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For syncing files between my devices I'm using SyncThing. This tool is reliable, available on Linux, Android, Mac and iOS. And it encrypts the communication.

But sometimes I want to know when files in certain directories have changed - as example in my Obsidian vault. This allows me to post-process the files.

Some of the use cases I have in Obsidian:

• Resolve links in Daily Notes: when I share a URL from my RSS reader or from other sources into Obsidian, the URL sometimes is just a link to a URL shortener. I then later need to resolve the link - or let a script do it right away for known shortlinks, and update the daily note.
• Remove tracking information from URLs: many shared links include campaign and tracking information, and this can be removed straight away.
• Extract content from certain Toots: I follow a couple interesting accounts on Mastodon, and when I share the Toot link into Obsidian, the script extracts the Toot content and adds it, along with the original link, to a pre-defined note.
• Extract links from Toots: many news websites include a link (sometimes again with tracking information) in their Toots. When I share such a Toot into Obsidian, a script picks up the link, extract the target link and updates the daily note.

All of this is not very complicated, and a couple of lines in Python do the job. The main parts for the script are:

• extract the API key from the SyncThing configuration
• Open a connection to the local SyncThing instance
• Watch for certain events