cloud, etc (I'm doing this with apple cloud, but I really only use one device)

Maybe a little bit of Macguyvering to add backups is a good idea

> you could probably put the obsidian vault directory inside of dropbox

I've done this and it seems to work fine.

In theory I guess you could end up with sync conflicts if you are literally editing the same note on two devices at the same time, in which case Dropbox will create a "Conflicted Copy" which will pop up in Obsidian so you can resolve it manually.

But in practice, because Obsidian saves pretty much constantly, and Dropbox syncs pretty much constantly, in a typical connected office use case you don't run into this much. If you work offline a lot, you might need to think about a more structured workflow (i.e. using Git). But for me it wasn't worth the hassle to commit/push every time I wanted to switch devices. Dropbox (and presumably the many Dropbox-like folder-sync tools) worked fine when I was testing it out.

I'm doing this with Google drive over Autosync and mostly it is fine. Occasional merge conflicts where it generates an extra file that is the other version, but I just run winmerge. It helps if you are careful about syncing and don't use obsidian in both places simultaneously.

With git you are less bound to a specific provider and your "software driver" is simpler and more standard

The git plugin allows you to disable it on certain devices. I enable it only on my main computer and sync the vault among devices with syncthing, which I find much more reliable than wholly relying on git.

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