Simple Backup

A minimal Obsidian plugin with a single job: copy your entire vault to a folder of your choice, timestamped and versioned, without ever slowing down Obsidian.

Why

Most sync/backup plugins are built around cloud services, conflict resolution, or partial sync. Simple Backup does none of that — it just makes a plain, timestamped copy of the vault on a schedule (or on demand), and prunes old copies according to a retention policy you control. If you already sync your vault another way and just want a local (or network-drive) safety net, this is it.

How it works

• On each run, Simple Backup copies the vault using fully asynchronous file operations (Node's fs.promises), so the actual disk I/O runs on a background thread pool instead of Obsidian's UI thread — the interface never freezes or stutters during a backup, even a large one.
• The vault is copied into <target>/<vault-name>-<YYYY-MM-DD-HHmm>/.
• Common junk/VCS folders (node_modules, .git, .trash, OS metadata files, etc.) are excluded by default and configurable.
• After every backup, a retention policy (keep N daily / N weekly / N monthly snapshots) prunes old backups automatically. The snapshot that was just created is always kept.
• Only errors are logged, to backup-errors.log inside the plugin's own folder — there is no verbose success log to sift through.

Features

• Manual trigger: ribbon icon and a command palette entry ("Run backup now").
• Scheduled triggers (each independently toggleable):
  • On Obsidian startup
  • Hourly
  • Daily, at a configurable time
• Live progress notice: a small, single, continuously-updating notification shows roughly how far the current backup has gotten (files copied, size so far).
• Stays awake while backing up: the computer won't go to sleep in the middle of a backup (Obsidian asks the system to keep the screen on for as long as the copy runs, then lets go). If the system refuses, the backup simply runs as before.
• Retention/rotation: configurable number of daily/weekly/monthly snapshots to keep; everything else gets deleted automatically at the end of each run.
• Folder picker: a native "Browse…" button next to the target directory field (uses Electron's dialog on desktop).
• Configurable exclude list for files/folders that shouldn't be copied.

Settings

Requirements

• Desktop only (Windows/macOS/Linux). The plugin relies on Node.js's fs module and (optionally) Electron's native dialog, neither of which is available in Obsidian Mobile — the plugin is marked isDesktopOnly and won't load on iOS/Android.

Installation (manual)

1. Copy manifest.json and main.js into <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/simple-backup/.
2. Reload Obsidian (or toggle the plugin off/on) and enable Simple Backup under Settings → Community plugins.
3. Open the plugin's settings and set a target directory before running your first backup.

Known limitations

• No separate OS process. An earlier version of this plugin ran the copy in a spawned child process at a lowered OS scheduling priority. In practice, Obsidian's Electron build silently ignores the standard mechanism for turning its own executable into a plain Node process (ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE), so the spawned "child" never actually ran the worker script — it just exited immediately. Rather than depend on that, the backup now runs inside Obsidian's own process using fully asynchronous I/O, which keeps the UI responsive without needing a second process at all. The trade-off is that the copy no longer gets a lowered OS priority of its own — in practice this is a non-issue, since copying is I/O-bound, not CPU-bound. It's also why there's no "run on shutdown" option: without a surviving separate process, a backup triggered on close could only ever be a best-effort race against Obsidian actually exiting, which isn't a promise worth making. Use "Run on startup" or a scheduled time instead.
• A backup interrupted mid-copy (Obsidian closed before it finished, machine lost power, target drive disconnected) is left exactly as it is — it's never auto-deleted, but it's also excluded from the daily/weekly/monthly retention accounting, so it won't accidentally count as "the latest good snapshot" either. Clean it up manually if you find one (it has no .backup-complete marker file inside it).
• The target directory can't be the vault itself. It can be a subfolder of the vault, or any other location — just not the vault's root path exactly.
• The "Browse…" folder picker depends on Electron's remote.dialog, which isn't part of every Obsidian/Electron build. If it's unavailable, the button shows a notice and you can still type the path in by hand.

Project layout

• src/main.js — the plugin entry point: settings UI, scheduling, and the ribbon icon/command.
• backup-core.js — the BackupRun class and helpers that do the actual asynchronous copying and retention. Required by src/main.js and by the test suite.
• build.js — bundles src/main.js + backup-core.js into a single, self-contained main.js at the repo root (via esbuild). Run npm run build after editing either source file.
• main.js (repo root) — the generated, distributable build output. This is the file that actually ships — don't edit it directly, it's overwritten by npm run build. It has to be self-contained because Obsidian's community plugin installer and BRAT only ever fetch manifest.json, main.js, and styles.css — nothing else.
• manifest.json — standard Obsidian plugin manifest.

License

MIT