I use git every day. So when I started taking Obsidian seriously, the obvious move was to drop the vault into a repo and call it solved. Commit, push, pull, done.
That works perfectly. On laptops. The second you add a phone, git stops being the easy answer and starts being the thing you fight with, which is why it is the one method I do not use for mobile in my guide to syncing Obsidian for free on every device. I run the Git plugin on desktop for version history and sync my iPad with something else entirely.
Almost nobody searching for this is asking how to set up git. They already know git. They are asking one question: will this work on my phone? So let’s answer that directly.
- Desktop Git Is Solved, So Let’s Not Waste Your Time
- Why Mobile Is a Completely Different Animal
- What Actually Breaks, and When
- No, It Is Not Real-Time Sync
- The Stable Path: Let a Real Git Client Do the Mobile Leg
- Git vs Remotely Save vs LiveSync
- Who Git Is Actually Right For
- FAQ
- The Short Version
Desktop Git Is Solved, So Let’s Not Waste Your Time
If you only use Obsidian on computers, there is no article here. Put the vault in a repo, add a .gitignore, commit, push. That is it. You do not need a plugin at all.
If you want the commits to happen without you thinking about it, install the Obsidian Git plugin from the community plugins tab like any other plugin, and it will do automatic commit-and-sync (commit, pull, and push) on a schedule, plus auto-pull when Obsidian starts. On desktop the plugin shells out to the actual git binary on your machine, so it behaves exactly the way git behaves. I walked through my own setup of this in the first post, including the part where it refused to give me any branch options and I had to go back to the command line like a caveman.
The mobile story is not the same.
Why Mobile Is a Completely Different Animal
Neither iOS nor Android will let an app run the real git binary. So the plugin does the only thing it can do: it swaps in isomorphic-git, a reimplementation of git written in JavaScript, and runs that inside Obsidian.
That is a different program wearing git’s clothes, and the gaps are specific:
-
No SSH authentication. isomorphic-git does not support it. Your SSH keys and
git@github.com:remotes are useless here. You are on HTTPS with a personal access token, and you get to store that token on your phone. - No rebase merge strategy. If your workflow assumes rebase, mobile does not have it.
- No submodules. Some people build vaults out of submodules. Not on a phone.
- No git-lfs. If your repo uses Large File Storage, mobile is out.
- Repo size is capped by memory. All of this happens inside the app’s RAM.
That last one is the one that actually kills people, and it deserves its own section.
What Actually Breaks, and When
The plugin’s documentation does not hedge. It says the git implementation on mobile is very unstable , that it would not recommend using this plugin on mobile, and that you should try other syncing services instead.
That is the developer of the plugin telling you not to use his plugin. I have never seen a clearer signal in an Obsidian community plugin.
The docs get specific about the failure mode too. Depending on your device and how much free RAM it has, Obsidian may crash on clone or pull, throw buffer overflow errors, or just run forever without finishing.
Notice what all three have in common. They are memory failures, not sync failures. So the variable that decides whether this works for you is not “is my vault big” in some absolute sense. It is your vault plus its entire history versus whatever RAM your phone has free right now. Which means it can work fine for weeks and then fail because you had a bunch of tabs open.
I am not going to give you a magic megabyte number, because there isn’t one. What I can tell you is the shape of it:
- The initial clone is the worst moment , by a wide margin. Biggest memory spike you will ever ask it to perform, and where most people give up before they reach daily use.
- Attachments are the accelerant. A pure-markdown vault is tiny. Start pasting screenshots and PDFs into it and the repo gets heavy fast, and unlike your notes, images do not compress or diff. Every version of that screenshot is in your history forever.
- History accumulates even if the vault doesn’t. A three year old vault with automatic commits every ten minutes has a lot of objects in it, and the clone deals with all of them.
Also worth knowing: an older separate obsidian-git-mobile repo exists and shows up in search results. Do not install it. It was archived back in September 2022 and its functionality was folded into the main plugin.
