Make Obsidian Multiplayer

Make Obsidian Multiplayer

Keep Obsidian on your own machine, and let the team work in the same vault in the browser. Git is the meeting point: Folio shows the vault from a Git repository, edits happen live inside Folio, and your local Obsidian syncs through Git. No Obsidian Sync seat per colleague, and colleagues need neither Obsidian nor a Git account.

Full walkthrough with screenshots: Make Obsidian multiplayer with Folio · How Folio and Obsidian compare: Folio vs. Obsidian. Comparison and prices: Folio vs. Obsidian.

1. Git setup

In the vault folder:

git init -b main

Create a .gitignore before the first commit. Obsidian rewrites its workspace files whenever anyone opens a note, so two people would conflict on them all day:

.obsidian/workspace.json
.obsidian/workspace-mobile.json
.obsidian/cache
.trash/
.DS_Store

Commit the rest of .obsidian/ or ignore it all; Folio never shows or edits that folder (it only reads types.json for property types) and connects either way.

git add .
git commit -m "Add the vault"
git remote add origin git@github.com:your-team/team-vault.git
git push -u origin main

Use a private repository and keep large videos and archives out: every clone carries them.

2. Connect it to Folio

User menu, Git access: connect GitHub or paste a token with read and write access. Then New space, From a git repository. Folio detects the vault and connects it with a light footprint: no ids in your notes.

3. Invite people and set roles

Send invitation links with a preset role (admin, editor, viewer), an expiry and a use limit. Narrow single pages where needed. The instance administrator does not read private spaces they are not a member of. See Sharing and Permissions.

4. Edit together

Colleagues open pages in Reading, Live edit or Source and see each other's cursors. They get properties, tags, backlinks, the graph, canvases and bases (Migrate from Obsidian lists what renders).

5. Keep Obsidian

Install the community plugin Obsidian Git and turn on automatic commit and push and automatic pull, with an interval of a few minutes. Any Git client or a small script running git pull and git push works the same.

What lands in Git, and when

Direction	What happens
Browser to Git	Folio writes the edit to the file at once and commits about 90 seconds after the space goes quiet (or on Sync). The commit author is the person who edited; Folio is the committer, message folio:update. Only the last editor in a window is the author.
Git to browser	Folio fetches about every three minutes and on every Sync; open pages pick up the merged text.
Diffs	One edit changes only the lines edited. File mode, CRLF and a missing final newline are kept; front matter keys Folio did not write are never removed.

So a browser edit reaches your Obsidian after about 90 seconds plus your plugin's pull interval.

Conflicts

Sync is a merge, never a rebase. Edits in different places combine on their own. If both sides change the same lines, Folio commits the conflict markers locally, does not push them, marks the space Conflict and lists the files. Fix the text like any edit, or use Take the version from git, which first saves the current state to a folio-backup/<timestamp> branch. Habits that keep it rare: pull before you write, commit often, talk before two people rework one note.

Limits

• Between local Obsidian and Folio there is no live co-editing; the two copies meet in Git.
• Dataview, Templater and plugins do not run in the browser; canvases are view-only.
• Obsidian markup is read, never written; Folio does not turn links into wikilinks.
• Saved tokens exist for GitHub and GitLab; other Git hosts are not documented. You run the server; no SSO or groups.

See also

Migrate from Obsidian · Blog: vault as a team wiki · Blog: Folio 0.4 · Install