Sync a reMarkable without the cloud.
Tagged Sync Pro talks to the tablet itself, over the USB cable or across your own Wi-Fi, and copies the notes off it. No reMarkable account is involved, no server of mine, and no internet connection is needed at any point. On a reMarkable 1 or a reMarkable 2 there is nothing to switch on first.
Why skip the cloud at all?
Every tool in this space reaches a reMarkable account through an interface the company has never documented or promised. It was worked out by watching what the official apps do. That works, and it works well — but it means one change on their side can stop syncing for everybody on the same day. In April 2026 exactly that happened, and every tool of this kind broke at once.
Reading the tablet directly does not touch that interface, so nothing that happens to their cloud can reach it. Across a desk it is usually quicker, too: the pages travel a metre instead of twice around the world.
What does my tablet need?
| Tablet | What has to happen first |
|---|---|
| reMarkable 1, reMarkable 2 | Nothing at all. They take the connection as they come out of the box. |
| Paper Pro, Paper Pure | Developer Mode — and switching it on wipes the tablet. Read the next section before you buy Pro for this. |
| Paper Pro Move | Untested. I do not own one, so I make no claim about it. |
Pairing happens once. It asks for the tablet's root password, which the device itself prints at the end of the licence text in its own settings; it is used to install a key for your vault, and is never kept. The tablet then shows you its key fingerprint, and that fingerprint is pinned to your vault: if anything at that address ever answers with a different one, the sync stops and says so, rather than handing your notes to whatever picked the address up.
Whether you need the cable at all depends on the firmware. Newer devices keep network access switched off until something turns it on, so the first pairing goes over USB and everything after that can go over Wi-Fi. On Windows the cable is the weaker route anyway — recent Windows releases have been dropping support for the driver it relies on — so Wi-Fi is worth preferring there.
What does it cost on a Paper Pro or Paper Pure?
- On a Paper Pro or a Paper Pure, a factory reset. Those two allow the connection only in Developer Mode, turning it on erases the device, and afterwards it shows a warning screen at every start. Your notes come back down from the reMarkable cloud afterwards — but that is reMarkable's rule, and nothing here can work around it.
- It is part of Pro, the optional add-on: €24 once, no subscription. The cloud route is in the plugin itself and always will be.
- The tablet has to be awake. A device asleep in a drawer cannot be read. A background sync checks for that before it starts, so it passes over quietly instead of failing — but the notes are not in your vault until the tablet is on.
Can I switch between cloud and cable later?
Yes. A vault that has synced through the cloud for a year can move to the cable and carry on where it left off. The plugin works out the same fingerprints for your notes as the cloud route does, so nothing is drawn again, nothing is read again, and no cloud bill is run up doing it. You can go back the same afternoon.
You can also keep both and name one as the fallback: read the tablet and fall back to the cloud while it sleeps, or the reverse when your line is down.
When is the cloud the better route?
- You own a Paper Pro or a Paper Pure and would rather not wipe it. That is a fair call.
- You want it working in the next five minutes, on any device, with nothing to pair.
- Your tablet is rarely awake at the same time as your computer, and you would rather notes turned up whenever you next open Obsidian.
Start with the plugin.
Syncing through the cloud costs nothing and takes minutes. If you then want the tablet read directly, Pro is €24 once — and the 14-day trial needs no key and no email.
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.