No, It Is Not Real-Time Sync
“Obsidian git plugin real-time sync” is one of the most searched versions of this question, and I think people are hoping the answer has changed. It has not.
Git is not a sync engine. It is a version control system you are using as a sync engine, and the difference shows up exactly here. The plugin’s automatic commit-and-sync runs on a timer measured in minutes. There is no file watcher pushing your keystrokes to a server.
So the real behavior is: you type a note on your laptop, and some number of minutes later it gets committed and pushed. Then your phone pulls whenever it pulls. Best case, a gap of a few minutes. Worst case, you opened the app before it finished pulling and you are now editing a stale copy of a note, which is how you manufacture a merge conflict on a device with no good way to resolve one.
If you want changes to appear on the other device almost immediately, git is the wrong tool and Self-hosted LiveSync is the one built for that.
The Stable Path: Let a Real Git Client Do the Mobile Leg
Here is the setup that actually holds up, and it is the same principle for both platforms. Do not make Obsidian do the git. Install a dedicated git client on the phone, let it clone and push the repo into a real folder, and then point Obsidian at that folder as a vault. Obsidian just edits markdown files. The git app handles git. Neither one has to be clever.
GitSync, which is what I would use now
The plugin’s own docs point at GitSync as the alternative, and having looked at it, that recommendation is correct and it is the biggest thing that has changed in this space.
GitSync is a mobile git client built specifically for syncing a folder between a git remote and a local directory, which is precisely the job. It runs on Android 5+ and iOS 13+, it is open source under GPL-3.0, and it is on Google Play, the App Store, F-Droid, and IzzyOnDroid. It won a 2024 Gem of the Year award in the Obsidian tools category, so the vault use case is not an accident, it is the point.
The part that matters most: it does not use isomorphic-git. It uses a native Rust core built on git2-rs. So it supports SSH, along with HTTPS and OAuth (GitHub, GitLab, and Gitea), and it does not inherit the memory ceiling that makes the plugin fall over. It also does background sync, which the plugin cannot do because the plugin only runs while Obsidian is open.
It is free to download. Premium is a $24.99 one-time unlock that adds additional repositories, Git LFS, git-crypt, and priority issue tagging, and you can also get it by becoming a GitHub Sponsor. There is a separate GitSync AI subscription at $6.99, which has nothing to do with syncing and which you can ignore. Note that Git LFS thing: it is a capability the Obsidian plugin does not have on mobile at any price.
Working Copy on iOS
Working Copy is the old reliable iOS git client and it is genuinely excellent. The catch that nobody mentions in sync articles: the free version cannot push. The App Store description says it straight, that you need to unlock pro features “such as the ability to push commits and manage more than 5 repositories.” Pro Unlock is $35.99. There is a 10 day trial, and it is free for students through the GitHub Student Developer Pack.
One wrinkle on “one-time”: you get permanent access to every pro feature that exists at purchase plus anything added over the next year. Features added after that need a Pro Upgrade ($17.99 for the recent ones). You never lose what you bought, but “buy once, get everything forever” is not quite the deal.
For a sync workflow, “cannot push” means “cannot sync,” so budget for it. What you get is a mature app other iOS apps can read from, which is what makes the handoff to Obsidian clean.
About mgit on Android
I have recommended mgit before and I am walking that back. The advice used to be to skip the Google Play build (users report it broken) and grab it from F-Droid instead. That is still true, but the F-Droid listing’s latest release is version 1.7.0, from January 4, 2023. That is over three years of nothing. It may well still work for you, but I am not going to tell somebody to trust their notes to an abandoned app when GitSync exists, is maintained, and is better.
