Tech
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Albeit the plugin is running cronjobs it’s much easier to maintain as settings are also synced between devices (so changing the commit interval to more/fewer minutes will be synced to all devices running Obsidian) ↩︎
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If you’re like me and missing a proper console in Windows Cmder is your savior, just don’t forget that Git is not installed system-wide ↩︎
Obsidian with automatic GitHub syncing
Some updates running Obsidian with automatic GitHub syncing.
I ditched my homegrown solution1 for the Obsidian Git plugin. Both approaches are based on this article by Bryan Jenks.
Using the plugin I got everything running on all my systems in a few minutes spend on each one. On Windows it took a little more time due to user error. Reminder for my future-self (and other Cmder users 2), don’t forget to also install regular Git for Windows.
For backup purposes, I’ve cloned the repository to my NAS (Linux) and updating it using an hourly cronjob. A bit unnecessary as the files are already stored on GitHub, 2x OneDrive (work/private), and iCloud. So this exertion was purely in the name of science ;-)
I ran into one issue when working on the same document on two systems at the same moment. Not a regular use-case for me, but will need to look into how this solution handles potential file conflicts. But other than that the process is running very smoothly. Besides purely syncing Git is also bringing version control. This is a huge plus to me for my every growing notes library.
On iOS I have WorkingCopy and iA Writer working the Obsidian repository. iA Writer and WorkingCopy integrate well and this already is a solid solution. iA Writer can access the files in WorkingCopy via iOS’ Open in Place feature. No need to transfer files between both apps. And the built-in diff tool is great. One (minor) downside is that WorkingCopy doesn’t offer automatic syncing. You need to push/pull changes from within the app. GitJournal should offer automatic syncing but I’m running into problems. I’m only seeing one file from the repro, but this could well be due to my setup. I do have an exotic file naming structure to keep things organized inside of Obsidian. But until I solve this issue I’m more than happy using iA Writer and WorkingCopy.
Currently reading: The age of surveillance capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff 📚