I found that trying to sync (Windows Obsidian app «=» Android Obsidian app) just via a cable would get the files over fine, but would not produce usable results, at least not without a lot more fiddling that I wanted to do. I was hoping that we could simply transfer the folder structure over and just have it work, but no such luck.
Evidently it requires not only transfer, but some kind of transformation that they do in their cloud, and I'm not interested in another cloud subscription, particularly one so specific. (Happy to pay for the software & updates, just not to maintain the subscription and maintain the concern about another connection in the loop)
This was a couple years ago. Perhaps this has changed, or there's now a plugin to make such a bidirectional transfer work?
There is a popular method which I use. Syncing the vault between devices with Syncthing.
It reportedly causes problems if you edit the same file in two different places at the same time, it will generate a conflict when saving since the files won't match, doesn't affect me in my workflow (if I have access to my desktop I won't use it on my phone) but YMMV
Obsidian creates a hidden directory in your “vault,” which contains plugin files, plus metadata about your settings, currently opened files, etc. If those settings don’t work equally well on both systems, that would be a hassle. Maybe try copying all the files from inside the directory (so that you don’t grab that hidden dir when you do) instead of grabbing the whole directory.
You might also want to look at the git-obsidian plugin. It takes a little setup, but seems to work well once it’s going.
I can highly recommend to use Git, the Obsidian Git plugin on Desktop and Termux on Android for syncing. Works great!
I have documented my setup here: https://github.com/davidkopp/termux-scripts/
Evidently it requires not only transfer, but some kind of transformation that they do in their cloud, and I'm not interested in another cloud subscription, particularly one so specific. (Happy to pay for the software & updates, just not to maintain the subscription and maintain the concern about another connection in the loop)
This was a couple years ago. Perhaps this has changed, or there's now a plugin to make such a bidirectional transfer work?
TIA for any suggestions!