So you've fallen into the Obsidian rabbit hole. Good. Now you're realizing that having your notes on just one device is annoying as hell, and Obsidian wants $10/month to fix that problem.
I get it—the devs deserve support, they built something genuinely useful. But I'm also not about to pay a subscription for syncing text files. Yes, I said it. That's all your vault is. A bunch of .md files sitting in a folder.
So I rolled my own sync setup with Syncthing-Fork, and it's been running flawlessly across my laptop, phone, and a VPS for months. Zero cost, zero drama. Let me show you how.
The Beauty of Obsidian: It's Just Files
Here's why this works at all: Obsidian doesn't trap your data in some proprietary hellscape. Your vault is literally just a folder on your filesystem. Open it. Look at it. Those are markdown files. You could edit them in Notepad if you wanted to punish yourself.
This isn't revolutionary—it's how software should work. But in 2025, when every app wants to be a SaaS product with your data held hostage on their servers, Obsidian's approach feels almost rebellious.
No database. No API calls to authenticate your right to access your own thoughts. Just files and folders, like it's 1995 and we still believed in owning our data.
Which means if you can sync a folder, you can sync your entire Obsidian vault. And you absolutely can sync a folder without giving someone money every month.
Syncthing-Fork: The Unsexy Solution That Actually Works
Syncthing is that rare piece of software that does one thing, does it well, and doesn't try to upsell you on AI features or premium tiers. It's open source, peer-to-peer, and once you set it up, you genuinely forget it exists.
Syncthing-Fork is the Android variant that actually gets maintained.
What sold me: I edit a note on my phone at 2 AM because my brain won't shut up. By the time I walk to my desk in the morning, that note is already on my laptop. No sync button. No "waiting for upload." It just is.
The whole thing runs device-to-device. Encrypted. No cloud middleman harvesting your data to train their next AI model.
My Setup: Three Devices Playing Nice
I'm running this across:
- Laptop (Arch BTW)
- Android phone (Syncthing-Fork from Nickola Hristov)
- VPS (Docker container, always online)
The VPS is technically optional. But here's the thing: if my laptop's off and I change something on my phone, the VPS catches it immediately. Then when my laptop wakes up, it syncs from the VPS. It's basically a relay that ensures changes never get stuck in limbo. I am also planning to use static site generator out of .md files for future so it will be helpful ig.
Plus it's an automatic off-site backup. My laptop could spontaneously combust and my vault's still sitting on that VPS.
How I Actually Set This Up
Making Syncthing Run Without Thinking About It
Laptop: Installed Syncthing, made it a systemd service so it starts on boot. I never want to manually start this thing. If I have to remember to run it, I'll forget, and then I'll have sync conflicts. Automate or die.
VPS: Spun up a Docker container. Wrote a basic docker-compose.yml, ran it, forgot about it. Docker handles restarts, keeps it isolated, makes updates trivial. The VPS isn't doing anything else demanding—it's just sitting there being reliable, which is what servers are actually for.
Phone: Installed Syncthing-Fork, gave it the permissions it was crying about, set it to auto-start. Battery impact is negligible. We're syncing text, not mining crypto.
The Connection Dance
Every Syncthing instance has a device ID. I added all three devices to each other. Think of it like exchanging SSH keys, except it's actually user-friendly.
Then I pointed Syncthing at my Obsidian vault folder and told it to share that folder with all my devices. That's it. That's the setup.
Watching It Actually Work
Change a file on any device. Syncthing detects it within seconds. The change propagates to the other devices. Obsidian notices the file changed and updates its view.
It's not magic—it's just file watching and network sockets. But it feels magic when you're used to cloud sync services that randomly decide they need five minutes to "think about it."
Why Syncthing Doesn't Suck
Block-level syncing means it only transfers what changed. Edit one paragraph? It sends that delta, not the entire file. This matters when you're on mobile data or have a 50MB vault full of images.
Conflict handling is reasonable. If you somehow edit the same file on two disconnected devices (how?), it creates a conflict copy instead of randomly picking a winner. You manually merge. Annoying, but better than silent data loss.
Everything's encrypted in transit. Your existential crisis notes aren't flying across the internet in plaintext for your ISP to judge.
The VPS Piece
Two devices can sync directly without a VPS. Phone talks to laptop when both are online. But the VPS makes this bulletproof.
I'm paranoid about losing data. Having an always-online third node means changes always have somewhere to go. Plus, it's offsite. My apartment could burn down and my notes would survive.
Running in Docker is just good practice. Isolated, reproducible, updateable. One docker-compose up -d and it's running forever.
What This Actually Feels Like
I've been running this for months. I don't think about it. That's the highest compliment I can give any infrastructure.
I dump thoughts into Obsidian on my phone while walking. Those thoughts are on my laptop by the time I get home. I refactor my notes at my desk, and they're on my phone instantly. The VPS quietly keeps everything synchronized without me ever SSHing in to check on it.
Zero conflicts. Zero "oops, I edited the old version" moments. Zero subscription fees.
If You're Technical Enough to Care
You're probably already sold or already running something similar. If you're on the fence: one Saturday afternoon to set this up, then you never think about it again.
No subscription. No trusting a third-party with your data. No wondering if the sync service will still exist in five years or if they'll get acquired and enshittified.
Just files, syncing between your devices, like we've been doing since rsync was invented.
If you're still paying for Obsidian Sync after reading this... I mean, that's your choice. But at least know you have options.
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