Self-hosted Obsidian LiveSync with CouchDB

Obsidian has been my primary tool for daily engineering notes, project specs, and personal knowledge base.

Standard file sync solutions like Google Drive or Syncthing can cause file conflicts on mobile when editing rapidly.

To get instant, conflict-free sync with full data ownership, I configured the Self-hosted LiveSync plugin for Obsidian backed by Apache CouchDB running on my Synology NAS.

Why this setup works well:

• Fast real-time sync: Changes on PC appear on the phone almost immediately.
• End-to-end encryption: All vault contents stored in CouchDB are encrypted with a client-side password before transmission.
• Clean conflict handling: CouchDB revision history prevents silent data overwrites.
• Automated Git backup: In addition to CouchDB replication, a background cron job commits the entire vault to a private Git repository once a day.

Combined with MikroTik Split-DNS, synchronization runs directly over local network when at home and securely over mobile internet when away.