Obsidian Aut-O-Backups

Automated backups to Dropbox of your entire vault every 20 minutes (starting after a 10 minute delay).

Backups are stored here:

/Apps/Obsidian Backups/

Underneath that folder, backups get stored as:

/VAULT_NAME/YEAR/MONTH/DAY/TIME_WITH_FRACTIONAL_SECONDS/VAULT_CONTENTS

We use fractional seconds to prevent collisions with ad hoc backups.

Usage

Click the icon to authenticate with Dropbox. After that, backups will happen every 20 minutes (starting after a 10 minute delay). You can also fire off a backup at any time by clicking the ribbon icon.

The slashed cloud indicates that you need to authenticate with Dropbox:

The large arrow indicates the upload has started:

The small arrow inside the cloud indicates the upload is about 50% done:

The cloud with a check mark indicates that the backup is complete!

Demo:

Settings

A setting is available to 'Exclude binary files', this will skip any file without one of the following extensions:

• md
• org
• txt

Dropbox permissions

This app requires the following Dropbox permissions:

• account_info.read: You can't turn this one off, I don't think I actually need it. You can see in the source code that I don't read anything from it.
• files.metadata.read: You can't turn this one off either. I never read or list files, so it shouldn't be necessary, but Dropbox doesn't allow turning it off.
• files.content.write: This is the one I actually need. This app only writes files. This app cannot read files. It is also scoped to only its folder.

Known limitations

Any files not in this list:

• md
• org
• txt

Are uploaded as binary files.

Let me know if more files need to be added to this list that are actually plain text.

What happened to 'Dropbox Backups'?

As of version 2.0.0, the app was renamed to follow required branding guidelines.

Manually installing the plugin

• Copy over main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css to your vault VaultFolder/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-dropbox-backups/.