Git vs Remotely Save vs LiveSync
People search for this comparison literally, so here it is without hedging.
| Git | Remotely Save | Self-hosted LiveSync | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it really is | Version control used as sync | File sync to cloud storage | Live replication over CouchDB |
| Mobile story | Bad via plugin, fine via GitSync | Good, it is the whole point | Good, but you run a server |
| Speed | Minutes, on a timer | Minutes, on a timer | Near instant |
| Version history | Excellent, it is the entire feature | No | Yes |
| Setup burden | Low if you know git | Lowest | Highest by a mile |
| Conflict handling | Real merges, and real merge conflicts | Duplicate files | Handled at the database level |
Pick Remotely Save if you want your notes on your phone with the least friction. This is what I actually run. Pick LiveSync if you want changes to land before you can switch apps, and you are the kind of person who is fine maintaining a CouchDB instance. Pick git if you want history.
Who Git Is Actually Right For
Git is right for you if you already live in git and what you want out of sync is a time machine , not a file transfer. Being able to see that you deleted three paragraphs on March 12th and get them back is a genuinely different capability from having your notes on two devices, and no cloud sync method matches it. Add the Version History Diff plugin and you can read those diffs inside Obsidian.
Git is wrong for you if what you want is your notes on your phone. That is a sync problem, and you should solve it with a sync tool.
Which leads to the setup I think most git people should actually run, and it is a hybrid: Git plugin on desktop only, for history and backup. Something else for the mobile leg. My iPad talks to Dropbox through Remotely Save, which is the route I walk through in the iPhone and iPad guide, my laptops keep a git history, and the two never touch each other.
That last part is a hard rule, and it is the same one that wrecks iCloud vaults on Windows: never point two sync systems at the same vault folder at once. Git and a cloud sync client fighting over the same .git directory is a genuinely creative way to destroy a repo.
FAQ
Does the Obsidian Git plugin work on mobile? Technically yes, on both iOS and Android, using isomorphic-git instead of real git. Practically, the plugin’s own documentation says the mobile implementation is very unstable and recommends using a different syncing service instead.
Is the Obsidian Git plugin stable on iOS and Android? No. The documented failure modes are Obsidian crashing during clone or pull, buffer overflow errors, or the operation running indefinitely, all depending on your device’s available RAM.
Does the Obsidian Git plugin do real-time sync? No. Automatic commit-and-sync runs on a schedule measured in minutes. If you need near instant propagation, Self-hosted LiveSync is the method built for it.
Can I use SSH with the Obsidian Git plugin on mobile? No. isomorphic-git does not support SSH authentication, so mobile requires HTTPS with a personal access token. GitSync does support SSH, because it uses a native git implementation.
What is the best Android support option for Obsidian and git? GitSync. It is maintained, it is on Play, F-Droid, and IzzyOnDroid, and it uses native git rather than a JavaScript reimplementation. mgit’s last F-Droid release was January 2023.
Can I use the Git plugin with Nextcloud for multi-user sync? You can host the remote anywhere, Nextcloud included. But git is not a live collaboration layer. Two people editing the same note between pushes produces a merge conflict, not a merged note. For shared vaults, look at LiveSync or Obsidian Sync’s shared vaults.
I uninstalled the Git plugin. Where did my vault go? Nowhere. The plugin does not own your vault, and removing it leaves your files and .git folder untouched. The confusion is almost always a mobile vault location problem: if you cloned through the plugin on iOS, the vault lives inside Obsidian’s own app storage, which is not somewhere you can casually browse to. Clone with a real git client into a folder you picked, and you always know where your notes are.
The Short Version
Git on Obsidian desktop is great and you should probably be doing it for the history alone. Git on Obsidian mobile through the plugin is a thing the plugin’s own author asked you not to do, and nobody seems to want to say that plainly.
If you want git on your phone anyway, and that is a reasonable thing to want, use GitSync and let a native git implementation do the work. If you just want your notes to show up on your phone, stop trying to make git do it and go use an actual sync method. I use git for the time machine and Dropbox for the phone, and I have not lost a note yet.
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