obsidian-remote-ssh

Editing multiple vaults from one Obsidian

5 min read

Editing multiple vaults from one Obsidian

Run several SSH profiles from a single Obsidian install — work vault on one host, personal vault on another, family-shared vault on a third. The plugin supports this natively; this recipe walks through the model + the few sharp edges.

The model

graph LR
  subgraph Ob["One Obsidian install"]
    LV[Local 'launcher' vault<br/>where the plugin lives]
  end
  subgraph Profiles["Profiles defined in the plugin"]
    P1[work-pi]
    P2[personal-vps]
    P3[family-nas]
  end
  subgraph Shadows["Shadow vaults (auto-managed)"]
    S1[~/.obsidian-remote/vaults/<work-id>/]
    S2[~/.obsidian-remote/vaults/<personal-id>/]
    S3[~/.obsidian-remote/vaults/<family-id>/]
  end
  subgraph Remotes["Real vaults (on the remote hosts)"]
    R1[work-pi:/home/me/work-notes]
    R2[vps:/home/me/personal]
    R3[nas:/srv/family-vault]
  end
  LV --- P1
  LV --- P2
  LV --- P3
  P1 --> S1
  P2 --> S2
  P3 --> S3
  S1 -.synced.- R1
  S2 -.synced.- R2
  S3 -.synced.- R3
  • One launcher vault holds the plugin + its profile list (data.json).
  • One profile per remote vault in plugin settings.
  • Each profile spawns its own shadow vault at ~/.obsidian-remote/vaults/<profile-id>/ when you connect.
  • Each shadow vault is a real Obsidian vault on disk — Obsidian opens it as a separate window.

So at any moment you can have 0, 1, 2, or 3 shadow vault windows open in parallel. The launcher vault stays open in its own window as the “control panel”.

Setting it up

1. Pick a launcher vault

Any vault works. Many users dedicate a small “Hub” vault for this purpose — minimal content, just the plugin + maybe a README explaining the setup. Others use their everyday local vault as the launcher.

2. Add profiles

Settings → Remote SSH → Add profile → repeat for each remote.

Profile naming tip: prefix with the host context for quick scanning in the connect menu — work-pi, personal-vps, family-nas.

3. Connect to each as you need it

Command palette → “Remote SSH: Connect” → pick a profile → a new window opens with that vault’s contents. Repeat for the next profile if you want both open simultaneously. Commands are scoped per launcher vault, not global.

What scales linearly

  • Daemon binaries — one per remote host (each profile uploads to its host’s ~/.obsidian-remote/server)
  • SSH connections — one per active connect; idle profiles cost nothing
  • Shadow vault disk usage — sum of all opened files across all shadows
  • Logs — one daemon log per remote host, but the plugin’s console.log is shared

What’s shared

  • Plugin data.json — profile list, host-key store, settings (font size, debug logging, etc.) — all in the launcher vault’s plugin folder
  • Client ID (This device setting) — single value used for ALL profiles. So every remote sees ~/.obsidian/user/<same-client-id>/ as your workspace subtree
  • Host-key store — fingerprints for every remote you’ve ever connected to, in the same data.json hostKeyStore
  • Telemetry — single telemetry.jsonl aggregating events across all profiles

Sharp edges

”All my profiles disappeared!”

Happens when you switch launcher vaults. The plugin’s data.json lives inside the vault, so opening a different vault means looking at that vault’s separate plugin state.

If you want the same profile list available from multiple launcher vaults, two options:

  1. Pick one launcher vault and use it consistently. Easiest.
  2. Symlink data.json between launcher vaults’ plugin folders. Caveat: file-watch and atomic-write semantics across symlinks can race; not officially supported.

Workspace state collisions

Per-Client-ID ~/.obsidian/user/<id>/ subtrees prevent your different LAPTOPS from stomping each other’s workspace state on the same vault. They do NOT separate per-profile workspace state on the same laptop — every profile uses the same Client ID. Usually fine because each shadow vault has its own .obsidian/user/<id>/workspace.json per profile by virtue of being a separate vault.

The collision case: same <client-id>, different profiles, but the plugin re-uses the same Obsidian vault.adapter chain. In practice this works because shadows are physically separate vaults; flag it as a known sharp edge.

Memory + CPU

Each open shadow vault is a full Obsidian window — significant per-window cost. Don’t keep 5+ open simultaneously unless you have RAM to spare. Idle profiles cost nothing — only opened ones are loaded.

Per-vault settings

Obsidian settings (theme, hotkeys, enabled plugins) are per-vault. Each shadow vault gets its own .obsidian/ directory on the remote, so it can have its own Obsidian config independent of the launcher vault. This is usually a feature (work vault on light theme, personal vault on dark) but means new-shadow-vault setup includes “configure Obsidian for this vault”.

Use cases

ScenarioSetup
Work + personal1 launcher vault, 2 profiles (work-host, personal-host). Switch contexts via the connect menu.
Per-project vaults1 launcher vault, N profiles (one per project’s remote). Connect to whichever project you’re working on.
Multi-device editing the SAME remote vaultDifferent config — see Collaboration architecture and Client ID. NOT what this recipe is about.
Shared family vault + private personalLauncher vault locally + 2 profiles (family-shared on NAS, personal on home server). Family members connect to family-shared from their own launchers.

See also

Graph View

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