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Vinzent edited this page Feb 12, 2023 · 7 revisions

Installation

Even though this plugin itself is desktop platform independent, some false installation of Obsidian or Git breaks the plugin.

Plugin installation

From within Obsidian

Go to "Settings" -> "Community plugins" -> "Browse", search for "Obsidian Git", install and enable.

Manual

  1. Download obsidian-git-<latest-version>.zip from the latest release
  2. Unpack the zip in <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-git
  3. Reload Obsidian (CTRL + R)
  4. Go to settings and disable safe mode
  5. Enable Obsidian Git

Mobile

Existing Repo

Follow these instructions for setting up an Obsidian Vault on a mobile device that is already backed up in a remote git repository.

The instructions assume you are using GitHub, but can be extrapolated to other providers.

  1. Make sure any outstanding changes on all devices are pushed and reconciled with the remote repo.
  2. Install Obsidian for Android or iOS.
  3. Create a new vault (or point Obsidian to an empty directory). Do NOT select Store in iCloud if you are on iOS.
  4. If your repo is hosted on GitHub, authentication must be done with a personal access token. Detailed instruction for that process can be found here. Minimal permissions required are "Read access to metadata" and "Read and Write access to contents and commit status" for the repo you are going to use.
  5. In Obsidian settings, enable community plugins. Browse plugins to install Obsidian Git.
  6. Enable Obsidian Git (on the same screen)
  7. Go to Options for the Obsidian Git plugin (bottom of main settings page, under Community Plugins section)
  8. Under the "Authentication/Commit Author" section, fill in the username on your git server and your password/personal access token.
  9. Leave the relative path setting empty (for advanced users only).
  10. Exit plugin settings, open command palette, choose "Obsidian Git: Clone existing remote repo".
  11. Fill in repo URL in the text field and press the repo URL button below it. The repo URL is NOT the URL in the browser. You have to append .git.
  12. Follow instructions to determine the folder to place repo in and whether an .obsidian directory already exits.
  13. Clone should start. Popup notifications (if not disabled) will display the progress. Do not exit until a popup appears requesting that you "Restart Obsidian".

New Repo

Similar steps as existing repo, except use the Initialize a new repo command, followed by Edit remotes to add the remote repo to track. This remote repo will need to exist and be empty.

Windows

Git installation

Make sure you have 3rd-party software access enabled.

For additional advice on using Obsidian Git for the tech unfamiliar, take a look at foreveryone#6438's great tutorial

Linux

Obsidian installation

Known supported package managers:

  • AppImage

Known not fully supported package managers

  • Snap (Snap puts Obsidian in a kind of sandbox, so that Obsidian can't access Git)
  • Flatpak can access Git, but not all system files, so it's not recommended.

If you installed Obsidian a while ago via Flatpak, and it doesn't work, please run the following snippet.

$ flatpak update md.obsidian.Obsidian
$ flatpak override --reset md.obsidian.Obsidian
$ flatpak run md.obsidian.Obsidian

Source of this snippet

MacOS

Nothing specific.

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