My iPad is the device that made me actually think about Obsidian sync instead of just having opinions about it. Laptops are easy. Two MacBook Pros and a Windows desktop will happily share a folder in any cloud service you point them at. Then you add an iPad and the thing that worked everywhere else does not work at all, because iOS doesn’t let apps do the stuff sync tools need to do.
I run Dropbox with Remotely Save for my iPad, and I pay nothing for it, which is the whole point of my guide to syncing Obsidian for free on every device. This post is the iOS-only version of that. Four options that work, what each one costs, and why the answer depends on what your desktop computer is rather than anything about your phone.
- Why iOS Is the Hard Case
- The Four Routes That Actually Work
- Route 1: iCloud, If Your Desktop Is a Mac
- Route 2: Remotely Save, the One I Actually Run
- Route 3: Syncthing on iOS, the Route Everyone Asks About
- Route 4: Obsidian Sync, When You Are Done Fighting
- OneDrive on iOS Is Its Own Problem
- The Files App Trap
- Frequently Asked Questions
- The Verdict
Why iOS Is the Hard Case
Every other platform gives you a folder. iOS gives you a sandbox.
On a Mac or a Windows box, a sync tool runs as a background service, watches a directory, and pushes changes when they happen. None of that is available to an iOS app. There are no background daemons. An app that is not on screen is mostly not running, and iOS decides when to wake it, not you. Apps also cannot freely read each other’s files, so “just point Obsidian at the Dropbox folder” is not a thing that exists here the way it does on desktop.
That is also why there is no native Syncthing for iOS. Syncthing is a daemon. iOS does not do daemons. Everything you will find on the App Store is a third-party app that embeds the Syncthing engine and works within Apple’s rules, which is a different and more limited thing.
So the question is not “which sync tool is best.”, but “which compromise do I want.”
The Four Routes That Actually Work
Pick by what your desktop is.
| Your desktop | Best free route | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Mac only | iCloud | Built into Obsidian’s iOS vault creation, near zero setup |
| Windows | Remotely Save with Dropbox or S3 | Works identically on both ends, no Apple dependency |
| Linux | Remotely Save, or Syncthing via SyncTrain | Linux has no iCloud and no official OneDrive client |
| Mixed, or you want no cloud at all | Syncthing via SyncTrain or Möbius Sync | Peer to peer, nothing stored on anyone’s server |
| You want it to just work | Obsidian Sync, $4/mo annual | Not free, but it is the one that never needs troubleshooting |
Now the details.
Route 1: iCloud, If Your Desktop Is a Mac
If you are all Apple, stop here. Create the vault on your iPhone or iPad, toggle on Store in iCloud during creation, and you are done. It is the only route with first-class support inside Obsidian’s own iOS app.
I am not going to repeat the setup steps, because I wrote the long version already. See the full iCloud walkthrough for creating versus migrating a vault, the “Optimize Mac Storage” setting that removes your notes, and the part where it falls apart if Windows is involved.
The short version: works perfectly on Apple hardware, unreliably the moment it is not.
Route 2: Remotely Save, the One I Actually Run
This is my setup. Remotely Save is a community plugin that syncs your vault to a storage backend you already have. The free tier covers S3 and anything S3-compatible like Cloudflare R2 or Backblaze B2, plus Dropbox, WebDAV including Nextcloud and Synology, and OneDrive personal with a caveat I get to below.
The reason it wins on iOS is that it sidesteps the sandbox problem. Remotely Save runs inside Obsidian. It does not need to watch a folder or run in the background, because it syncs when Obsidian is open and you tell it to, or on the schedule you set. iOS does not have to cooperate for it to work.
The setup is the same on every platform, which is the other reason I use it. Install the plugin from Community Plugins, pick your service, authenticate, set a sync interval, and run a manual sync once to seed the vault. Do the desktop side first and let it finish before you touch the iPad, same as any sync method.
The tradeoff is honest: sync happens when Obsidian is open. Open the app, wait a couple of seconds, then start typing. That is the deal, and after a couple of years of it I have stopped noticing.
Route 3: Syncthing on iOS, the Route Everyone Asks About
This is the biggest cluster of searches on this topic and the one the forum threads are full of, so here is the current state of it in 2026.
You cannot run Syncthing on iOS directly. You run one of two apps that wrap it.
Möbius Sync
Free to download. The catch is the one people keep asking about in forum threads: usage within the Möbius Sync sandbox is free up to 20MB. Past that you need the in-app purchase, Unlimited file sync, $4.99 , which is a one-time purchase and not a subscription.
For an Obsidian vault, 20MB is the deciding number. A text-only vault of a few thousand notes fits under it well. A vault with images, PDFs, or scanned documents blows through it immediately. But five dollars once is a fair price for a sync solution.
