Private Obsidian Sync with GitHub for my Linux and Android

Obsidian is a great note-taking app that I use for my personal notes. I have been using it for a while now and I have a lot of notes that I want to keep private. I also want to sync my notes across my Linux and Android devices.

First I initialized a git repository in my Obsidian vault folder. And pushed it to a private GitHub repository git@github.com:jahangir1x/obsidian-vault.git

A typical obsidian vault has .obsidian folder that contains the configuration and metadata of the vault. I have created a bash script sync.sh that will sync the vault with the GitHub repository.

contents of sync.sh:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# get directory of this script and cd to ../
cd "$(dirname $(dirname ${BASH_SOURCE[0]}))"

echo "[+] pulling from remote..."
git pull
echo ""

if [ -n "$(git status --porcelain)" ]; then
  echo "[+] changes detected, pushing to remote..."
  git status
  echo ""
  git add .
  git commit -m "sync client: $(whoami)@$(hostname)=>$(uname -o)"
  echo ""
  git push
  echo ""
else
  echo "no changes to push."
fi

cd "$(dirname $(dirname ${BASH_SOURCE[0]}))" will cd to the directory of the vault. So, I can run the script from anywhere. I don’t care about the commit messages, so I just use the id, hostname and the OS name as the commit message. So, I can see which device made the last change.

In my Linux .zshrc I have added an alias to run the script:

obsidian-sync() {
  bash ~/obsidian_vault/.obsidian/sync.sh
}

Now I can run obsidian-sync from anywhere to sync my notes.

In android, I use Termux and git to sync my notes. I have set up my git credentials in Termux and cloned the repository. I cloned the repository in the ~/storage/shared/obsidian/.obsidian-vault folder. the directory starts with . so it is hidden in the android file manager and gallery apps.

In my Termux .zshrc I have added an alias to run the script:

obsidian-sync() {
  bash ~/storage/shared/obsidian/.obsidian-vault/.obsidian/sync.sh
}

There was some hiccup with safe directory in Termux so I had to use the ~/storage/shared/obsidian/.obsidian-vault directory. So, I ran:

git config --global --add safe.directory /storage/shared/obsidian/.obsidian-vault

Now I can run obsidian-sync from anywhere in Termux to sync my notes.