Sync Obsidian vaults to Android using Git

By William Guimont-Martin • 3 minutes read •

Updated way to sync your Obsidian vault to an Android phone using Git. Previous method can be found here.

Here’s the procedure to sync your Obsidian vault to an Android phone.

First, you’ll have to run these commands on your computer:

  1. Create a SSH key using ssh-keygen -f ~/obsidian-phone-key -t ed25519 -C "[email protected]"
  2. Add the public key (~/obsidian-phone-key.pub) to your GitHub account
  3. Connect your phone to your computer and allow the computer to access phone data (e.g., using LocalSend)
  4. Copy the private key (~/obsidian-phone-key) to your phone

Now, on your phone:

  1. Install F-Droid
  2. Open F-Droid and install Termux
  3. In Termux, install git using pkg install git
  4. In Termux install termu-am using pkg install termux-am
  5. Mount the phone storage using termux-setup-storage
  6. Copy your SSH key into ~/.ssh/ using cp ~/storage/shared/path/to/obsidian-phone-key ~/.ssh/
  7. Follow these instructions to add the ssh key
  8. Now go to the location you want to clone the repository (should be in ~/storage/shared/ for Obsidian to have access) and clone it using git clone [email protected]:username/repo.git
  9. You can now open Obsidian
    1. Open folder as vault
    2. Browse to the repository you copied from your computer
  10. Open F-Droid and install MGit
  11. From the settings page of MGit, import the SSH key
    1. SSH Keys
    2. Download button in the upper right corner
    3. Select obsidian-phone-key you copied from your computer
  12. Go back to the main menu of MGit, press the three dots in the upper right and press the Import Repository button
  13. Browse to the repository you copied from your computer
  14. You should now be able to pull from MGit
  15. Your Obsidian vault is now synced using Git!
  16. (Optional) If you want to also be able to manage the repository from Termux, run the command git config --global --add safe.directory ~/storage/shared/path/to/repo