SyncTrain
The other option, and worth knowing about because it is truly free. No in-app purchases, open source, iOS 17 or later, actively maintained. It has deeper Shortcuts integration, which is the closest thing iOS offers to background syncing, since you can trigger a sync from an automation rather than remembering to open the app.
I appreciate that its own App Store description tells you this: “Do not use Synctrain for back-up purposes, and always keep a back-up of your data.” An app that volunteers its own limitations is an app I trust more than one that does not.
The Reality of Both
Syncthing on iOS is peer to peer, which means your notes never sit on anyone else’s server. That is the real reason to pick it.
But it also means both devices have to be awake and reachable at the same time for anything to happen. Your Mac asleep in a bag syncs nothing. This is why people describe iOS Syncthing as flaky when it is actually working exactly as designed. There is no server holding your changes until the other device shows up. If you want that, you want one of the other three routes.
Route 4: Obsidian Sync, When You Are Done Fighting
Not free, so it does not really belong in a free guide, except that it belongs in every honest one. Sync Standard is $5 a month billed monthly or $4 billed annually, it is end-to-end encrypted by default, and it is the only option on this page where iOS is a first-class platform rather than a workaround.
If you have read this far and the phrase “sandbox limitations” has stopped being interesting, that is the answer. Four dollars a month is roughly one coffee.
OneDrive on iOS Is Its Own Problem
OneDrive keeps showing up in the search data for this topic, so it deserves a direct answer: it is the most awkward of the cloud options on iOS.
Remotely Save does support OneDrive on the free tier, but with a restriction worth understanding before you start. The free version can only connect to the App Folder, meaning /Apps/remotely-save inside your OneDrive. The PRO version is what connects to the root folder.
That means you can’t point free Remotely Save at a vault that already lives somewhere else in your OneDrive. The vault has to live in the app’s own folder. If you were planning to sync a vault that sits alongside your work documents, that is the plan that breaks, and it breaks after you have already set everything up.
If you are on OneDrive because your job is on Microsoft 365, this is workable as long as you keep the vault in the app folder. If you are on OneDrive out of habit, Dropbox or an S3 bucket will give you a smoother ride for free.
The Files App Trap
Here is the mistake that generates the most confused forum posts.
Your Obsidian vault on iOS is not just a folder in the Files app that you can put anywhere. Obsidian stores its iOS vaults in its own app container, which surfaces in Files as iCloud Drive > Obsidian. That location is not decoration. Obsidian’s docs are explicit that vaults should live inside the Obsidian folder in iCloud Drive.
Drop a vault in some other Files location and you get the confusing outcome: it looks fine in Files, it may even sync between your Macs, and the iOS app will not list it. People then conclude sync is broken when the vault was never somewhere Obsidian could see.
The other half of this trap is that “it’s in Files” does not mean “it’s on the device.” A file showing a cloud icon is a placeholder. Obsidian searching a vault full of placeholders returns incomplete results and nothing tells you why.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sync Obsidian on iPhone for free? Yes. iCloud if your desktop is a Mac, Remotely Save with Dropbox or S3 for everything else, or SyncTrain if you want peer to peer with no cloud involved.
Does Syncthing work on iOS? Not directly, because iOS does not allow background daemons. You use a wrapper app, either Möbius Sync or SyncTrain, and both devices must be awake at the same time to sync.
Is Möbius Sync free? Free to download and free within its sandbox up to 20MB. Beyond that the Unlimited file sync in-app purchase is $4.99, one time.
How do I sync Obsidian between my PC and iPhone? Remotely Save with Dropbox or an S3 bucket. iCloud is the wrong tool when a Windows machine is involved, for reasons covered in the iCloud walkthrough.
Why are my notes out of date when I open Obsidian on my phone? Because no iOS sync method runs continuously in the background. Open the app and give it a few seconds before you start editing.
Where does Obsidian store vaults on iPhone and iPad? In its own container, visible in the Files app as iCloud Drive > Obsidian. Vaults kept elsewhere may not appear in the app’s vault list.
The Verdict
The iOS question answers itself once you stop asking it about iOS. Mac desktop, use iCloud. Windows or Linux desktop, use Remotely Save. Want nothing on anyone’s server, use SyncTrain and accept that both devices have to be on. Want to stop thinking about it, pay the four dollars.
What none of them do is sync silently in the background the way you are used to on a laptop, and no blog post is going to fix that, because it is Apple’s design and not a gap in the tooling. Once you build the two-second pause into opening the app, iOS sync stops being a problem and goes back to being a folder.
Mine has been a folder for four years now. I only think about it when I write about it.
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