Obsidian, running in your browser

Where your notes live

Two options, and neither one involves a server.

A real folder on your computer

Point Markport at any directory and it reads and writes that directory directly, through the browser's File System Access API. Your notes stay ordinary Markdown files on your disk - open them in any other editor, back them up, sync them with whatever you already use. Nothing is copied into the browser, and the browser cannot see anything outside the folder you picked. Chromium-based browsers only.

Inside the browser

If you would rather not grant folder access, vaults can live in OPFS - private to you, never uploaded, never shared between visitors. They survive a reload and stay until you clear that site's browsing data. Works in every modern browser.

There is also an optional sync server you can run yourself - pull-only, read-only, no encryption. Not ready for real use yet.

One exception: requests to github.com, githubusercontent.com and obsidian.md - installing a community plugin, and the deprecated-plugin check Obsidian itself makes at vault load - pass through a small proxy, because a browser cannot reach those hosts directly. Your notes are never part of that. A sync server you connect yourself is a direct connection and is never proxied.

Zero patches to Obsidian's bundle

app.js is served exactly as Obsidian ships it - verified by checksum against the official Android bundle. Nothing is rewritten at build time. Platform behaviour (desktop vs. mobile layout) is adjusted at runtime, through a shim that captures Obsidian's own Platform object instead of editing its source.

This repository does not contain or redistribute that bundle.

What works

• Full Markdown editing and live preview, powered by Obsidian's own renderer
• File tree, tabs, split panes, graph view
• Wikilinks, backlinks, tags, search, command palette
• Core plugins, and community plugins installed from within the app
• Folder vaults, or browser-local storage - see above
• RTL and full Unicode

What does not work

• Obsidian 1.13 and newer. Markport is pinned to 1.12.7. Starting with 1.13, Obsidian asks its host environment for a terms field carrying a verbatim acknowledgement before it initialises. The acknowledgement sits on both sides - one supplies it, the other compares against its own copy (illustrative, not exact).

  On mobile, through Capacitor's App plugin:

  const ACKNOWLEDGEMENT = "I understand and agree that I am not allowed to … granted by the Obsidian team.";
  
  // ### Platform side ###
  // The string is compiled into classes.dex and served through Capacitor's App plugin
  App.getInfo = () => ({
    name: 'Obsidian', id: 'md.obsidian', build: '…', version: '1.13.4',
    terms: ACKNOWLEDGEMENT,
  });
  
  // ### Client side ###
  const appInfo = await App.getInfo();
  Platform.build   = appInfo.build;
  Platform.version = appInfo.version;
  
  // …
  
  if (ACKNOWLEDGEMENT !== appInfo.terms) throw new Error();

  On desktop, the same value over IPC - in the same run that reads version and resources:

  const ACKNOWLEDGEMENT = "I understand and agree that I am not allowed to … granted by the Obsidian team.";
  
  // ### Platform side ###
  electron.ipcMain.on("terms",         e => { e.returnValue = ACKNOWLEDGEMENT }),
  electron.ipcMain.on("documents-dir", e => { e.returnValue = documentsDir }),
  electron.ipcMain.on("resources",     e => { e.returnValue = resourcesPath }),
  electron.ipcMain.on("version",       e => { e.returnValue = appVersion }),
  
  // ### Client side ###
  Platform.version = electron.ipcRenderer.sendSync("version");
  Platform.build   = electron.remote.app.getVersion();
  
  // …
  
  const termsFromIPC = electron.ipcRenderer.sendSync("terms");
  
  if (ACKNOWLEDGEMENT !== termsFromIPC) return window.close();

• Plugins that need real Node APIs - spawning processes, reaching outside the vault. Plugins written against the mobile-safe API generally work.
• Folder vaults - Chromium only; Firefox and Safari do not implement the directory picker.
• Auto-refresh on external file changes - Chromium only; elsewhere it refreshes when the tab regains focus.
• An insecure origin. Browser storage is unavailable without https:// (or localhost), and vault creation fails silently on a bare-IP host.

Browser support

Chromium gives the complete experience. Safari shipped OPFS writes much later than reads - check your version. A secure context (https:// or localhost) is required everywhere.

There is no public instance

On purpose. Hosting one would mean serving Obsidian's own application code to strangers, and that is Obsidian's call to make, not mine. This repository does not contain or redistribute their bundle either - the setup script downloads it from Obsidian, onto your own machine.

So there is nothing to click here, and nothing to sign up for. What follows is what it does, what it does not do, and how to run your own copy.

Run it yourself

Two deployment modes. A static, client-only build - any static host, or a folder on your own machine. Or an optional Node.js server that stores vaults as real files on disk and pushes live updates across tabs. Both run the same browser-side core.

Setup instructions →