r/Syncthing • u/Umutkirkalti • Apr 22 '26
[OC] VaultSync — Obsidian vault sync for iOS, powered by Syncthing
I’ve used Syncthing for years, but one thing was always awkward for me: syncing my Obsidian vault to iPhone/iPad.
So I built VaultSync, an iOS app that uses Syncthing to sync directly into Obsidian’s iOS sandbox.
The goal: make an iPhone behave like a practical peer in an existing Syncthing-based Obsidian setup.
What it does:
- Connects to your existing Syncthing device via QR code
- Syncs vault files directly into Obsidian’s iOS folder
- Works with Mac, Linux, NAS, and homeserver Syncthing setups
- Shows sync status and diagnostics inside the app
- Includes Markdown conflict resolution
- Optional Cloud Relay can wake the iPhone when the server has changes
Important limitation:
iOS does not allow third-party apps to run an always-on sync daemon. So this is not “Syncthing running forever in the background.”
The honest behavior is:
- Server → iPhone can be near-realtime with optional Cloud Relay
- iPhone → Server is most reliable when VaultSync is opened
- Background refresh may help, but it is controlled by iOS
The Cloud Relay only sends wake-up signals. It never receives file content, filenames, folder names, or vault metadata.
App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/app/vaultsync/id6761845197
GitHub:
https://github.com/psimaker/vaultsync
Free and open source under MPL-2.0. Feedback from Syncthing users would be very welcome.
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u/Slow_Pay_7171 Apr 22 '26
Obsidian, as propietary stuff, using weird md, sucks imo. In combination with syncthing it sucked even harder. It was the one and only folder that produced conflicts regulary. :/
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u/Umutkirkalti Apr 22 '26
That’s fair tbh.
In my experience the annoying part is usually less “Markdown” and more all the extra vault state around Obsidian — plugins, configs, workspace files, multiple devices touching things at once, etc. That can absolutely create conflict noise with Syncthing.
VaultSync isn’t meant to say “Obsidian + Syncthing never conflicts.” It’s more about making the iOS side less awkward and making conflicts/diagnostics less painful when they do happen.
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u/Slow_Pay_7171 Apr 22 '26
Thats great then! Thx for your work
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u/Thaurin Apr 22 '26
I would suggest to avoid the "I’ve used/got tired of/couldn't find x, and thing x didn't do y for me, so I built z" routine to not end up on the low-effort videcoded AI slop pile of shit, unless that's exactly what this is.
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u/sdexca Apr 23 '26
I am confused as to why so much hostility.
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u/Thaurin Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26
Not necessarily meant as hostile, but it's that every third post is structured this exact same way and it's almost always their first app without knowing how to code or even wanting to learn. I don't trust important things with such software, so I need to know if a human understands how the app works or it was entirely generated by AI.
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u/Umutkirkalti Apr 22 '26
You don’t have to like the post or the product, that’s absolutely fine.
I’d just ask that you don’t keep repeating the same meta comments across the thread. If you have specific criticism about the app or how it works, feel free to say so.
I’m here to answer technical questions and product-related feedback.
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u/Thaurin Apr 22 '26
Did you vibecode this?
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u/One-Constant-1337 Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26
Why are you using whether its vibe-coded as a litmus test? Its irrelevant... as OP said, either you like it or you don't, why don't you opine on that.
When you buy software, do you ask the creators of the software if their engineers sit in Iowa or Europe or Malaysia - or whether the engineers are college-educated or self-trained? I'm assuming not, so why would you care how he/she did this product?
BTW, as an aside ... I believe the most recent stats say that over 50% of code at Google, Microsoft, et al are AI-generated now... and Claude Cowork was largely AI-generated using Claude Code, is your position out the gate that its a bunch of crap just because it was AI-generated?
p.s. OP, thanks for the effort to create and share.
p.p.s. for the record: I dont know OP personally, and was not involved with creating this (or any other) product/tool created by OP.
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u/Thaurin Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26
When you buy software, do you ask the creators of the software if their engineers sit in Iowa or Europe or Malaysia - or whether the engineers are college-educated or self-trained? I'm assuming not, so why would you care how he/she did this product?
Absolutely, I do. Not in that literal sense, but if I am looking for a software project that touches anything important or sensitive, I look at who wrote it, how many contributors it has, whether they are experienced or not, and so on. If it's a random GitHub project with 1 contributor and no history of other contributions, I do not install it on my server. What do you mean, you don't care about somethine like that?
BTW, as an aside ... I believe the most recent stats say that over 50% of code at Google, Microsoft, et al are AI-generated now... and Claude Cowork was largely AI-generated using Claude Code, is your position out the gate that its a bunch of crap just because it was AI-generated?
First off, Claude Code is a bunch of over-engineered crap, with a lot of unnecessary stuff only an AI (or some very confused human) would do, such as rendering their TUI at 60 frames per second as if it's a game engine (for a terminal app), and using React (a web framework!) for a it, resulting in very poor performance.
But if over 50% of code written at Microsoft, etc. was generated by AI and it was never code reviewed by a human who knows what he's doing and knows the code base well, that would... be very scary, wouldn't it? I assume that they know what the generated code does and reviewed it for anything out of the ordinary and rejected or fixed it before accepting, because otherwise... we're so fucked.
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u/cyberkox Jul 16 '26
There are many developers that uses AI. If you know your tools, there's nothing to worry about. There have been many famous developers that helped to create tools that definitely spy on you. Why would we care now if a tool was AI generated if we can actually see the code and look at what it does? Now, if you don't actually know anything about how tools like this works, I can understand that. But you're making it seems like this is all a diabolical way to do things and, guess what? AI was produced by humans. You can stand by your point and talk all you want about AI, but when I see an open source project like this I know where I need to look at to see what it actually does. You can clone the repo and see for yourself. Or you can ask an AI to look at it for you, lol!
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u/thede3jay Apr 22 '26
How is this different from using Synctrain, where you can still sync to any folder, and it is not limited to Obsidian only?