Obsidian Sync

Canonical version: Obsidian Sync.

Official note synchronization service of Obsidian. It's a paid service. Currently (end 2024) costs $4 per month.

Obsidian Sync works in the background and continuously synchronizes your notes across all connected devices.

• It uses end-to-end encryption. Data is encrypted using AES-256 before being synchronized
• Files are versioned. You can easily compare versions and go back in time if needed
• You can work offline, and synchronization will occur once you come back online

Headless CLI

Steph Ango (Obsidian CEO) published obsidian-headless, an npm package that runs Obsidian Sync without a GUI. It connects to your vault on disk and syncs it just like the desktop app would — with the same speed, privacy, customizability, and end-to-end encryption.

Install and run:

# Run directly without installing
npx obsidian-headless /path/to/vault

# Or install globally
npm install --global obsidian-headless
obsidian-headless /path/to/vault

Sync modes

• Bidirectional (default) — pushes and pulls changes in both directions
• Pull-only (--pull-only) — only downloads from remote, ignores local changes
• Mirror-remote (--mirror-remote) — only downloads from remote, reverts any local changes

Use cases

• Automate remote backups
• Automate publishing a website
• Give agentic tools access to a vault without access to your full computer
• Sync a shared team vault to a server that feeds other tools
• Run scheduled automations (e.g. aggregate daily notes into weekly summaries, auto-tag, etc.)

Security

Obsidian Sync has been independently audited by Cure53 (October 2024) and Trail of Bits (December 2025). Both audits covered the API, server, and cryptography. All findings were addressed via remediations validated by the auditors, and a small number of accepted trade-offs (e.g. deterministic file-hash encryption for deduplication, server-readable path-to-content mapping for routing) are now documented on the Sync security page.

The audits also validated the August 2025 encryption upgrade shipped with Obsidian 1.9.11.

References

• Official Website: https://obsidian.md/sync
• obsidian-headless npm package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/obsidian-headless
• Obsidian Security page: https://obsidian.md/security
• Cure53 Obsidian Sync audit (2024) — summary and full report
• Trail of Bits Obsidian Sync audit (2025) — full report
• Announcement blog post: https://obsidian.md/blog/cure53-tob-sync-audits/

About Sébastien

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