I’ve been using my phone to write more this last week, and it’s working better than I expected. A few things have made this time different than previous efforts.
I’m no longer using OneNote for this phone writing. I decided to give Obsidian another try after a recent change in OneNote got on my last nerve.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think OneNote is great. But OneNote’s newly repositioned search box is blocking part of my page titles on the computer version, and it annoyed me into trying Obsidian again. I had tried it before, and had hoped to take advantage of the wiki-like linking capabilities in it, but had ultimately decided I didn’t like working with markdown when I had so many images and things to deal with. And at that time, I also tried to use the importer and it just wouldn’t import most of my notes from OneNote. I gave up at that time and didn’t really think about it again until this newest issue with OneNote’s search box.
I’m pretty happy with Obsidian this time. The markdown is less bothersome. I’ve figured out images. I came up with a really great organizational structure that goes farther than I can go with OneNote’s notebooks, sections, pages, and subpages.
That said, I also had to come up with a sync alternative for Obsidian.
The fact is, I’m not willing to pay for Obsidian Sync. I (mostly) trust OneNote and haven’t ever noticed losing any notes. I’m a Microsoft 365 subscriber. So it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense that I’m switching. And maybe I’m not switching everything—I haven’t truly decided yet. But because of the newness of this switch and the purpose of it and for the reasons I’m doing it, I’m just not ready to pay out real money to sync some notes.
That means I needed a workaround. At first I was going to use OneDrive as the location of my Obsidian vault, but after further consideration, I decided I didn’t like the single fail point for something that might grow into an important collection of notes and journals for me. In the end, it was my BAT files that came to the rescue!
I’ve discussed previously how I use BAT files to handle copying my publishing directory to OneDrive as a backup (creating a mirror of my publishing directory that means I have an exact copy always available to me if I need it). It’s a one-way sync, but it’s a super effective backup that gives me access to files I might need if I’m away from my computer (or my computer breaks/dies/is lost).
I have my Obsidian vault on my hard drive, and used an extra line in my publishing backup batch file to make sure I have an updated mirror of that vault on OneDrive, and then added a new folder to OneDrive called !Obsidian-uploads (I wanted it to fall into the first position in my OneDrive folder list for easy access).
Here’s why:
My Workflow with OneDrive
1. Store the mirror of the vault on OneDrive
I use OneDrive to store my vault, meaning I can pull files from it to my phone and use them in a local Obsidian vault. My phone won’t let me directly use the OneDrive vault because Android blocks me from accessing the files through the Android folder even though they’re set to offline use (because I did try to set that up at one point before I decided it wasn’t in my best interest to store my working vault on OneDrive). There are ways around that, but I didn’t bother. Again, I’m not interested in paying for an app to solve this specific problem for reasons I mentioned above.
2. Copy notes to my phone
When I want to see a note from my vault, I just download it from OneDrive and move it into my Android phone’s Obsidian vault directory. At that point, I can use it in Obsidian just like any other note.
3. Upload edited or new notes
When I’m done, if I made changes to the note, I upload it to my !Obsidian-uploads folder on OneDrive.
The way OneDrive handles uploads in the Android app is a benefit for me, and I take advantage of it: When I upload a file back into the vault on OneDrive, OneDrive doesn’t overwrite existing files. It appends a number to the file, and that gives me a bit of automatic version history.
Version history is important in a process like this, because I’m moving files between devices and making changes. This ensures I always have previous iterations of my work, preventing accidental loss or unwanted overwrites.
This is only for files I edit. For files I write, it’s even easier.
I create a new file on my phone in Obsidian and write. I tend to use titles like “2025-07-25 ACR” (with ACR being whatever acronym I’m using for my work in progress I’m writing for).
Then I “share” the note with OneDrive which really is just uploading it to OneDrive to the !Obsidian-uploads folder.
4. Use a BAT file on my computer to bring uploaded notes into my vault
This would feel like a hassle if it weren’t for that second extra line I added to my BAT file. That line copies the contents of !Obsidian-uploads to a folder in my vault called “Uploads.” To make sure this works correctly every time, I have the !Obsidian-uploads folder set to “Always keep on this device” in OneNote on my computer where the vault is. It might still work if I didn’t, but it would be a little slower I think, because it would have to download those files before copying them, and if they’re set to always be on the device, they’ll already be downloaded and ready to be copied without delay. :D
Why all this effort?
The Obsidian Advantage
Probably the single biggest thing that has made me start writing more on my phone (and why I never quite got there with OneNote) is that Obsidian has an autocomplete feature where it automatically closes quotation marks and brackets. I open the quote for dialogue and then the closing quote mark is already there. I love this little feature. It makes drafting on my phone just so much easier. Those quotation marks are always a hassle!
Of course, I wouldn’t be using Obsidian at all for this if it didn’t also have a good undo and redo function. I set up the toolbar to showcase this as the first and second item in the bar. It’s been great.
What I’ve discovered is that I edit a lot less often and maintain my forward momentum in the story when editing the story isn’t as easy to do. Here, a negative of Obsidian is also a benefit to me, because selecting text is a little finicky in Obsidian on my phone, and that also makes it less appealing to try to edit. I just don’t bother because selecting several lines of text is troublesome.
That’s the true benefit of phone writing: I think just a little more cleanly (because editing is a pain in the behind) and what I put down stays down.
I never thought I’d like writing on my phone, but it’s turned out to be a good addition to my writing process.
I’m writing more, and I’m happy about it.