Share and collaborate

Editing together

What you see when others edit the same Obsidian note as you, live cursors with names, mouse pointers and faces in the note header, and how to turn them off.

Open any note in a shared folder while someone else has it open, and you edit it together. There is nothing to start or join.

Cursors and names

Each person's text cursor shows in the note in their colour, with their name beside it, and their selection is tinted the same colour. Everything you type appears for them as you type it, and theirs for you. If two of you type in the same place at once, both people's words are kept.

Names come from each person's display name, which you set under Account → Display name in the Nectenda settings.

Faces in the note header

Everyone else with the note open appears as a circle with their initials beside the note's title. Up to five are shown, then a count of the rest. Choose someone's circle to jump to where their cursor is. The Nectenda icon also carries a small number, showing how many other people have this note open. Its menu lists each of them with Go to, which moves you to that person's cursor.

Mouse pointers

You can also see where other people's mouse pointers are in the note. When someone's pointer or cursor is outside the part of the note you are looking at, a marker at the edge of the pane shows which way they are.

Two switches control this, under Collaboration on the Editing page of the Nectenda settings (Settings → Nectenda → Editing), and in the menu of the Nectenda icon in the note header:

• Share my mouse pointer — whether others see yours. Turn it off to keep your pointer to yourself.
• Show collaborators' mouse pointers — whether you see theirs. Turning it off only hides them on this device; it does not stop yours being shared.

Pointers are encrypted like everything else, so the server cannot see them.

In the file explorer

A shared folder's indentation guide is drawn in your theme's accent colour, so you can tell at a glance what is shared. When a collaborator changes a note, its name briefly pulses in the file explorer. See Sync status icons for the marks beside each note.

When you are offline

Keep typing. Your edits are saved on your device and sent when you reconnect, and anything others wrote meanwhile arrives and merges in. Nobody's work is lost to the merge.