What is Obsidian LiveSync?
Obsidian LiveSync is a self-hosted synchronization backend for the LiveSync community plugin for Obsidian. It uses CouchDB as the underlying database to sync your Obsidian vaults in real time across multiple devices — desktop, mobile, or any platform where Obsidian runs.
Unlike the official Obsidian Sync service, LiveSync lets you keep full control of your data by running the sync server on your own infrastructure. All note content is stored in your CouchDB instance and never passes through a third-party server.
How It Works
The Coolify service deploys a pre-configured CouchDB instance with CORS enabled for Obsidian's app origins (app://obsidian.md, capacitor://localhost, http://localhost). Once deployed, you point the LiveSync plugin in Obsidian to your server URL and credentials to start syncing.
Configuration
After deploying the service in Coolify:
- Open Obsidian and install the Self-hosted LiveSync plugin from the community plugins list.
- In the plugin settings, select Remote Database and choose CouchDB.
- Enter the service URL (the domain Coolify assigned, e.g.
https://your-domain.example.com). - Enter the username and password — find them in Coolify under Environment Variables (
COUCHDB_USERandCOUCHDB_PASSWORD). - Click Test Database Connection to verify the setup.
- Enable LiveSync or Periodic Sync mode to start syncing.
Environment Variables
| Variable | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
COUCHDB_USER | auto-generated | CouchDB admin username |
COUCHDB_PASSWORD | auto-generated | CouchDB admin password (64-char) |
MAX_DOCUMENT_SIZE | 52428800 (50 MB) | Maximum size of a single CouchDB document in bytes |
MAX_HTTP_REQUEST_SIZE | 67108864 (64 MB) | Maximum HTTP request size in bytes — should exceed MAX_DOCUMENT_SIZE to allow multipart overhead |
Increase MAX_DOCUMENT_SIZE and MAX_HTTP_REQUEST_SIZE only if you attach very large files to your notes.