Obsidian Google Drive Plugin

Obsidian plugin that allows synchronizing vaults from and to your Google Drive account.

There are other ways of synchronizing Obsidian vaults to Google Drive but they require installing third party apps, while this is a standalone native Obsidian implementation.

Note there's no deletion/renaming support yet, also there's no conflict detection warning either, ie if you modify a vault from two different devices without synchronizing to Google Drive and then synchronize both to Google Drive, the oldest modification will be overwritten without warning on both the local vaults and Google Drive. See TODO

Features

• Google OAuth2 secure Google Drive authorization
• No third party server access other than Google Drive
• One hour Google Drive login timeout, if you synchronize your Obsidian vault with Google Drive after the timeout you will be prompted to login again (this is a limitation of not using third party servers, may change in the future)
• Google Drive folder creation/browsing to synchronize the Obsidian vault to
• Synchronize Obsidian vault from/to Google Drive
  • Upload files/folders from Obsidian vault to Google Drive
  • Download files/folders from Google Drive to Obsidian vault
  • Overwrite older files in Obsidian vault or Google Drive with the newer ones
  • Upload only, download only, upload and download synchronization modes
• With the plugin's default configuration settings, Google Drive access is limited to files and folders created by this plugin, can't access the rest of your Google Drive
• Android support (untested on iOS, may work)
• PC support (untested on Mac, may work)
• Supports personalized Google Cloud API settings, when using those:
  • Supports all Google Drive access (not just files and folders created by this plugin)
  • Supports Google Drive Computer folders (ie orphan folders)
  • Supports Google Drive transparent token refresh after the one hour Google Drive login timeout

Usage

First Obsidian vault instance

1. Create and populate a vault inside Obsidian as usual or use an existing vault
2. Configure Google Drive Plugin settings, specifically
   1. Configure Google Drive login
      1. Leave the default settings, click on the Click to login to Google Drive link.
      2. A browser window using your default browser will open requiring your user and password to access Google Drive on behalf of Obsidian Google Drive Plugin
      3. After filling in your password and accepting, you will be redirected to an error URL that starts with localhost:, copy that whole URL
      4. Go back to Obsidian Google Drive login dialog box and paste that URL into the Paste error URL text box and press Ok
   2. Now that you have configured Google Drive login, create a Google Drive folder for your vault by choosing <new> in the Google Drive folder dropdown
      1. Enter the folder name in the dialog box
      2. The dropdown will update and the folder is now your Google Drive vault folder
3. Configure the rest of the Google Drive Plugin settings as desired and dismiss the configuration dialog
4. Manually synchronize the vault with Google Drive whenever needed by pressing the Synchronize Vault to Google Drive ribbon icon or the command Google Drive: Synchronize vault
5. Edit your notes as usual, synchronize with Google Drive as desired

Second and later Obsidian vault instances

1. Create an empty vault inside Obsidian
2. Configure the plugin settings as with the first instance but choose an existing Google Drive folder instead of creating a new one.
3. Manually synchronize the vault with Google Drive by pressing the Synchronize Vault to Google Drive ribbon icon or the command Google Drive: Synchronize vault, this will download all the files in that Google Drive folder into your Obsidian vault
4. Edit your notes as usual, synchronize with Google Drive as desired

Google Drive login settings

Default Google Drive login settings

The default settings have the following limitations:

• Can only access files and folders created from the plugin.
• Will periodically timeout and force to enter username and password in the browser to re-authorize the plugin

Personalized Google Drive login settings

If you have your own Google Cloud developer account, you can use your own settings (client id, secret, scope and uri) in the Google Drive login configuration and

• Bypass the one hour limit
• Access your whole Google Drive if you use a drive scope

Privacy

The plugin doesn't collect any kind of information, Google may collect whatever default statistics Google Cloud collects when you authorize applications to access and operate Google Drive.

The plugin doesn't communicate to any server other than Google's to access your Google Drive files.

The default (non personalized) settings only have access to files and folders created by this plugin.

TODO

• Support file/folder deletion/renaming
• Support conflict detection
• Support periodic syncs
• Support encryption
• Support compression
• Support for >5MB files
• Better error checking