Third-party Sync

An Obsidian sync plugin, forked from Remotely Save with security-first improvements. Rebuilt the encryption layer (AES-256-GCM) and simplified the codebase. NOT backwards compatible with Remotely Save — please back up your vault before switching.

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English | 简体中文 | 繁體中文

Disclaimer

• This is NOT the official sync service provided by Obsidian.
• ⚠️ ALWAYS backup your vault before using this plugin.

Why Fork from Remotely Save?

Security Upgrades (Core Improvements)

• Cipher algorithm
  • Remotely Save: AES-CBC or AES-CTR (RClone)
  • This Plugin: AES-256-GCM
• Integrity check
  • Remotely Save: None (CBC mode, which is vulnerable to padding oracle attacks)
  • This Plugin: Built-in GCM AuthTag verification
• Initialization Vector (IV)
  • Remotely Save: Derived from password (same IV for all files under same password)
  • This Plugin: Randomly generated per file
• Salt length
  • Remotely Save: 8 bytes (2^64 possibilities)
  • This Plugin: 16 bytes (2^128 possibilities)
• Encryption dependencies
  • Remotely Save: crypto-browserify + @fyears/rclone-crypt + Web Worker
  • This Plugin: Pure browser-native window.crypto.subtle API

Architecture Simplification

Compared to the original, this fork makes the following simplifications:

• Storage services: Reduced from 13 to 3 mainstream services (S3 / WebDAV / OneDrive). Removed Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, Azure Blob, pCloud, Yandex Disk, Koofr, Webdis, etc.
• Encryption schemes: Merged from 2 (OpenSSL + RClone) into 1 (AES-256-GCM)

Features

• Supported services: Amazon S3 (and compatible: Tencent COS, Alibaba OSS, Backblaze B2, MinIO, etc.), WebDAV (Jianguoyun/Nutstore, Nextcloud, OwnCloud, Seafile, rclone, etc.), OneDrive personal. See service compatibility docs.
• End-to-end encryption (details): files are encrypted locally before upload using AES-256-GCM via browser-native Web Crypto API, output format compatible with RClone Crypt's base64url filename encoding.
• Auto sync: scheduled interval, startup, on-save, and remote-change detection.
• Sync Direction: bidirectional / incremental push (backup mode) / incremental pull / with-delete variants.
• Modification Ratio Protection: aborts sync if the ratio of modified/deleted files exceeds threshold, preventing accidental data loss.
• Conflict handling: configurable to keep newer or larger version on conflicts.
• Large file skip: skip files exceeding a configured size threshold.
• Sync bookmarks and config dir (optional).
• Status bar: displays sync progress and last sync time.
• Mobile support: full functionality on Obsidian mobile (Android / iOS), including end-to-end encryption.
• URI import/export for settings (excluding OneDrive OAuth info).
• Empty folder cleanup: automatically removes synced folders that become empty.
• Minimal intrusive design.
• Fully open source (Apache-2.0).
• Sync algorithm.
• 🌐 Multilingual — The UI automatically follows your Obsidian display language (English, 简体中文, 繁體中文). No manual setting required; falls back to English when a translation is missing.

Limitations & Notes

• No metadata sync — deletion detection relies on timestamp comparison. Recommended to use with Incremental Push/Pull modes.
• Simple conflict resolution: files are compared by modification time; the newer version wins.
• Cloud services cost money. All operations (upload, download, file listing, API calls) may incur charges.
• Some limitations come from browser environment, see technical docs.
• Protect your data.json file — it contains sensitive info (S3 keys, WebDAV passwords, etc.). Do not share with others; recommended to add to .gitignore.

Installation

Option 1: Search Obsidian Third-party Sync in Obsidian's community plugin marketplace.

Option 2: Use Obsidian42 - BRAT, add repo nightfall-yl/obsidian-third-party-sync.

Option 3: Manually download main.js, manifest.json, styles.css from the latest release and place them in your vault's .obsidian/plugins/third-party-sync/ directory.

Usage

S3

• Prepare S3 info: Endpoint, Region, Access Key ID, Secret Access Key, Bucket name.
• Fill in settings and set encryption password (if needed).
• Click ribbon icon to manually sync, or enable auto sync in settings.

WebDAV

• Works with Jianguoyun/Nutstore, Nextcloud, OwnCloud, Seafile, rclone, etc.
• Some services require plugins like WebAppPassword. See WebDAV config docs.

OneDrive (Personal)

• Personal accounts only — OneDrive for Business is not supported.
• Plugin reads/writes under /Apps/third-party-sync/ after authorization.
• E2E encryption supported (vault name itself is not encrypted).

Auto Sync

• Errors silently fail in auto sync mode.
• Cannot run while Obsidian is closed (browser plugin technical limitation).

Hidden Files

• Files/folders starting with . or _ are excluded from sync by default.
• Enable sync for _ folders and .obsidian config directory in settings.

Buy Me a Coffee

If you find this plugin helpful, consider buying me a coffee ☕️

Credits

• Thanks to @fyears for the original Remotely Save project.

Feedback

Open an issue on GitHub Issues. Pull requests are welcome!