digital-garden/obsidian-and-livesync

title: “Obsidian + obsidian-livesync” date: 2026-04-14 tags:

obsidian
self-hosted

← Back to overview · Next: CouchDB + couch-sync →

obsidian-livesync is a community plugin that replaces Obsidian’s native sync with a self-hosted CouchDB backend. It supports end-to-end encryption, so even though notes live in a database on your server, they’re encrypted before leaving your device.

Setting Up the Plugin

In Obsidian, open Settings → Community Plugins → Browse and search for Self-hosted LiveSync.
Install and enable it.
Under Remote Database Configuration, enter:
- URI: http://your-vps-ip:5984
- Username / Password: your CouchDB admin credentials
- Database name: obsidian
Enable End-to-end encryption and set a passphrase. Store this safely — without it you cannot decrypt your notes.
Click Test Connection, then Apply & Restart.

Repeat this on every device. All devices sync through the same CouchDB instance; obsidian-livesync handles conflict resolution automatically.

How obsidian-livesync Stores Notes

obsidian-livesync does not store plain markdown in CouchDB. It uses a chunked, content-addressed format:

Leaf documents

Each file is split into chunks. Every chunk becomes a leaf document:

{
  "_id": "h:+2wl1oyw4xkjoo",
  "type": "leaf",
  "data": "<encrypted base64 content>",
  "e_": true
}

_id is a hash of the chunk content — identical chunks are deduplicated across files.
data holds the encrypted, base64-encoded chunk.
e_: true marks the document as encrypted.

Parent documents

A parent document ties the chunks together, using the filename as its _id:

{
  "_id": "my-note.md",
  "type": "plain",
  "path": "my-note.md",
  "ctime": 1776028129377,
  "mtime": 1776028134157,
  "size": 142,
  "children": ["h:+2wl1oyw4xkjoo", "h:+1b8os20kjykp8"],
  "published": true
}

children lists the leaf IDs in order to reconstruct the full file.
published: false is a custom field — couch-sync uses this to unpublish a note without deleting it.

Why this matters

Because content is encrypted, couch-sync cannot read actual note text out of CouchDB without the decryption key. If you want the sync pipeline to publish note content, you either need to disable E2E encryption or run a separate decryption step.

Real-time Sync

Once configured, obsidian-livesync maintains a persistent connection to CouchDB and pushes changes within a second or two of saving. Sync is bidirectional — changes from any device appear on all others automatically.

Conflict resolution follows “latest write wins” for most edits, with a dedicated conflict UI for cases where two devices edited the same note while offline.

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