OneDrive Sync

Sync your Obsidian vault with OneDrive Personal accounts. Zero-config, mobile-friendly, battery-efficient.

📖 How It Works · Troubleshooting · Development

[!TIP] 🦞 OpenClaw Users - This pairs well with the 🦞🐚📝 Carapace Obsidian toolset when integrating these vaults with OpenClaw, so synced vault content can plug directly into your broader tool-driven workflow.

[!IMPORTANT] While I do work for Microsoft and on the OneDrive team, this plugin is in no way an official Microsoft plugin. Just a thing I needed and wanted to share. If you like it, give me a ⭐. As a friend of mine says, "I'm only in it for the subs and likes.".

✨ Features

• Zero-Configuration — No Azure AD app registration. Just click connect and authenticate.
• Mobile-First — Device Code Flow works on iOS and Android with no redirects.
• Event-Driven Sync — Syncs on file changes, not polling. Great for battery life.
• Bidirectional — Automatic two-way sync with configurable conflict resolution.
• Two Access Modes — App Folder (secure, isolated) or Full Access (shareable, flexible location).

Why this over native OneDrive file sync?

• Skips device-specific clutter — workspace UI state files (.obsidian/workspace*.json) are intentionally excluded.
• Faster content sync behavior — sync is event-driven on vault file changes instead of waiting for generic file-system polling cycles.
• Built-in merge/conflict handling — choose overwrite, duplicate, or manual resolution instead of relying on last-writer-wins file sync behavior.

🚀 Installation

Community Plugin Store (Recommended)

1. Open Obsidian → Settings → Community Plugins → Browse
2. Search for "OneDrive Sync"
3. Click Install, then Enable

[!NOTE] Upgrading from 1.0.x? Version 1.1.0 uses a new Azure app registration. After updating, you'll need to disconnect and reconnect to OneDrive in the plugin settings. Your files in OneDrive are not affected — the plugin will re-sync on first connection.

To clean up the old app authorization, visit account.live.com/consent/Manage, find the old entry (it may appear as "Obsidian OneDrive Sync by Jeff Steinbok"), and click Remove. You can also delete the old /Apps/Obsidian OneDrive Sync by Jeff Steinbok folder from your OneDrive if present.

Via BRAT (Beta Testing)

1. Install BRAT from Community Plugins
2. BRAT settings → Add Beta Plugin → JeffSteinbok/obsidian-onedrive

Manual

1. Download main.js and manifest.json from the latest release
2. Place them in .obsidian/plugins/onedrive-sync/
3. Enable the plugin in Settings → Community Plugins

🔧 Setup

1. Settings → OneDrive Sync → Connect to OneDrive
2. Enter the displayed code at microsoft.com/devicelogin
3. Sign in and grant permissions
4. Done — your vault syncs automatically!

Configuration

Commands

Available via the command palette (Ctrl/Cmd+P):

• Sync now — trigger a manual sync immediately
• Connect to OneDrive / Disconnect from OneDrive — manage authentication
• Force full sync (re-download everything) — clear sync state and re-pull all files from cloud
• Reconcile from cloud (cloud-as-truth recovery) — destructive recovery; see Reset vs. Reconcile below
• Show sync conflicts — open the conflict resolution view

Reset vs. Reconcile — which one?

Reset sync token is upload-biased: local always wins, so any local-only file gets pushed to cloud on the next sync. Reconcile from cloud is the opposite: cloud always wins, local-only files get deleted (with a confirmation prompt for large deletes). Empty folders left behind by reconcile are pruned automatically — except folders that also exist in OneDrive.

Files always excluded from sync

The plugin hardcodes these exclusions for safety:

• .obsidian/plugins/onedrive-sync/ — the plugin's own folder is always excluded to prevent syncing its data.json (which contains sync state and configuration) and to avoid self-downgrade scenarios where one device overwrites another's plugin binary. Authentication tokens are stored separately using Obsidian's SecretStorage API, not in data.json.
• .obsidian/workspace*.json — per-device UI state (Obsidian Sync excludes these too)
• _OneDriveSyncLogs/ — device-local debug logs

Optional: .syncIgnore

Create a .syncIgnore file at your vault root to skip extra files/folders from sync (similar to .gitignore).

• One pattern per line
• # starts a comment
• ! negation patterns are not supported
• Folder pattern example: private/
• Wildcard example: *.tmp

🔒 Access Modes

To switch modes: Settings → OneDrive Sync → Access Mode, then disconnect and reconnect.

👥 Sharing Your Vault (Full Access Mode)

1. Enable Full Access mode and set your sync folder path (e.g., /Documents/MyVault)
2. In OneDrive web/app, share that folder with others ("Can edit")
3. They don't need the plugin! They just use OneDrive's native sync:
   • Desktop: Accept the share → OneDrive syncs locally → open folder as vault in Obsidian
   • Mobile: Accept the share → "Make available offline" in OneDrive app → open as vault

Tip: Use "Create duplicate" conflict resolution to avoid overwriting each other's changes.

📱 Mobile Support

This plugin is designed with mobile as a primary target:

• Device Code Flow — no custom URL schemes or redirects needed
• Event-Driven Sync — only syncs when files change (battery-efficient)
• iOS: Use Safari to complete authentication
• Android: Use Chrome or your default browser

Custom Client ID

By default the plugin uses a shared Azure AD app registration. For privacy or rate-limit reasons you can bring your own:

1. Go to Azure Portal → Microsoft Entra ID → App registrations
2. Click New registration
3. Name: Obsidian OneDrive Sync (or anything you like)
4. Supported account types: Personal Microsoft accounts only
5. Redirect URI: Leave blank (not needed for device code flow)
6. After registration, copy the Application (client) ID
7. Under Authentication → enable Allow public client flows

Then paste the client ID into Settings → OneDrive Sync → Advanced → Custom client ID.

Security & Privacy

• Authentication tokens (OAuth access and refresh tokens) are stored using Obsidian's SecretStorage API, which keeps them outside of data.json and in a platform-appropriate secure store. They are never written to files that could be accidentally synced or exposed.
• The plugin's own folder (.obsidian/plugins/onedrive-sync/) is always excluded from sync. Even though tokens are no longer in data.json, the exclusion remains to prevent self-downgrade (one device overwriting another's plugin binary) and to keep device-specific sync state separate.
• No data leaves your OneDrive — the plugin communicates directly with Microsoft Graph. There is no intermediary server.
• Vault file enumeration — the plugin reads your vault's file list to determine what to sync. This is inherent to any sync tool, but the information never leaves your device except as uploads to your own OneDrive.