Which tablets, which computers, and what each one asks of you.
reMarkable 1, reMarkable 2, Paper Pro and Paper Pure all sync, together with typed text from the Type Folio and books you read as EPUB. On the computer it is Obsidian's desktop app, on macOS, Windows or Linux. What differs between those three is handwriting recognition. Nothing else about the sync changes.
Which tablets and accessories work?
| Device or accessory | Where it stands |
|---|---|
| reMarkable 2 | Works. |
| reMarkable 1 | Works. |
| reMarkable Paper Pro | Works, including the wider canvas, the colours and the shader highlighter. Those fixes came out of Paper Pro owners' own files. |
| reMarkable Paper Pure | Works. |
| reMarkable Paper Pro Move | Untested. I do not own one, so I make no claim about it either way. |
| Type Folio | Typed text is lifted from the file exactly as you typed it and never put through recognition, so a typed word cannot come back misspelled. |
| EPUB books | Read as the PDF the device makes of them, so chapters keep the names the book's own contents give them. |
| “Read on reMarkable” extension | An article you send over counts as a document to mark up, like any other PDF. |
Which computers work, and why do they differ?
Syncing, marked-up documents and typed pages behave the same everywhere, because none of them goes through handwriting recognition: the words are read out of the file. Recognition is the only place the three platforms part company, and the reasons are not arbitrary.
| Your computer | What you set up | Why it is that way |
|---|---|---|
| Mac with Apple silicon | Nothing | macOS brings its own text recognition. The downloadable model is offered here too, from 8 GB of memory upwards. |
| Mac with an Intel chip | Nothing | The same built-in recognition. The downloadable model needs Apple silicon, so it is not offered. |
| Windows on Arm | Nothing, or a server you run | The downloadable model is offered from 16 GB of memory upwards, on a build no malware scanner objects to. |
| Windows on Intel or AMD | A local AI server you run | Windows Defender quarantines the engine the downloadable model rests on, so it is withheld rather than shipped into a quarantine folder. |
| Linux | A local AI server you run | No recognition ships with the system, and there is no build of the downloadable model for it. |
Where a server is the route, it is Ollama, LM Studio or anything else speaking the same interface, with a vision model loaded. Until one is set up, notes still arrive — with the page drawn as you wrote it, and no text beneath it.
Can I sync from my phone?
No. A sync can only be started from Obsidian on a computer — the mobile app cannot run one. What the sync leaves behind, though, is nothing exotic: ordinary Markdown files with a PDF next to them. Once a note exists, your phone opens it exactly like every other note in the vault. The limit is on making notes, not on reading them.
Does the sync ever write to my tablet?
No. Notes travel from the tablet to the vault and never the other way. Nothing is written to the device, nothing on it is renamed, moved or deleted, and a document you never tagged is never even fetched. Whatever goes wrong on this side, the tablet is where you left it.
Check it against your own setup.
The plugin is in the Obsidian community store and costs nothing. If your platform needs a server, that is free too — Pro is a separate matter, and optional.
Desktop only — Obsidian for Mac, Windows or Linux. Doesn't open? See it on obsidian.md, or in Obsidian: Settings → Community plugins → search Tagged Sync.