I like to maintain my information/second brain on Obsidian. It stores the files locally as markdown files. I, however, need to access my second brain from multiple devices, including my personal laptop, Pixelbook (Chromebook), phone, and work laptop.

Obsidian has a cloud sync feature, but that requires 4 USD/month to enable. I am not a big fan of recurring expenses. I like one-off payments more.

So I decided to sync using Google Drive instead. I put all my Obsidian files and directories inside the Google Drive directory called “Obsidian” and then:

1. Pixelbook: It can access my Google Drive by default since that’s how Chromebooks work.
2. Personal Laptop: I use Linux on my laptop and there is no native client for Google Drive on Linux. I bought a one-time license to InSync for 30 GBP.
3. Android: I use the Autosync app. It provides a free service if you are syncing only one directory.
4. Work laptop: I share my obsidian root directory with my work profile and then an internal tool at the office syncs Google Drive files to the Linux Filesystem on my work laptop.

With the above 4 tools, I have a generic solution to my original problem. I can keep Google Drive files across multiple devices, including Obsidian files.

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