Backing up your Obsidian vault

Relay syncs your Shared Folders. It is not designed as a backup tool. You'll want remote backups if your computer is lost or destroyed; local backups are fine for recovering from data loss or corruption (e.g. if a coding agent makes unwelcome changes to your files).

If you're serious about your notes, set up git. It's the right answer for any Obsidian user, Relay or not.

Set up git with Obsidian Git

The Obsidian Git plugin commits your vault to a git repository on a schedule. Set it to auto-commit every 5 minutes.

Git retains full file history. You can restore any file to any prior state: git log to find the commit, git checkout <hash> -- path/to/file.md to restore.

Should you push to a remote?

Pushing to GitHub, GitLab, or a self-hosted server gives you an offsite copy — protection if your machine is lost or destroyed. The trade-off: your vault content lives on another server. If your vault contains sensitive notes or client work, use a private repository, a self-hosted server, or skip remote push and keep history local.

Local-only git still gives you full version history. You lose the offsite copy but keep the recovery path.

If you've already lost data

If you don't have git set up, these are your options:

• Obsidian file recovery (Settings → Core plugins → File recovery) — saves snapshots on a schedule, can restore a note to a recent prior state
• .trash folder (<vault>/.trash/) — check here for recently deleted files

These are better than nothing. Git is better than these.

Compatibility with other sync services

Do not run another sync service (iCloud, Dropbox, Obsidian Sync) on the same Shared Folders as Relay. See Using Relay with other sync services for details.

If you use Obsidian Sync for cross-device sync alongside Relay, configure it to exclude your Relay Shared Folders. The Obsidian Sync Local REST API (headless mode) makes managing those exclusions easier.

Need help?

Join the Relay Discord for support.