Third-party Sync

Obsidian Third-party Sync is an unofficial fork of Remotely Save, focused on security upgrades. It retains all core features from the original while rebuilding the encryption implementation and simplifying the codebase. It is NOT backwards compatible with Remotely Save — backup your vault before switching.

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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 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: progress and last sync time display.
• 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 (14 languages: English, 简体中文, 繁體中文, 日本語, 한국어, Deutsch, Français, Español, Italiano, Nederlands, Dansk, Svenska, Norsk, Русский). No manual setting required; falls back to English when a translation is missing.

Limitations & Notes

• Without metadata sync, deletion sync relies on timestamp comparison. Recommended to use with Incremental Push/Pull modes.
• No smart conflict resolution algorithm (original Pro feature removed). Files are compared by modification time; the newer 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!